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14 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/">Petter Reinholdtsen
</a>
21 <h3>Entries tagged "english".
</h3>
25 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_6_got_a_video_review_from_Pcwizz.html">Skolelinux
6 got a video review from Pcwizz
</a>
32 <a href=
"https://twitter.com/pcwizz/status/313044373262716930">twitter
</a>
33 I just discovered that
<a href=
"http://pcwizz.net/">Pcwizz
</a> have
34 done a
<a href=
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPzTZ61Pcuc">video
35 review
</a> on Youtube of
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.no/">Skolelinux
36 / Debian Edu
</a> version
6. He installed the standalone profile and
37 the video show a walk-through of of the menu content, demonstration of
38 a few programs and his view of our distribution.
</p>
40 <p>There is also some really nice quotes (transcribed by me, might
41 have heard wrong). While looking thought the Graphics menu:
</p>
44 "Basically everything you ever need in a school environment."
47 <p>And as a general evaluation of the entire distribution:
</p>
50 "So, yeah, a bit bloated. It kept all the Debian stuff in there, just
51 to keep it nice and GNU. So, I do not want to go on about it, but
52 lets give it
7 out of
10. I am not going to use it. That is because
53 I am not deploying a school network. There may be some mythical
54 feature to help you deploy Skolelinux on a school network."
57 <p>To bad he did not test the server profile, and discovered the PXE
58 installation option. It make it possible to install only the main
59 server from CD, and the rest of the machines via the net, and might be
60 considered the mythical feature he talk about. :)
</p>
62 <p>While looking through the menus, there is also this funny comment
63 about the part of the K menu generated from the Debian menu subsystem:
66 "[The K menu] have a special Debian section for software that no-one
67 is going to look at, because it contain lots of junky stuff that you
68 actually don't need in the education distribution, but have just been
69 included because it isn't stripped out for some reason."
72 <p>I guess it is yet another argument for merging the Debian menu and
73 Gnome/KDE desktop menu entries into
74 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/Proposals/DebianMenuUsingDesktopEntries">one
75 consistent menu system
</a> instead of two incomplete and partly
76 inconsistent menu systems.
</p>
78 <p>The entire video is available below for those accepting iframe
81 <iframe width=
"560" height=
"315" src=
"http://www.youtube.com/embed/wPzTZ61Pcuc" frameborder=
"0" allowfullscreen
></iframe>
87 Tags:
<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/video">video
</a>.
92 <div class=
"padding"></div>
96 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_update_released.html">First Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze update released
</a>
102 <p>Last Sunday,
2013-
03-
03,, Holger Levsen announced the first update
103 of
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu
</a>
104 based on Debian Squeeze. This is the first update since
105 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">the
106 initial release
2012-
03-
11</a>. This is the
107 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2013/03/msg00000.html">release
108 announcement email from Holger
</a>:
</p>
110 <blockquote><p>Hi,
</p>
112 <p>it's my pleasure to announce the immediate availability of Debian
113 Edu
6.0.7+r1 ("Debian Edu Squeeze").
</p>
115 <p>Debian Edu
6.0.7+r1 is an incremental update to Debian Edu
116 6.0.4+r0, containing all the changes between Debian
6.0.4 and
6.0.7 as
117 well Debian Edu specific bugfixes and enhancements. See below (in this
118 mail) for the full list of (edu) changes. Please see
119 <a href=
"http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311">http://www.debian.org/News/
2012/
20120311</a>
120 for more information on "Debian Edu Squeeze".
</p>
122 <p>Images are available for download at
123 <a href=
"http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/
</a></p>
126 <br>1fe79eb4f0f9ae1c58fc318e26cc1e2e debian-edu-
6.0.7+r1-CD.iso
127 <br>a6ddd924a8bd9a1b5ca122e8fe1c34ec debian-edu-
6.0.7+r1-DVD.iso
128 <br>ac6c72cd7925ccec51bfbf58e2a7c69c debian-edu-
6.0.7+r1-source-DVD.iso
</p>
131 <br>a4b58233b672a99c7df8dc24fb6de3327654a5c3 debian-edu-
6.0.7+r1-CD.iso
132 <br>9b524915e0ff2aa793f13d93123e5bd2bab2dbaa debian-edu-
6.0.7+r1-DVD.iso
133 <br>43997614893fc5e9e59ad6ce066b05d07fd836fa debian-edu-
6.0.7+r1-source-DVD.iso
</p>
135 <p>These images are suitable for amd64+i386.
</p>
137 <p>Changes for Debian Edu
6.0.7+r1 Codename "Squeeze", released
141 <li>sitesummary was updated from
0.1.3 to
0.1.8
143 <li>Make Nagios configuration more robust and efficient
</li>
144 <li>Comply with
3.X kernel
</li>
146 <li>debian-edu-doc from
1.4~
20120310~
6.0.4+r0 to
1.4~
20130228~
6.0.7+r1
148 <li>Minor updates from the wiki
</li>
149 <li>Danish translation now complete
</li>
151 <li>debian-edu-config from
1.453 to
1.455
153 <li>Fix /etc/hosts for LTSP diskless workstations. Closes: #
699880</li>
154 <li>Make ltsp_local_mount script work for multiple devices.
</li>
155 <li>Correct Kerberos user policy: don't expire password after
2 days.
157 <li>Handle '#' characters in the root or first users password.
159 <li>Fixes for gosa-sync:
161 <li>Don't fail if password contains "
</li>
162 <li>Don't disclose new password string in syslog
</li>
164 <li>Fixes for gosa-create:
166 <li>Invalidate libnss cache before applying changes
</li>
167 <li>Multiple failures during mass user import into GOsa²
</li>
168 <li>gosa-netgroups plugin: don't erase entries of attribute type
169 "memberNisNetgroup". Closes: #
687256</li>
170 <li>First user now uses the same Kerberos policy as all other users
</li>
172 <li>Add Danish web page
</li>
174 <li>debian-edu-install from
1.528 to
1.530
176 <li>Improve preseeding support and documentation
</li>
180 <p>End-user documentation in English is available at
181 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/
</a>
182 - translations to French, Italian, Danish and German are available in
183 the debian-edu-doc package. (Other languages could use your help!)
</p>
185 <p>If you want to contribute to Debian Edu, please join our
187 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">debian-edu@lists.debian.org
</a>!
190 <p>I am very happy to see the fruits of a year of hard work. :)
</p>
196 Tags:
<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>.
201 <div class=
"padding"></div>
205 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Frikanalen___Complete_TV_station_organised_using_the_web.html">Frikanalen - Complete TV station organised using the web
</a>
211 <p>Do you want to set up your own TV station, schedule videos and
212 broadcast them on the air? Using free software? With video on demand
214 <a href=
"http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and
215 open standards
</a>? Included a web based video stream as well? And
216 administrate it all in your web browser from anywhere in the world? A
217 few years now the Norwegian public access TV-channel
218 <a href=
"http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen
</a> have been building a
219 system to do just this. The source code for the solution is licensed
220 using the GNU LGPL, and
221 <a href=
"http://github.com/Frikanalen">available from github
</a>.
</p>
223 <p>The idea is simple. You upload a video file over the web, and
224 attach meta information to the file. You select a time slot in the
225 program schedule, and when the time come it is played on the air and
226 in the web stream. It is also made available in a video on demand
227 solution for anyone to see it also outside its scheduled time. All
228 you need to run a TV station - using your web browser.
</p>
230 <p>There are several parts to this web based solution. I'll mention
231 the three most important ones. The first part is the database of
232 videos and the schedule. This is written in Django and include a REST
233 API. The current database is SQLite, but the plan is to migrate it to
234 PostgreSQL. At the moment this system can be tested on
235 <a href=
"http://beta.frikanalen.tv/">beta.frikanalen.tv
</a>. The
236 second part is the video playout, taking the schedule information from
237 the database and providing a video stream to broadcast. This is done
238 using
<a href=
"http://www.casparcg.com/">CasparCG from SVT
</a> and
239 <a href=
"http://www.mltframework.org/">Media Lovin' Toolkit
</a>. Video
240 signal distribution is handled using
241 <a href=
"http://www.ob-encoder.com/">Open Broadcast Encoder
</a>. The
242 third part is the converter, handling the transformation of uploaded
243 video files to a format useful for broadcasting, streaming and video
244 on demand. It is still very much work in progress, so it is not yet
245 decided what it will end up using. Note that the source of the latter
246 two parts are not yet pushed to github. The lead author want to clean
247 them up a bit more first.
</p>
249 <p>The development is coordinated on the
250 <a href=
"irc://irc.freenode.net/%23frikanalen">#frikanalen IRC
251 channel
</a> (irc.freenode.net), and discussed on
252 <a href=
"http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/frikanalen">the
253 frikanalen mailing list
</a>. The lead developer is Benjamin Bruheim
254 (phed on IRC). Anyone is welcome to participate in the
261 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video
</a>.
266 <div class=
"padding"></div>
270 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dr__Richard_Stallman__founder_of_Free_Software_Foundation__give_a_talk_in_Oslo_March_1st_2013.html">Dr. Richard Stallman, founder of Free Software Foundation, give a talk in Oslo March
1st
2013</a>
276 <p>Dr.
<a href=
"http://www.stallman.org/">Richard Stallman
</a>,
277 founder of
<a href=
"http://www.fsf.org/">Free Software Foundation
</a>,
278 is giving
<a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20130301-rms/">a
279 talk in Oslo March
1st
2013 17:
00 to
19:
00</a>. The event is public
280 and organised by
<a href=
"">Norwegian Unix Users Group (NUUG)
</a>
281 (where I am the chair of the board) and
282 <a href=
"http://www.friprog.no/">The Norwegian Open Source Competence
283 Center
</a>. The title of the talk is «The Free Software Movement and
284 GNU», with this description:
287 The Free Software Movement campaigns for computer users' freedom to
288 cooperate and control their own computing. The Free Software Movement
289 developed the GNU operating system, typically used together with the
290 kernel Linux, specifically to make these freedoms possible.
293 <p>The meeting is open for everyone. Due to space limitations, the
294 doors opens for NUUG members at
16:
15, and everyone else at
16:
45. I
295 am really curious how many will show up. See
296 <a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20130301-rms/">the event
297 page
</a> for the location details.
</p>
303 Tags:
<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/personvern">personvern
</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>.
308 <div class=
"padding"></div>
312 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Frikart___Free_Garmin_maps_for_European_countries_based_on_OpenStreetmap.html">Frikart - Free Garmin maps for European countries based on OpenStreetmap
</a>
318 <p>If you, like me, want an updated a map for your Garmin GPS, there is
319 now a great source of free maps available from
320 <a href=
"http://www.frikart.no/garmin/index.html">Frikart
</a>. To
321 download a map, just click on the country you are interested in, and
322 download the map type you want. There are
8 different maps available,
323 using different colours and data selection. Pick one of Roadmap, Topo
324 Summer, Topo Winter, Roadmap II, Topo Summer II, Topo Winter II,
325 "Trails - overlay map" and "Cross country - overlay map" (see the web
326 page for descriptions).
</p>
328 <p>The maps are updated weekly, so if you find something wrong in the
329 map you can just edit the
330 <a href=
"http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap
</a> map source
331 (anyone can contribute) and fetch a fixed map a week later. :)
</p>
337 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart
</a>.
342 <div class=
"padding"></div>
346 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/_Electronic__paper_invoices___using_vCard_in_a_QR_code.html">"Electronic" paper invoices - using vCard in a QR code
</a>
352 <p>Here in Norway, electronic invoices are spreading, and the
353 <a href=
"http://www.anskaffelser.no/e-handel/faktura">solution promoted
354 by the Norwegian government
</a> require that invoices are sent through
355 one of the approved facilitators, and it is not possible to send
356 electronic invoices without an agreement with one of these
357 facilitators. This seem like a needless limitation to be able to
358 transfer invoice information between buyers and sellers. My preferred
359 solution would be to just transfer the invoice information directly
360 between seller and buyer, for example using SMTP, or some HTTP based
361 protocol like REST or SOAP. But this might also be overkill, as the
362 "electronic" information can be transferred using paper invoices too,
363 using a simple bar code. My bar code encoding of choice would be QR
364 codes, as this encoding can be read by any smart phone out there. The
365 content of the code could be anything, but I would go with
366 <a href=
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VCard">the vCard format
</a>, as
367 it too is supported by a lot of computer equipment these days.
</p>
369 <p>The vCard format support extentions, and the invoice specific
370 information can be included using such extentions. For example an
371 invoice from SLX Debian Labs (picked because we
372 <a href=
"http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">ask
373 for donations to the Debian Edu project
</a> and thus have bank account
374 information publicly available) for NOK
1000.00 could have these extra
379 X-INVOICE-AMOUNT:NOK1000.00
380 X-INVOICE-KID:
123412341234
381 X-INVOICE-MSG:Donation to Debian Edu
382 X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER:
16040884339
383 X-BANK-IBAN-NUMBER:NO8516040884339
384 X-BANK-SWIFT-NUMBER:DNBANOKKXXX
387 <p>The X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER field was proposed in a stackoverflow
389 <a href=
"http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10045664/storing-bank-account-in-vcard-file">how
390 to put bank account information into a vCard
</a>. For payments in
391 Norway, either X-INVOICE-KID (payment ID) or X-INVOICE-MSG could be
392 used to pass on information to the seller when paying the invoice.
</p>
394 <p>The complete vCard could look like this:
</p>
399 ORG:SLX Debian Labs Foundation
400 ADR;WORK:;;Gunnar Schjelderups vei
29D;OSLO;;
0485;Norway
401 URL;WORK:http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/
402 EMAIL;PREF;INTERNET:sdl-styret@rt.nuug.no
405 X-INVOICE-AMOUNT:NOK1000.00
406 X-INVOICE-MSG:Donation to Debian Edu
407 X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER:
16040884339
408 X-BANK-IBAN-NUMBER:NO8516040884339
409 X-BANK-SWIFT-NUMBER:DNBANOKKXXX
413 <p>The resulting QR code created using
414 <a href=
"http://fukuchi.org/works/qrencode/">qrencode
</a> would look
415 like this, and should be readable (and thus checkable) by any smart
416 phone, or for example the
<a href=
"http://zbar.sourceforge.net/">zbar
417 bar code reader
</a> and feed right into the approval and accounting
420 <p><img src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-02-12-qr-invoice.png"></p>
422 <p>The extension fields will most likely not show up in any normal
423 vCard reader, so those parts would have to go directly into a system
424 handling invoices. I am a bit unsure how vCards without name parts
425 are handled, but a simple test indicate that this work just fine.
</p>
427 <p><strong>Update
2013-
02-
12 11:
30</strong>: Added KID to the proposal
428 based on feedback from Sturle Sunde.
</p>
434 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard
</a>.
439 <div class=
"padding"></div>
443 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sleep_until_morning___home_automation_for_the_kids.html">Sleep until morning - home automation for the kids
</a>
449 <p><img align=
"left" style=
"margin-right:25px;" src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-02-10-morning-light.jpeg"></p>
451 <p>With kids in the house, one challenge is getting them to sleep
452 during the night and wake up when it is morning. I mean, when I
453 believe it is morning, and not two hours earlier. In our household we
454 have decided that
07:
00 is the turning point, but getting the kids to
455 sleep until
07:
00 is a small challenge every day. They have adapted
456 quite well, and rarely wake up at
05:
00 any more, but some times wake
457 up at times like
05:
50,
06:
15,
06:
30 or
06:
45, and it is hard to put
458 the awake one to bed again without disturbing and waking the rest.
459 And I understand perfectly well that they fail to sleep until
07:
00
460 some times, as there is no way for them to know if it is before or
461 after the magic moment without coming and asking us parents.
</p>
463 <p>But yesterday I came up with a method to solve this problem. It
464 involve home automation. A few years ago I bought a
465 <a href=
"http://www.telldus.se/products/tellstick">Tellstick
</a> and RF
466 switches at the local
<a href=
"http://www.clasohlson.com/">Clas
467 Ohlson
</a> shop, allowing me to control lights and other electrical
468 gadgets using my Linux server. When I moved from the old flat to a
469 small house, I put away all this equipment as most of the lighting in
470 the house was not using wall sockets and thus not easy to connect to
471 the gadgets I had. But recently I bought a
472 <a href=
"http://www.telldus.se/products/tellstick_net">Tellstick
473 Net
</a> to be able to read sensor input as well as control power
474 sockets. I want to control ovens in the basement to avoid the pipes
475 to freeze, and monitor the humidity to detect flooding. The default
476 setup for Tellstick Net is to be controlled by the vendor web service,
477 which to me is a security problem, but it is also possible to build
479 <a href=
"http://developer.telldus.com/blog/2012/03/02/help-us-develop-local-access-using-tellstick-net-build-your-own-firmware">firmware
480 with local access
</A> instead of being controlled by a Swedish
481 company, thanks to the release of the GPL licensed firmware source
482 code. I plan to get that running before I let it control anything
483 important. But while working on this, one idea to make it easier for
484 the kids came to me yesterday. We can set up a night light controlled
485 by the computer, and turn it automatically on at
07:
00. The kids can
486 then check the light in the morning to know if they are supposed to
487 get up or not. They joined me in setting everything up, and I
488 repeated the concept several times before bed times to make sure they
489 remembered to check the light before getting up in the morning.
</p>
491 <p>We tested it this morning, and all the kids stayed in bed until
492 after
07:
00, and every one of them commented on the fact that the
493 "morning light" was turned on and signalled that the morning had
494 arrived. So this look like a success, and I am excited to see how
495 this develops the next few days. :) I really hope this can allow us
496 all to sleep a bit longer in the morning.
</p>
498 <p>A nice advantage of this setup is that we can remote control when
499 to tell the kids to get up. We do not have to wait until
07:
00, and
500 can also delay it if we want to.
</p>
506 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
511 <div class=
"padding"></div>
515 <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>
522 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">last
523 bitcoin related blog post
</a> mentioned that the new
524 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin package
</a> for
525 Debian was waiting in NEW. It was accepted by the Debian ftp-masters
526 2013-
01-
19, and have been available in unstable since then. It was
527 automatically copied to Ubuntu, and is available in their Raring
530 <p>But there is a strange problem with the build that block this new
531 version from being available on the i386 and kfreebsd-i386
532 architectures. For some strange reason, the autobuilders in Debian
533 for these architectures fail to run the test suite on these
534 architectures (
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/672524">BTS #
672524</a>).
535 We are so far unable to reproduce it when building it manually, and
536 no-one have been able to propose a fix. If you got an idea what is
537 failing, please let us know via the BTS.
</p>
539 <p>One feature that is annoying me with of the bitcoin client, because
540 I often run low on disk space, is the fact that the client will exit
541 if it run short on space (
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/696715">BTS
542 #
696715</a>). So make sure you have enough disk space when you run
545 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
546 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
547 <b><a href=
"bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a></b>.
</p>
553 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>.
558 <div class=
"padding"></div>
562 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">Welcome to the world, Isenkram!
</a>
569 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">asked
570 for testers
</a> for my prototype for making Debian better at handling
571 pluggable hardware devices, which I
572 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">set
573 out to create
</a> earlier this month. Several valuable testers showed
574 up, and caused me to really want to to open up the development to more
575 people. But before I did this, I want to come up with a sensible name
576 for this project. Today I finally decided on a new name, and I have
577 renamed the project from hw-support-handler to this new name. In the
578 process, I moved the source to git and made it available as a
579 <a href=
"http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/isenkram.git">collab-maint
</a>
580 repository in Debian. The new name? It is
<strong>Isenkram
</strong>.
581 To fetch and build the latest version of the source, use
</p>
584 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/collab-maint/isenkram.git
585 cd isenkram && git-buildpackage -us -uc
588 <p>I have not yet adjusted all files to use the new name yet. If you
589 want to hack on the source or improve the package, please go ahead.
590 But please talk to me first on IRC or via email before you do major
591 changes, to make sure we do not step on each others toes. :)
</p>
593 <p>If you wonder what 'isenkram' is, it is a Norwegian word for iron
594 stuff, typically meaning tools, nails, screws, etc. Typical hardware
595 stuff, in other words. I've been told it is the Norwegian variant of
596 the German word eisenkram, for those that are familiar with that
599 <p><strong>Update
2013-
01-
26</strong>: Added -us -us to build
600 instructions, to avoid confusing people with an error from the signing
603 <p><strong>Update
2013-
01-
27</strong>: Switch to HTTP URL for the git
604 clone argument to avoid the need for authentication.
</p>
610 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>.
615 <div class=
"padding"></div>
619 <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>
625 <p>Early this month I set out to try to
626 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">improve
627 the Debian support for pluggable hardware devices
</a>. Now my
628 prototype is working, and it is ready for a larger audience. To test
630 <a href=
"http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">source
631 from the Debian Edu subversion repository
</a>, build and install the
632 package. You might have to log out and in again activate the
633 autostart script.
</p>
635 <p>The design is simple:
</p>
639 <li>Add desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ causing a program
640 hw-support-handlerd to start when the user log in.
</li>
642 <li>This program listen for kernel events about new hardware (directly
643 from the kernel like udev does), not using HAL dbus events as I
646 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware modalias in
647 the APT database, a database
648 <a href=
"http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=markup">available
649 via HTTP
</a> and a database available as part of the package.
</li>
651 <li>If a package is mapped to the hardware in question, the package
652 isn't installed yet and this is the first time the hardware was
653 plugged in, show a desktop notification suggesting to install the
654 package or packages.
</li>
656 <li>If the user click on the 'install package now' button, ask
657 aptdaemon via the PackageKit API to install the requrired package.
</li>
659 <li>aptdaemon ask for root password or sudo password, and install the
660 package while showing progress information in a window.
</li>
664 <p>I still need to come up with a better name for the system. Here
665 are some screen shots showing the prototype in action. First the
666 notification, then the password request, and finally the request to
667 approve all the dependencies. Sorry for the Norwegian Bokmål GUI.
</p>
669 <p><img src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-1-notification.png">
670 <br><img src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-2-password.png">
671 <br><img src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-3-dependencies.png">
672 <br><img src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-4-installing.png">
673 <br><img src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-5-installing-details.png" width=
"70%"></p>
675 <p>The prototype still need to be improved with longer timeouts, but
676 is already useful. The database of hardware to package mappings also
677 need more work. It is currently compatible with the Ubuntu way of
678 storing such information in the package control file, but could be
679 changed to use other formats instead or in addition to the current
680 method. I've dropped the use of discover for this mapping, as the
681 modalias approach is more flexible and easier to use on Linux as long
682 as the Linux kernel expose its modalias strings directly.
</p>
684 <p><strong>Update
2013-
01-
21 16:
50</strong>: Due to popular demand,
685 here is the command required to check out and build the source: Use
687 svn://svn.debian.org/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/; cd
688 hw-support-handler; debuild
</tt>'. If you lack debuild, install the
689 devscripts package.
</p>
691 <p><strong>Update
2013-
01-
23 12:
00</strong>: The project is now
692 renamed to Isenkram and the source moved from the Debian Edu
693 subversion repository to a Debian collab-maint git repository. See
694 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">build
695 instructions
</a> for details.
</p>
701 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>.
706 <div class=
"padding"></div>
710 <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>
716 <p>This Christmas my trusty old laptop died. It died quietly and
717 suddenly in bed. With a quiet whimper, it went completely quiet and
718 black. The power button was no longer able to turn it on. It was a
719 IBM Thinkpad X41, and the best laptop I ever had. Better than both
720 Thinkpads X30, X31, X40, X60, X61 and X61S. Far better than the
721 Compaq I had before that. Now I need to find a replacement. To keep
722 going during Christmas, I moved the one year old SSD disk to my old
723 X40 where it fitted (only one I had left that could use it), but it is
724 not a durable solution.
726 <p>My laptop needs are fairly modest. This is my wishlist from when I
727 got a new one more than
10 years ago. It still holds true.:)
</p>
731 <li>Lightweight (around
1 kg) and small volume (preferably smaller
733 <li>Robust, it will be in my backpack every day.
</li>
734 <li>Three button mouse and a mouse pin instead of touch pad.
</li>
735 <li>Long battery life time. Preferable a week.
</li>
736 <li>Internal WIFI network card.
</li>
737 <li>Internal Twisted Pair network card.
</li>
738 <li>Some USB slots (
2-
3 is plenty)
</li>
739 <li>Good keyboard - similar to the Thinkpad.
</li>
740 <li>Video resolution at least
1024x768, with size around
12" (A4 paper
742 <li>Hardware supported by Debian Stable, ie the default kernel and
744 <li>Quiet, preferably fan free (or at least not using the fan most of
749 <p>You will notice that there are no RAM and CPU requirements in the
750 list. The reason is simply that the specifications on laptops the
751 last
10-
15 years have been sufficient for my needs, and I have to look
752 at other features to choose my laptop. But are there still made as
753 robust laptops as my X41? The Thinkpad X60/X61 proved to be less
754 robust, and Thinkpads seem to be heading in the wrong direction since
755 Lenovo took over. But I've been told that X220 and X1 Carbon might
758 <p>Perhaps I should rethink my needs, and look for a pad with an
759 external keyboard? I'll have to check the
760 <a href=
"http://www.linux-laptop.net/">Linux Laptops site
</a> for
761 well-supported laptops, or perhaps just buy one preinstalled from one
762 of the vendors listed on the
<a href=
"http://linuxpreloaded.com/">Linux
763 Pre-loaded site
</a>.
</p>
769 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>.
774 <div class=
"padding"></div>
778 <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>
784 <p>Some times I try to figure out which Iceweasel browser plugin to
785 install to get support for a given MIME type. Thanks to
786 <a href=
"https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Plugins">specifications
787 done by Ubuntu
</a> and Mozilla, it is possible to do this in Debian.
788 Unfortunately, not very many packages provide the needed meta
789 information, Anyway, here is a small script to look up all browser
790 plugin packages announcing ther MIME support using this specification:
</p>
796 def pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
801 version = pkg.candidate
803 version = pkg.installed
806 record = version.record
807 if not record.has_key('Npp-MimeType'):
809 mime_types = record['Npp-MimeType'].split(',')
811 t = t.rstrip().strip()
813 thepkgs.append(pkg.name)
815 mimetype = "audio/ogg"
816 if
1 < len(sys.argv):
817 mimetype = sys.argv[
1]
818 print "Browser plugin packages supporting %s:" % mimetype
819 for pkg in pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
823 <p>It can be used like this to look up a given MIME type:
</p>
826 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype
827 Browser plugin packages supporting audio/ogg:
829 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype application/x-shockwave-flash
830 Browser plugin packages supporting application/x-shockwave-flash:
835 <p>In Ubuntu this mechanism is combined with support in the browser
836 itself to query for plugins and propose to install the needed
837 packages. It would be great if Debian supported such feature too. Is
838 anyone working on adding it?
</p>
840 <p><strong>Update
2013-
01-
18 14:
20</strong>: The Debian BTS
841 request for icweasel support for this feature is
842 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/484010">#
484010</a> from
2008 (and
843 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/698426">#
698426</a> from today). Lack
844 of manpower and wish for a different design is the reason thus feature
845 is not yet in iceweasel from Debian.
</p>
851 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>.
856 <div class=
"padding"></div>
860 <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>
866 <p>The
<a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/AppStreamDebianProposal">DEP-
11
867 proposal to add AppStream information to the Debian archive
</a>, is a
868 proposal to make it possible for a Desktop application to propose to
869 the user some package to install to gain support for a given MIME
870 type, font, library etc. that is currently missing. With such
871 mechanism in place, it would be possible for the desktop to
872 automatically propose and install leocad if some LDraw file is
873 downloaded by the browser.
</p>
875 <p>To get some idea about the current content of the archive, I decided
876 to write a simple program to extract all .desktop files from the
877 Debian archive and look up the claimed MIME support there. The result
879 <a href=
"http://ftp.skolelinux.org/pub/AppStreamTest">Skolelinux FTP
880 site
</a>. Using the collected information, it become possible to
881 answer the question in the title. Here are the
20 most supported MIME
882 types in Debian stable (Squeeze), testing (Wheezy) and unstable (Sid).
883 The complete list is available from the link above.
</p>
885 <p><strong>Debian Stable:
</strong></p>
889 ----- -----------------------
912 <p><strong>Debian Testing:
</strong></p>
916 ----- -----------------------
939 <p><strong>Debian Unstable:
</strong></p>
943 ----- -----------------------
966 <p>I am told that PackageKit can provide an API to access the kind of
967 information mentioned in DEP-
11. I have not yet had time to look at
968 it, but hope the PackageKit people in Debian are on top of these
971 <p><strong>Update
2013-
01-
16 13:
35</strong>: Updated numbers after
972 discovering a typo in my script.
</p>
978 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>.
983 <div class=
"padding"></div>
987 <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>
993 <p>Yesterday, I wrote about the
994 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">modalias
995 values provided by the Linux kernel
</a> following my hope for
996 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">better
997 dongle support in Debian
</a>. Using this knowledge, I have tested how
998 modalias values attached to package names can be used to map packages
999 to hardware. This allow the system to look up and suggest relevant
1000 packages when I plug in some new hardware into my machine, and replace
1001 discover and discover-data as the database used to map hardware to
1004 <p>I create a modaliases file with entries like the following,
1005 containing package name, kernel module name (if relevant, otherwise
1006 the package name) and globs matching the relevant hardware
1010 Package: package-name
1011 <br>Modaliases: module(modaliasglob, modaliasglob, modaliasglob)
</p>
1014 <p>It is fairly trivial to write code to find the relevant packages
1015 for a given modalias value using this file.
</p>
1017 <p>An entry like this would suggest the video and picture application
1018 cheese for many USB web cameras (interface bus class
0E01):
</p>
1022 <br>Modaliases: cheese(usb:v*p*d*dc*dsc*dp*ic0Eisc01ip*)
</p>
1025 <p>An entry like this would suggest the pcmciautils package when a
1026 CardBus bridge (bus class
0607) PCI device is present:
</p>
1029 Package: pcmciautils
1030 <br>Modaliases: pcmciautils(pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc06sc07i*)
1033 <p>An entry like this would suggest the package colorhug-client when
1034 plugging in a ColorHug with USB IDs
04D8:F8DA:
</p>
1037 Package: colorhug-client
1038 <br>Modaliases: colorhug-client(usb:v04D8pF8DAd*)
</p>
1041 <p>I believe the format is compatible with the format of the Packages
1042 file in the Debian archive. Ubuntu already uses their Packages file
1043 to store their mappings from packages to hardware.
</p>
1045 <p>By adding a XB-Modaliases: header in debian/control, any .deb can
1046 announce the hardware it support in a way my prototype understand.
1047 This allow those publishing packages in an APT source outside the
1048 Debian archive as well as those backporting packages to make sure the
1049 hardware mapping are included in the package meta information. I've
1050 tested such header in the pymissile package, and its modalias mapping
1051 is working as it should with my prototype. It even made it to Ubuntu
1054 <p>To test if it was possible to look up supported hardware using only
1055 the shell tools available in the Debian installer, I wrote a shell
1056 implementation of the lookup code. The idea is to create files for
1057 each modalias and let the shell do the matching. Please check out and
1059 <a href=
"http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/hw-support-lookup?view=co">hw-support-lookup
</a>
1060 shell script. It run without any extra dependencies and fetch the
1061 hardware mappings from the Debian archive and the subversion
1062 repository where I currently work on my prototype.
</p>
1064 <p>When I use it on a machine with a yubikey inserted, it suggest to
1065 install yubikey-personalization:
</p>
1068 % ./hw-support-lookup
1069 <br>yubikey-personalization
1073 <p>When I run it on my Thinkpad X40 with a PCMCIA/CardBus slot, it
1074 propose to install the pcmciautils package:
</p>
1077 % ./hw-support-lookup
1082 <p>If you know of any hardware-package mapping that should be added to
1083 <a href=
"http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=co">my
1084 database
</a>, please tell me about it.
</p>
1086 <p>It could be possible to generate several of the mappings between
1087 packages and hardware. One source would be to look at packages with
1088 kernel modules, ie packages with *.ko files in /lib/modules/, and
1089 extract their modalias information. Another would be to look at
1090 packages with udev rules, ie packages with files in
1091 /lib/udev/rules.d/, and extract their vendor/model information to
1092 generate a modalias matching rule. I have not tested any of these to
1095 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
1096 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
1097 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
1098 <a href=
"irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel
</a>.
</p>
1104 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>.
1109 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1113 <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>
1119 <p>While looking into how to look up Debian packages based on hardware
1120 information, to find the packages that support a given piece of
1121 hardware, I refreshed my memory regarding modalias values, and decided
1122 to document the details. Here are my findings so far, also available
1124 <a href=
"http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
1125 Debian Edu subversion repository
</a>:
1127 <p><strong>Modalias decoded
</strong></p>
1129 <p>This document try to explain what the different types of modalias
1130 values stands for. It is in part based on information from
1131 <URL:
<a href=
"https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias">https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias
</a> >,
1132 <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> >,
1133 <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> > and
1134 <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> >.
1136 <p>The modalias entries for a given Linux machine can be found using
1137 this shell script:
</p>
1140 find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -
0 cat | sort -u
1143 <p>The supported modalias globs for a given kernel module can be found
1147 % /sbin/modinfo psmouse | grep alias:
1148 alias: serio:ty05pr*id*ex*
1149 alias: serio:ty01pr*id*ex*
1153 <p><strong>PCI subtype
</strong></p>
1155 <p>A typical PCI entry can look like this. This is an Intel Host
1156 Bridge memory controller:
</p>
1159 pci:v00008086d00002770sv00001028sd000001ADbc06sc00i00
1162 <p>This represent these values:
</p>
1167 sv
00001028 (subvendor)
1168 sd
000001AD (subdevice)
1170 sc
00 (bus subclass)
1174 <p>The vendor/device values are the same values outputted from 'lspci
1175 -n' as
8086:
2770. The bus class/subclass is also shown by lspci as
1176 0600. The
0600 class is a host bridge. Other useful bus values are
1177 0300 (VGA compatible card) and
0200 (Ethernet controller).
</p>
1179 <p>Not sure how to figure out the interface value, nor what it
1182 <p><strong>USB subtype
</strong></p>
1184 <p>Some typical USB entries can look like this. This is an internal
1185 USB hub in a laptop:
</p>
1188 usb:v1D6Bp0001d0206dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00
1191 <p>Here is the values included in this alias:
</p>
1194 v
1D6B (device vendor)
1195 p
0001 (device product)
1197 dc
09 (device class)
1198 dsc
00 (device subclass)
1199 dp
00 (device protocol)
1200 ic
09 (interface class)
1201 isc
00 (interface subclass)
1202 ip
00 (interface protocol)
1205 <p>The
0900 device class/subclass means hub. Some times the relevant
1206 class is in the interface class section. For a simple USB web camera,
1207 these alias entries show up:
</p>
1210 usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc01ip00
1211 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc02ip00
1212 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc01ip00
1213 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc02ip00
1216 <p>Interface class
0E01 is video control,
0E02 is video streaming (aka
1217 camera),
0101 is audio control device and
0102 is audio streaming (aka
1218 microphone). Thus this is a camera with microphone included.
</p>
1220 <p><strong>ACPI subtype
</strong></p>
1222 <p>The ACPI type is used for several non-PCI/USB stuff. This is an IR
1223 receiver in a Thinkpad X40:
</p>
1226 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
1229 <p>The values between the colons are IDs.
</p>
1231 <p><strong>DMI subtype
</strong></p>
1233 <p>The DMI table contain lots of information about the computer case
1234 and model. This is an entry for a IBM Thinkpad X40, fetched from
1235 /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/modalias:
</p>
1238 dmi:bvnIBM:bvr1UETB6WW(
1.66):bd06/
15/
2005:svnIBM:pn2371H4G:pvrThinkPadX40:rvnIBM:rn2371H4G:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
1241 <p>The values present are
</p>
1244 bvn IBM (BIOS vendor)
1245 bvr
1UETB
6WW(
1.66) (BIOS version)
1246 bd
06/
15/
2005 (BIOS date)
1247 svn IBM (system vendor)
1248 pn
2371H4G (product name)
1249 pvr ThinkPadX40 (product version)
1250 rvn IBM (board vendor)
1251 rn
2371H4G (board name)
1252 rvr NotAvailable (board version)
1253 cvn IBM (chassis vendor)
1254 ct
10 (chassis type)
1255 cvr NotAvailable (chassis version)
1258 <p>The chassis type
10 is Notebook. Other interesting values can be
1259 found in the dmidecode source:
</p>
1263 4 Low Profile Desktop
1276 17 Main Server Chassis
1277 18 Expansion Chassis
1279 20 Bus Expansion Chassis
1280 21 Peripheral Chassis
1282 23 Rack Mount Chassis
1291 <p>The chassis type values are not always accurately set in the DMI
1292 table. For example my home server is a tower, but the DMI modalias
1293 claim it is a desktop.
</p>
1295 <p><strong>SerIO subtype
</strong></p>
1297 <p>This type is used for PS/
2 mouse plugs. One example is from my
1301 serio:ty01pr00id00ex00
1304 <p>The values present are
</p>
1313 <p>This type is supported by the psmouse driver. I am not sure what
1314 the valid values are.
</p>
1316 <p><strong>Other subtypes
</strong></p>
1318 <p>There are heaps of other modalias subtypes according to
1319 file2alias.c. There is the rest of the list from that source: amba,
1320 ap, bcma, ccw, css, eisa, hid, i2c, ieee1394, input, ipack, isapnp,
1321 mdio, of, parisc, pcmcia, platform, scsi, sdio, spi, ssb, vio, virtio,
1322 vmbus, x86cpu and zorro. I did not spend time documenting all of
1323 these, as they do not seem relevant for my intended use with mapping
1324 hardware to packages when new stuff is inserted during run time.
</p>
1326 <p><strong>Looking up kernel modules using modalias values
</strong></p>
1328 <p>To check which kernel modules provide support for a given modalias,
1329 one can use the following shell script:
</p>
1332 for id in $(find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -
0 cat | sort -u); do \
1334 /sbin/modprobe --show-depends "$id"|sed 's/^/ /' ; \
1338 <p>The output can look like this (only the first few entries as the
1339 list is very long on my test machine):
</p>
1343 insmod /lib/modules/
2.6.32-
5-
686/kernel/drivers/acpi/ac.ko
1345 FATAL: Module acpi:device: not found.
1347 insmod /lib/modules/
2.6.32-
5-
686/kernel/drivers/char/nvram.ko
1348 insmod /lib/modules/
2.6.32-
5-
686/kernel/drivers/leds/led-class.ko
1349 insmod /lib/modules/
2.6.32-
5-
686/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko
1350 insmod /lib/modules/
2.6.32-
5-
686/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.ko
1351 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
1352 insmod /lib/modules/
2.6.32-
5-
686/kernel/lib/crc-ccitt.ko
1353 insmod /lib/modules/
2.6.32-
5-
686/kernel/net/irda/irda.ko
1354 insmod /lib/modules/
2.6.32-
5-
686/kernel/drivers/net/irda/nsc-ircc.ko
1358 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
1359 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
1360 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
1361 <a href=
"irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel
</a>.
</p>
1363 <p><strong>Update
2013-
01-
15:
</strong> Rewrite "cat $(find ...)" to
1364 "find ... -print0 | xargs -
0 cat" to make sure it handle directories
1365 in /sys/ with space in them.
</p>
1371 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>.
1376 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1380 <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>
1386 <p>As part of my investigation on how to improve the support in Debian
1387 for hardware dongles, I dug up my old Mark and Spencer USB Rocket
1388 Launcher and updated the Debian package
1389 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">pymissile
</a> to make
1390 sure udev will fix the device permissions when it is plugged in. I
1391 also added a "Modaliases" header to test it in the Debian archive and
1392 hopefully make the package be proposed by jockey in Ubuntu when a user
1393 plug in his rocket launcher. In the process I moved the source to a
1394 git repository under collab-maint, to make it easier for any DD to
1395 contribute.
<a href=
"http://code.google.com/p/pymissile/">Upstream
</a>
1396 is not very active, but the software still work for me even after five
1397 years of relative silence. The new git repository is not listed in
1398 the uploaded package yet, because I want to test the other changes a
1399 bit more before I upload the new version. If you want to check out
1400 the new version with a .desktop file included, visit the
1401 <a href=
"http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/pymissile.git">gitweb
1402 view
</a> or use "
<tt>git clone
1403 git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/pymissile.git
</tt>".</p>
1409 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>.
1414 <div class="padding
"></div>
1418 <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>
1424 <p>One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
1425 general, is that there is a great package management system with the
1426 ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
1427 from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
1428 install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
1429 machine. Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
1430 Linux distribution. When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
1431 suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
1432 I need to talk to it. When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
1433 yubikey-personalization package. The information required to do this
1434 is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.</p>
1436 <p>Some years ago, I proposed to
1437 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/
2010/
05/msg01206.html
">use
1438 the discover subsystem to implement this</a>. The idea is fairly
1443 <li>Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
1444 starting when a user log in.</li>
1446 <li>Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
1447 hardware is inserted into the computer.</li>
1449 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
1450 database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
1453 <li>Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
1454 package, and make it easy to install it.</li>
1458 <p>I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
1459 initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
1460 discover database to find packages and
1461 <a href="http://www.packagekit.org/
">PackageKit</a> to install
1464 <p>Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
1465 draft package is now checked into
1466 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/
">the
1467 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>. In the process, I updated the
1468 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html
">discover-data</a>
1469 package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
1470 the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
1471 2.2013.01.09 to unstable. I also discovered that the current
1472 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html
">discover</a>
1473 package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
1474 /proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present. I ported it to use
1475 libusb as a fall back option to get it working. The fixed package
1476 version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn't upload it to unstable
1477 because of the freeze).</p>
1479 <p>With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
1480 desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
1483 <p align="center
"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
01-
09-hw-autoinstall.png
"></p>
1485 <p>For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
1486 install the proposed packages by pressing the "Please install
1487 program(s)" button should to be implemented.
</p>
1489 <p>If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
1490 happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
1491 from hardware to Debian packages. Check if 'discover-pkginstall -l'
1492 list the package you would like to have installed when a given
1493 hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
1494 reportbug if it isn't. Or, if you know of a better way to provide
1495 such mapping, please let me know.
</p>
1497 <p>This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
1498 should be considered before it is ready for production use. Is dbus
1499 the correct way to detect new hardware? At the moment I look for HAL
1500 dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
1501 on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop. Are there better events to use?
1502 How should the user be notified? Is the desktop notification
1503 mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
1504 popup instead? How should packages be installed? When should they
1505 not be installed?
</p>
1507 <p>If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
1508 please send me an email. :)
</p>
1514 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>.
1519 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1523 <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>
1529 <p>During Christmas, I have worked a bit on the Debian support for
1530 <a href=
"http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx">LEGO Mindstorm
1531 NXT
</a>. My son and I have played a bit with my NXT set, and I
1532 discovered I had to build all the tools myself because none were
1533 already in Debian Squeeze. If Debian support for LEGO is something
1534 you care about, please join me on the IRC channel
1535 <a href=
"irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego
</a> (server
1536 irc.debian.org). There is a lot that could be done to improve the
1537 Debian support for LEGO designers. For example both CAD software
1538 and Mindstorm compilers are missing. :)
</p>
1540 <p>Update
2012-
01-
03: A
1541 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">project page
</a>
1542 including links to Lego related packages is now available.
</p>
1548 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>.
1553 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1557 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Christmas_present_for_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu.html">A Christmas present for Skolelinux / Debian Edu
</a>
1563 <p>I was happy to discover a few days ago that the
1564 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu
</a>
1565 project also this year received a Christmas present from Another
1566 Agency in Trondheim. NOK
1000,- showed up on our donation account
1567 December
24th. I want to express our thanks for this very welcome
1568 present. As the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is very short on
1569 funding these days, and thus lack the money to do regular developer
1570 gatherings, this donation was most welcome. One developer gathering
1571 cost around NOK
15 000,-, so we need quite a lot more to keep the
1572 development pace we want. Thus, I hope their example this year is
1573 followed by many others. :)
</p>
1575 <p>The public list of donors can be found on
1576 <a href=
"http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">the
1577 donation page
</a> for the project, which also contain instructions if
1578 you want to donate to the project.
</p>
1584 Tags:
<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>.
1589 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1593 <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>
1599 <p>Let me start by wishing you all marry Christmas and a happy new
1600 year! I hope next year will prove to be a good year.
</p>
1602 <p><a href=
"http://www.bitcoin.org/">Bitcoin
</a>, the digital
1603 decentralised "currency" that allow people to transfer bitcoins
1604 between each other with minimal overhead, is a very interesting
1605 experiment. And as I wrote a few days ago, the bitcoin situation in
1606 <a href=
"http://www.debian.org/">Debian
</a> is about to improve a bit.
1607 The
<a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">new debian source
1608 package
</a> (version
0.7.2-
2) was uploaded yesterday, and is waiting
1609 in
<a href=
"http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the NEW queue
</A>
1610 for one of the ftpmasters to approve the new bitcoin-qt package
1613 <p>And thanks to the great work of Jonas and the rest of the bitcoin
1614 team in Debian, you can easily test the package in Debian Squeeze
1615 using the following steps to get a set of working packages:
</p>
1618 git clone git://git.debian.org/git/collab-maint/bitcoin
1620 DEB_MAINTAINER_MODE=
1 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp fakeroot debian/rules clean
1621 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp git-buildpackage --git-ignore-new
1624 <p>You might have to install some build dependencies as well. The
1625 list of commands should give you two packages, bitcoind and
1626 bitcoin-qt, ready for use in a Squeeze environment. Note that the
1627 client will download the complete set of bitcoin "blocks", which need
1628 around
5.6 GiB of data on my machine at the moment. Make sure your
1629 ~/.bitcoin/ directory have lots of spare room if you want to download
1630 all the blocks. The client will warn if the disk is getting full, so
1631 there is not really a problem if you got too little room, but you will
1632 not be able to get all the features out of the client.
</p>
1634 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1635 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1636 <b><a href=
"bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a></b>.
</p>
1642 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>.
1647 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1651 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html">A word on bitcoin support in Debian
</a>
1657 <p>It has been a while since I wrote about
1658 <a href=
"http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin
</a>, the decentralised
1659 peer-to-peer based crypto-currency, and the reason is simply that I
1660 have been busy elsewhere. But two days ago, I started looking at the
1661 state of
<a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin in
1662 Debian
</a> again to try to recover my old bitcoin wallet. The package
1663 is now maintained by a
1664 <a href=
"https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-bitcoin/">team of
1665 people
</a>, and the grunt work had already been done by this team. We
1666 owe a huge thank you to all these team members. :)
1667 But I was sad to discover that the bitcoin client is missing in
1668 Wheezy. It is only available in Sid (and an outdated client from
1669 backports). The client had several RC bugs registered in BTS blocking
1670 it from entering testing. To try to help the team and improve the
1671 situation, I spent some time providing patches and triaging the bug
1672 reports. I also had a look at the bitcoin package available from Matt
1674 <a href=
"https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin">PPA for
1675 Ubuntu
</a>, and moved the useful pieces from that version into the
1678 <p>After checking with the main package maintainer Jonas Smedegaard on
1679 IRC, I pushed several patches into the collab-maint git repository to
1680 improve the package. It now contains fixes for the RC issues (not from
1681 me, but fixed by Scott Howard), build rules for a Qt GUI client
1682 package, konqueror support for the bitcoin: URI and bash completion
1683 setup. As I work on Debian Squeeze, I also created
1684 <a href=
"http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-bitcoin-devel/Week-of-Mon-20121217/000041.html">a
1685 patch to backport
</a> the latest version. Jonas is going to look at
1686 it and try to integrate it into the git repository before uploading a
1687 new version to unstable.
1689 <p>I would very much like bitcoin to succeed, to get rid of the
1690 centralized control currently exercised in the monetary system. I
1691 find it completely unacceptable that the USA government is collecting
1692 transaction data for almost all international money transfers (most are done in USD and transaction logs shipped to the spooks), and
1693 that the major credit card companies can block legal money
1694 transactions to Wikileaks. But for bitcoin to succeed, more people
1695 need to use bitcoins, and more people need to accept bitcoins when
1696 they sell products and services. Improving the bitcoin support in
1697 Debian is a small step in the right direction, but not enough.
1698 Unfortunately the user experience when browsing the web and wanting to
1699 pay with bitcoin is still not very good. The bitcoin: URI is a step
1700 in the right direction, but need to work in most or every browser in
1701 use. Also the bitcoin-qt client is too heavy to fire up to do a
1702 quick transaction. I believe there are other clients available, but
1703 have not tested them.
</p>
1706 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">experiment
1707 with bitcoins
</a> showed that at least some of my readers use bitcoin.
1708 I received
20.15 BTC so far on the address I provided in my blog two
1709 years ago, as can be
1710 <a href=
"http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">seen
1711 on the blockexplorer service
</a>. Thank you everyone for your
1712 donation. The blockexplorer service demonstrates quite well that
1713 bitcoin is not quite anonymous and untracked. :) I wonder if the
1714 number of users have gone up since then. If you use bitcoin and want
1715 to show your support of my activity, please send Bitcoin donations to
1716 the same address as last time,
1717 <b><a href=
"bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a></b>.
</p>
1723 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>.
1728 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1732 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ledger___double_entry_accounting_using_text_based_storage_format.html">Ledger - double-entry accounting using text based storage format
</a>
1738 <p>A few days ago I came across
1739 <a href=
"http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/hledger/">a blog post from Joey
1740 Hess
</a> describing
<a href=
"http://ledger-cli.org/">ledger
</a> and
1741 hledger, a text based system for double-entry accounting. I found it
1742 interesting, as I am involved with several organizations where
1743 accounting is an issue, and I have not really become too friendly with
1744 the different web based systems we use. I find it hard to find what I
1745 look for in the menus and even harder try to get sensible data out of
1746 the systems. Ledger seem different. The accounting data is kept in
1747 text files that can be stored in a version control system, and there
1749 are at least
<a href=
"https://github.com/ledger/ledger/wiki/Ports">five
1750 different implementations
</a> able to read the format. An example
1751 entry look like this, and is simple enough that it will be trivial to
1752 generate entries based on CVS files fetched from the bank:
</p>
1755 2004-
05-
27 Book Store
1756 Expenses:Books $
20.00
1760 <p>The concept seemed interesting enough for me to check it out and
1761 look for others using it. I found blog posts from
1762 <a href=
"http://blog.spang.cc/posts/hledger_rocks_my_world/">Christine
1764 <a href=
"http://bugsplat.info/2010-05-23-keeping-finances-with-ledger.html">Pete
1766 <a href=
"http://blog.andrewcantino.com/blog/2010/11/06/command-line-accounting-with-ledger-and-reckon/">Andrew
1768 <a href=
"http://blog.iphoting.com/blog/2012/11/29/command-line-double-entry-accounting/">Ronald
1769 Ip
</a> describing how they use it, as well as a post from
1770 <a href=
"https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/ledger-cli/r0oWjwbQ9Bo">Bradley
1771 M. Kuhn
</a> at the Software Freedom Conservancy. All seemed like good
1772 recommendations fitting my need.
</p>
1774 <p>The
<a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/l/ledger.html">ledger
</a>
1775 package is available in Debian Squeeze, while the
1776 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/h/haskell-hledger.html">hledger
</a>
1777 package only is available in Debian Sid. As I use Squeeze, ledger
1778 seemed the best choice to get started.
</p>
1780 <p>To get some real data to test on, I wrote a
1781 <a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/tools/lodo2ledger">web scraper
</a> for
1782 <a href=
"http://www.lodo.no/">LODO
</a>, the accounting system used by
1783 the
<a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG
</a> association, and started to
1784 play with the data set. I'm not really deeply into accounting, but I
1785 am able to get a simple balance and accounting status for example
1786 using the "
<tt>ledger balance
</tt>" command. But I will have to
1787 gather more experience before I know if the ledger way is a good fit
1788 for the organisations I am involved in.</p>
1794 Tags: <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>.
1799 <div class="padding
"></div>
1803 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Scripting_the_Cerebrum_bofhd_user_administration_system_using_XML_RPC.html
">Scripting the Cerebrum/bofhd user administration system using XML-RPC</a>
1809 <p>Where I work at the <a href="http://www.uio.no/
">University of
1810 Oslo</a>, we use the
1811 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/cerebrum/
">Cerebrum user
1812 administration system</a> to maintain users, groups, DNS, DHCP, etc.
1813 I've known since the system was written that the server is providing
1814 an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML-RPC
">XML-RPC</a> API, but
1815 I have never spent time to try to figure out how to use it, as we
1816 always use the bofh command line client at work. Until today. I want
1817 to script the updating of DNS and DHCP to make it easier to set up
1818 virtual machines. Here are a few notes on how to use it with
1821 <p>I started by looking at the source of the Java
1822 <a href="http://cerebrum.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/cerebrum/trunk/cerebrum/clients/jbofh/
">bofh
1823 client</a>, to figure out how it connected to the API server. I also
1824 googled for python examples on how to use XML-RPC, and found
1825 <a href="http://tldp.org/HOWTO/XML-RPC-HOWTO/xmlrpc-howto-python.html
">a
1826 simple example in</a> the XML-RPC howto.</p>
1828 <p>This simple example code show how to connect, get the list of
1829 commands (as a JSON dump), and how to get the information about the
1830 user currently logged in:</p>
1833 #!/usr/bin/env python
1836 server_url = 'https://cerebrum-uio.uio.no:8000';
1837 username = getpass.getuser()
1838 password = getpass.getpass()
1839 server = xmlrpclib.Server(server_url);
1840 #print server.get_commands(sessionid)
1841 sessionid = server.login(username, password)
1842 print server.run_command(sessionid, "user_info", username)
1843 result = server.logout(sessionid)
1847 <p>Armed with this knowledge I can now move forward and script the DNS
1848 and DHCP updates I wanted to do.
</p>
1854 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin
</a>.
1859 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1863 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_the_value_of_copyright_taxed_.html">Why isn't the value of copyright taxed?
</a>
1869 <p>While working on a
1870 <a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">Norwegian
1871 translation of the Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig
</a> (
76% done),
1872 which cover the problems with todays copyright law and how it stifles
1873 creativity, one idea occurred to me. The idea is to get the tax
1874 office to help make more works enter the public domain and also help
1875 make it easier to clear rights for using copyrighted works.
</p>
1877 <p>I mentioned this idea briefly during Yesterdays
1878 <a href=
"http://www.farmann.no/2012/11/14/john-perry-barlow-in-oslo-friday-nov-16
1879 -15-30-19-00/">presentation
1880 by John Perry Barlow
</a>, and concluded that it was best to put it
1881 in writing for a wider audience. The idea is not really based on the
1882 argument that copyrighted works are "intellectual property", as the
1883 core requirement is that copyrighted work have value for the copyright
1884 holder and the tax office like to collect their share from any value
1885 controlled by the citizens in a country. I'm sharing the idea here to
1886 let others consider it and perhaps shoot it down with a fresh set of
1889 <p>Most valuables are taxed by the government. At least here in
1890 Norway, the amount of money you have, the value of our land property,
1891 the value of your house, the value of your car, the value of our
1892 stocks and other valuables are all added together. If the tax value
1893 of these values exceed your debt, you have to pay the tax office some
1894 taxes for these values. And copyrighted work have value. It have
1895 value for the rights holder, who can earn money selling access to the
1896 work. But it is not included in the tax calculations? Why not?
</p>
1898 <p>If the government want to tax copyrighted works, it would want to
1899 maintain a database of all the copyrighted works and who are the
1900 rights holders for a given works, to be able to associate the works
1901 value to the right citizen or company for tax purposes. If such
1902 database exist, it will become a lot easier to find out who to talk to
1903 for clearing permissions to use a copyrighted work, which is a very
1904 hard operation with todays copyright law. To ensure that copyright
1905 holders keep the database up-to-date, it would have to become a
1906 requirement to be able to collect money for granting access to
1907 copyrighted works that the work is listed in the database with the
1908 correct right holder.
</p>
1910 <p>If copyright causes copyright holders to have to pay more taxes,
1911 they will have a small incentive to "disown" their copyright, and let
1912 the work enter the public domain. For works with several right holders
1913 one of the right holders could state (and get it registered in the
1914 database) that she do not need to be consulted when clearing rights to
1915 use the work in question and thus will not get any income from that
1916 work. Stating this would have to be impossible to revert and stop the
1917 tax office from adding the value of that work to the given citizens
1918 tax calculation. I assume the copyright law would stay the same,
1919 allowing creators to pick a license of their choosing, and also
1920 allowing them to put their work directly in the public domain. The
1921 existence of such database will make it even easier to clear rights,
1922 and if the right holders listed in the database is taxed, this system
1923 would increase the amount of works that enter the public domain.
</p>
1925 <p>The effect would be that the tax office help to make it easier to
1926 get rights to use the works that have not yet entered the public
1927 domain and help to get more work into the public domain and .
</p>
1929 <p>Why have such taxing not happened yet? I am sure the tax office
1930 would like to tax copyrighted work values if they could.
</p>
1936 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett
</a>.
1941 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1945 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Angela_Fu_.html">Debian Edu interview: Angela Fuß
</a>
1951 <p>Here is another interview with one of the people in the
<a
1952 href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux
</a>
1953 community. I am running short on people willing to be interviewed, so
1954 if you know about someone I should interview, Please send me an email.
1955 After asking for many months, I finally managed to lure another one of
1956 the people behind the German
1957 "
<a href=
"http://wiki.it-zukunft-schule.de/">IT-Zukunft Schule
</a>"
1958 project out from maternity leave to conduct an interview. Give a warm
1959 welcome to Angela Fuß. :)</p>
1961 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
1963 <p>I am a 39-year-old woman living in the very north of Germany near
1964 Denmark. I live in a patchwork family with "my man" Mike Gabriel, my
1965 two daughters, Mikes daughter and Mikes and my rather newborn son.
1967 <p>At the moment - because of our little baby - I am spending most of
1968 the day by being a caring and organising mom for all the kids.
1969 Besides that I am really involved into and occupied with several inner
1970 growth processes: New born souls always bring the whole familiar
1971 system into movement and that needs time and focus ;-). We are also
1972 in the middle of buying a house and moving to it.
</p>
1974 <p>In
2013 I will work again in my job in a German foundation for
1975 nature conservation. I am doing public relation work there. Besides
1976 that - and that is the connection to Skolelinux / Debian Edu - I am
1977 working in our own school project "IT-Zukunft Schule" in North
1978 Germany. I am responsible for the quality assurance, the customer
1979 relationship management and the communication processes in the
1982 <p>Since
2001 I constantly have been training myself in communication
1983 and leadership. Besides that I am a forester, a landscaping gardener
1984 and a yoga teacher.
</p>
1986 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
1987 project?
</strong></p>
1989 <p>I fell in love with Mike ;-).
</p>
1991 <p>Very soon after getting to know him I was completely enrolled into
1992 Free Software. At this time Mike did IT-services for one newly
1993 founded school in Kiel. Other schools in Kiel needed concepts for
1994 their IT environment. Often when Mike came home from working at the
1995 newly founded school I found myself listening to his complaints about
1996 several points where the communication with the schools head or the
1997 teachers did not work. So we were clear that he would not work for
1998 one more school if we did not set up a structure for communication
1999 between him, the schools head, the teachers, the students and the
2002 <p>Together with our friend and hardware supplier Andreas Buchholz we
2003 started to get an overview of free software solutions suitable for
2004 schools. One day before Christmas
2010 Mike and I had a date with Kurt
2005 Gramlich in Gütersloh. As Kurt and I are really interested in building
2006 networks of people and in being in communication we dived into
2007 Skolelinux and brought it to the first grammar schools in Northern
2010 <p>For information about our school project you can read
2011 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html">the
2012 interview with Mike Gabriel
</a>.
</p>
2014 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
2017 <p>First I have to say: I cannot answer this question technically. My
2018 answer comes rather from a social point of view.
</p>
2020 <p>The biggest advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu I see is the large
2021 and strong international community of Debian Developers in the
2022 background which is very alive and connected over mailinglists, blogs
2023 and meetings. My constant feeling for the Debian Community is: If
2024 something does not work they will somehow fix it. All is well
2025 ;-). This is of course a user experience. What I also get as a big
2026 advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu is that everybody who uses it and
2027 works with it can also contribute to it - that includes students,
2028 teachers, parents...
</p>
2030 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
2033 <p>I will answer this question relating to the internal structure of
2034 Skolelinux / Debian Edu.
</p>
2036 <p>What I see as a major disadvantage is that there is a gap between
2037 the group of developers for Debian Edu and the people who make the
2038 marketing, that means the people that bring Skolelinux to the
2039 schools. There is a lack of communication between these two groups and
2040 I think that does not really work for Skolelinux / Debian Edu.
</p>
2042 <p>Further I appreciate that Skolelinux / Debian Edu is known as a
2043 do-ocracy. Nevertheless I keep asking myself if at some points a
2044 democracy or some kind of hierarchical project structure would be good
2045 and helpful. I am also missing some kind of contact between the
2046 Skolelinux / Debian Edu communities in Europe or on an international
2047 level. I think it would be good if there was more sharing between the
2048 different countries using Skolelinux / Debian Edu.
</p>
2050 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?
</strong></p>
2052 <p>On my laptop I am still using an Ubuntu
10.04 with a Gnome Desktop
2053 on. As applications I use Openoffice.org, Gedit, Firefox, Pidgin,
2054 LaTeX and GnuCash. For mails I am using Horde. And I am really fond of
2055 my N900 running with Maemo.
</p>
2057 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
2058 get schools to use free software?
</strong></p>
2060 <p>I am really convinced that in our school project "IT-Zukunft
2061 Schule" we have developed (and keep developing) a great way to get
2062 schools to use Free Software. We have written a detailed concept for
2063 that so I cannot explain the whole thing here. But in a nutshell the
2064 strategy has three crucial pillars:
</p>
2068 <li>We really take time to get what sort of stories, questions and
2069 concerns the schools head and the teachers have about using different
2070 kinds of IT and we take time to enrol them into Free Software.
</li>
2072 <li>Our solution for schools is never just technical. In the centre
2073 are always the people who are going to use the software. From the very
2074 beginning of the planning for a school, we tell the schools head that
2075 they are paying us not only for a technical solution for their school,
2076 they also pay us for leading all the communication processes
2077 needed. If they do not want that, we are not working with them because
2078 we cannot give a guarantee for the quality of our work then.
</li>
2080 <li>Another focus lies in the training of teachers and students in
2081 co-administrating the IT-System at their school. They start getting in
2082 contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu community and they get the
2083 offer to become more and more independent from us.
</li>
2091 Tags:
<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/intervju">intervju
</a>.
2096 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2100 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_European_Central_Bank__ECB__take_a_look_at_bitcoin.html">The European Central Bank (ECB) take a look at bitcoin
</a>
2106 <p>Slashdot just ran a story about the European Central Bank (ECB)
2107 <a href=
"http://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/other/virtualcurrencyschemes201210en.pdf">releasing
2108 a report (PDF)
</a> about virtual currencies and
2109 <a href=
"http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin
</a>. It is interesting to
2110 see how a member of the bitcoin community
2111 <a href=
"http://blog.bitinstant.com/blog/2012/10/30/the-ecb-report-on-bitcoin-and-virtual-currencies.html">receive
2112 the report
</a>. As for the future, I suspect the central banks and
2113 the governments will outlaw bitcoin if it gain any popularity, to avoid
2114 competition. My thoughts go to the
2115 <a href=
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wörgl">Wörgl experiment
</a> with
2116 negative inflation on cash which was such a success that it was
2117 terminated by the Austrian National Bank in
1933. A successful
2118 alternative would be a threat to the current money system and gain
2119 powerful forces to work against it.
</p>
2121 <p>While checking out the current status of bitcoin, I also discovered
2122 that the community already seem to have
2123 <a href=
"http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/27/3271637/bitcoin-savings-trust-pyramid-scheme-shuts-down">experienced
2124 its first pyramid game / Ponzi scheme
</a>. Not very surprising, given
2125 how members of "small" communities tend to trust each other. I guess
2126 enterprising crocks will try again and again, as they do anywhere
2127 wealth is available.
</p>
2133 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin
</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>.
2138 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2142 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/12_years_of_outages___summarised_by_Stuart_Kendrick.html">12 years of outages - summarised by Stuart Kendrick
</a>
2148 <p>I work at the
<a href=
"http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo
</a>
2149 looking after the computers, mostly on the unix side, but in general
2150 all over the place. I am also a member (and currently leader) of
2151 <a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/">the NUUG association
</a>, which in turn
2152 make me a member of
<a href=
"http://www.usenix.org/">USENIX
</a>. NUUG
2153 is an member organisation for us in Norway interested in free
2154 software, open standards and unix like operating systems, and USENIX
2155 is a US based member organisation with similar targets. And thanks to
2156 these memberships, I get all issues of the great USENIX magazine
2157 <a href=
"https://www.usenix.org/publications/login">;login:
</a> in the
2158 mail several times a year. The magazine is great, and I read most of
2161 <p>In the last issue of the USENIX magazine ;login:, there is an
2162 article by
<a href=
"http://www.skendric.com/">Stuart Kendrick
</a> from
2163 Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center titled
2164 "
<a href=
"https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/october-2012-volume-37-number-5/what-takes-us-down">What
2165 Takes Us Down
</a>" (longer version also
2166 <a href="http://www.skendric.com/problem/incident-analysis/
2012-
06-
30/What-Takes-Us-Down.pdf
">available
2167 from his own site</a>), where he report what he found when he
2168 processed the outage reports (both planned and unplanned) from the
2169 last twelve years and classified them according to cause, time of day,
2170 etc etc. The article is a good read to get some empirical data on
2171 what kind of problems affect a data centre, but what really inspired
2172 me was the kind of reporting they had put in place since 2000.<p>
2174 <p>The centre set up a mailing list, and started to send fairly
2175 standardised messages to this list when a outage was planned or when
2176 it already occurred, to announce the plan and get feedback on the
2177 assumtions on scope and user impact. Here is the two example from the
2178 article: First the unplanned outage:
2181 Subject: Exchange 2003 Cluster Issues
2182 Severity: Critical (Unplanned)
2183 Start: Monday, May 7, 2012, 11:58
2184 End: Monday, May 7, 2012, 12:38
2185 Duration: 40 minutes
2186 Scope: Exchange 2003
2187 Description: The HTTPS service on the Exchange cluster crashed, triggering
2190 User Impact: During this period, all Exchange users were unable to
2191 access e-mail. Zimbra users were unaffected.
2195 Next the planned outage:
2198 Subject: H Building Switch Upgrades
2199 Severity: Major (Planned)
2200 Start: Saturday, June 16, 2012, 06:00
2201 End: Saturday, June 16, 2012, 16:00
2204 Description: Currently, Catalyst 4006s provide 10/100 Ethernet to end-
2205 stations. We will replace these with newer Catalyst
2207 User Impact: All users on H2 will be isolated from the network during
2208 this work. Afterward, they will have gigabit
2213 <p>He notes in his article that the date formats and other fields have
2214 been a bit too free form to make it easy to automatically process them
2215 into a database for further analysis, and I would have used ISO 8601
2216 dates myself to make it easier to process (in other words I would ask
2217 people to write '2012-06-16 06:00 +0000' instead of the start time
2218 format listed above). There are also other issues with the format
2219 that could be improved, read the article for the details.</p>
2221 <p>I find the idea of standardising outage messages seem to be such a
2222 good idea that I would like to get it implemented here at the
2223 university too. We do register
2224 <a href="http://www.uio.no/tjenester/it/aktuelt/planlagte-tjenesteavbrudd/
">planned
2225 changes and outages in a calendar</a>, and report the to a mailing
2226 list, but we do not do so in a structured format and there is not a
2227 report to the same location for unplanned outages. Perhaps something
2228 for other sites to consider too?</p>
2234 Tags: <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>.
2239 <div class="padding
"></div>
2243 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Amazon_steal_books_from_customer_and_throw_out_her_out_without_any_explanation.html
">Amazon steal books from customer and throw out her out without any explanation</a>
2249 <p>A blog post from Martin Bekkelund today tell the story of
2250 <a href="http://www.bekkelund.net/
2012/
10/
22/outlawed-by-amazon-drm/
">how
2251 Amazon erased the books from a customer's kindle, locked the account
2252 and refuse to tell the customer why</a>. If a real book store did
2253 this to a customer, it would be called breaking into private property
2254 and theft. The story has spread around the net today. A bit more
2255 background information is available in Norwegian from
2256 <a href="http://www.digi.no/
904658/hun-ble-kastet-ut-av-amazon
">digi.no</a>.
2257 It is no surprise that digital restriction mechanisms (DRM) are used
2258 this way, as it has been warned about such abuse since DRM was
2259 introduced many years back. And Amazon proved in 2009 that it was
2261 <a href="http://boingboing.net/
2009/
07/
20/amazons-orwellian-de.html
">
2262 break into customers equipment and remove the books</a> people had
2263 bought, when it removed the book 1984 by George Orwell from all the
2264 customers who had bought it. From the official comments, it even
2266 <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/
2009/
07/
18/technology/companies/
18amazon.html
">Amazon
2267 would never do that again</a>. And here we are, three years
2270 <p>And thought this action is
2271 <a href="http://www.itavisen.no/
904648/forbrukerraadet-helt-haarreisende
">against
2272 Norwegian regulations and law</a>, it is according to the terms of use
2273 as written by Amazon, and it is hard to hold Amazon accountable to
2274 Norwegian laws. It is just yet another example of unacceptable terms
2275 of use on the web, and how they are used to remove customer
2278 <p>Luckily for electronic books, there are alternatives without
2279 unacceptable terms. For example
2280 <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/
">Project Gutenberg</a> (about 40,000
2281 books), <a href="http://runeberg.org/
">Project Runenberg</a> (1,652
2282 books) and <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/texts
">The Internet
2283 Archive</a> (3,641,797 books) have heaps of books without DRM, which
2284 can read by anyone and shared with anyone.</p>
2286 <p>Update 2012-10-23: This story broke in the morning on Monday. In
2287 the evening after the story had spread all across the Internet, Amazon
2288 restored the account of the user, as reported by
2289 <a href="http://www.digi.no/
904675/helomvending-fra-amazon
">digi.no</a>
2290 and <a href="http://nrk.no/kultur-og-underholdning/
1.8368487">NRK</a>.
2291 Apparently public pressure work. The story from Martin have seen
2292 several twitter messages per minute the last 24 hours, which is quite
2293 a lot, and is still drawing a lot of attention. But even when the
2294 account is restored, the fundamental problem still exist. I recommend
2295 reading two opinions from
2296 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/
2012/
10/rights-you-have-no-right-to-your-ebooks/index.htm
">Simon
2298 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/
2012/
10/is-amazon-playing-fair/index.htm
">Glen
2299 Moody</a> if you want to learn more about the fundamentals and more
2300 details about the original story.</p>
2306 Tags: <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/personvern
">personvern</a>.
2311 <div class="padding
"></div>
2315 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_fight_for_freedom_and_privacy.html
">The fight for freedom and privacy</a>
2321 <p>Civil liberties and privacy in the western world are going down the
2322 drain, and it is hard to fight against it. I try to do my best, but
2323 time is limited. I hope you do your best too. A few years ago I came
2324 across a marvellous drawing by
2325 <a href="http://www.claybennett.com/about.html
">Clay Bennett</a>
2326 visualising some of what is going on.
2328 <p><a href="http://www.claybennett.com/pages/security_fence.html
">
2329 <img src="http://www.claybennett.com/images/archivetoons/security_fence.jpg
"></a></p>
2332 «They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
2333 safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.» - Benjamin Franklin
2336 <p>Do you feel safe at the airport? I do not. Do you feel safe when
2337 you see a surveillance camera? I do not. Do you feel safe when you
2338 leave electronic traces of your behaviour and opinions? I do not. I
2339 just remember <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon
">the
2340 Panopticon</a>, and can not help to think that we are slowly
2341 transforming our society to a huge Panopticon on our own.</p>
2347 Tags: <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>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance
">surveillance</a>.
2352 <div class="padding
"></div>
2356 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ColonHelp_produser_sue_WordPress_to_silence_critic.html
">ColonHelp produser sue WordPress to silence critic</a>
2362 <p>Thanks to a blog post by
2363 <a href="http://ramblingfoo.blogspot.no/
2012/
10/a-shitstorm-is-comming.html
">Eddy
2364 Petrișor</a>, I became aware of yet another "alternative medicine"
2365 company using legal intimidation tactics to scare off critics.
2366 According to the originating blog post about the detox "cure"
2367 <a href=
"http://insulaindoielii.wordpress.com/2012/10/11/colon-help-sues-wordpress/">ColonHelp
2368 and its producers Zenyth Pharmaceuticals actions
</a>, the producer
2369 sues Wordpress to get rid of the critical information. To check if
2370 the story was for real, I contacted Automattic, the company behind
2371 wordpress.com, and they reply was "We can confirm that Zenyth is
2372 seeking a court order against WordPress / Automattic. However, we
2373 don't believe the Terms of Service have been violated in this
2376 <p>The story seem to be simply that a blogger checked the scientific
2377 foundation for a popular health product in Rumania, ColonHelp, and
2378 reported that there was no reason at all to believe it improved the
2379 health of its users. This caused the company behind the product,
2380 Zenyth Pharmaceuticals, to use legal intimidation to try to silence
2381 the critic, instead of presenting its views and scientific foundation
2382 to argue its side.
</p>
2384 <p>This is the usual story, and the Zenyth Pharmaceuticals company
2385 deserve everyone to know how it failed to act properly. Lets hope the
2386 <a href=
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect">Streisand
2387 effect
</a> can make it rethink its strategy.
</p>
2389 <p>What is the harm, you might think. I suggest you take a look at
2390 <a href=
"http://www.whatstheharm.net/detoxification.html">a list of
2391 victims of detoxification
</a>.
</p>
2397 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis
</a>.
2402 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2406 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_is_your_local_library_collecting_the__wrong__computer_books_.html">Why is your local library collecting the "wrong" computer books?
</a>
2412 <p>I just read the blog post from Tim Retout
2413 <a href=
"http://retout.co.uk/blog/2012/10/02/the-library-challenge">about
2414 the computer science book collection available in his local
2415 library
</a>, and just wanted to share my comment on his theory about
2416 computer books becoming obsolete so soon. That is part of the reason
2417 why the selection is so sad in almost any local library (it is in mine
2418 too), but I believe the major contributing factor is that the people
2419 buying books to the library have no way to know a good and future
2420 computer classic from trash. And they need to know which one will
2421 become a classic in the future, as they would normally buy one of the
2422 recently published books.
</p>
2424 <p>During my university years, I worked for a while at the university
2425 library, and even there the person in charge of buying computer
2426 related books (and in fact any natural science related book), did not
2427 know enough about computers to make a good educated guess. Once, just
2428 before Christmas, they had some leftover money on the book budget and
2429 I was asked if I could pick out a lot of computer books in the
2430 university book store, for the library to buy for their collection. I
2431 had a great time picking all the books I dreamt of buying and reading,
2432 and the books I knew were classics (like most of the
2433 <a href=
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Richard_Stevens">Stevens
2434 collection
</a>). I picked several of the generic O'Reilly books (ie
2435 documenting protocols, formats and systems, not specific versions of
2436 products) and stayed away from the 'teach yourself X in N days' class.
2437 I had a great time, and probably picked out more than a hundred books
2438 for the library that evening.
</p>
2440 <p>The sad fact is that there is no way a overworked librarian is
2441 going to know that for example
2442 <a href=
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Practice_of_Programming">The
2443 Practice of Programming
</a> is a must-have in any computer library,
2444 and they will most of the time end up picking the wrong books to buy.
2445 Perhaps you can help your local library make better choices by giving
2446 the suggestions for books to get? I know they would love to hear from
2447 you, even if their budget might block them from getting your favourite
2448 book right away.
</p>
2454 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
2459 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2463 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Seventy_percent_done_with_Norwegian_docbook_version_of_Free_Culture.html">Seventy percent done with Norwegian docbook version of Free Culture
</a>
2469 <p>Since this summer, I have worked in my spare time on a Norwegian
<a
2470 href=
"http://www.docbook.org/">docbook
</a> version of the
2004 book
<a
2471 href=
"http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture
</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
2472 The reason is that this book is a great primer on what problems exist
2473 in the current copyright laws, and I want it to be available also for
2474 those that are reluctant do read an English book.
2477 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">called
2478 for volunteers
</a> to help me, but too few have volunteered so far,
2479 and progress is a bit slow. Anyway, today I broken the
70 percent
2480 mark for the first rough translation. At the moment, less than
700
2481 strings (paragraphs, index terms, titles) are left to translate. With
2482 my current progress of
10-
20 strings per day, it will take a while to
2483 complete the translation. This graph show the updated progress:
</p>
2485 <img width=
"80%" align=
"center" src=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png">
2487 <p>Progress have slowed down lately due to family and work
2488 commitments. If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out
2489 the project files currently available from
2490 <a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github
</a>.
</p>
2492 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
2494 <a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF
</a>
2496 <a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB
</a>
2497 are published on github. The HTML version is published as well, but
2498 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
2499 saw no point in linking to that version.
</p>
2505 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture
</a>.
2510 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2514 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Giorgio_Pioda.html">Debian Edu interview: Giorgio Pioda
</a>
2520 <p>After a long break in my row of interviews with people in the
2521 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux
</a>
2522 community, I finally found time to wrap up another. This time it is
2523 Giorgio Pioda, which showed up on the mailing list at the start of
2524 this year, asking questions and inspiring us to improve the first time
2525 administrators experience with Skolelinux. :) The interview was
2526 conduced in May, but I only found time to publish it now.
</p>
2528 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
</strong></p>
2530 <p>I have a PhD in chemistry but since several years I work as teacher
2531 in secondary (
15-
18 year old students) and tertiary (a kind of "light"
2532 university) schools. Five years ago I started to manage a Learning
2533 Management Service server and slowly I got more and more involved with
2534 IT.
3 years ago the graduating schools moved completely to Linux and I
2535 got the head of the IT for this. The experience collected in chemistry
2536 labs computers (for example NMR analysis of protein folding) and in
2537 the IT-courses during university where sufficient to start. Self
2538 training is anyway very important
</p>
2540 <p>I live in the Italian speaking part of Switzerland, and the
2541 <a href=
"http://www.spse.ch/">SPSE school
</a> (secondary) is a very
2542 special sport school for young people who try to became sport pro (for
2543 all sports, we have dozens of disciplines represented) and we are
2544 recognised by the Olympic Swiss Organisation.
2546 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
2547 project?
</strong></p>
2549 <p>Looking for Linux / Primary Domain Controller (PDC) I found it
2550 already several years ago. But since the system was still not
2551 Kerberized and since our schools relies strongly on laptops I didn't
2552 use it. I plan to introduce it in the next future, probably for the
2553 next school year, since the squeeze release solved this security
2556 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
2559 <p>Many. First of all there is a strong and living community that is
2560 very generous for help and hints. Chat help is crucial, together with
2561 the mailing list. Second. With Skolelinux you get an already well
2562 engineered platform and you don't have to start to build up your PDC
2563 and your clients from GNU/scratch; I've already done this once and I
2564 can tell it, it is hard. Third, since Skolelinux is a standard
2565 platform, it is way easier to educate other IT people and even if the
2566 head IT is sick another one could pick up the task without too much
2569 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
2572 <p>The only real problem I see is that it is a little too less
2573 flexible at client level. Debian stable is rocky and desirable, but
2574 there are many reasons that force for another choice. For example the
2575 need of new drivers for new PC, or the need for a specific OS for some
2576 devices that have specific software packages for another specific
2577 distribution (I have such a case for whiteboards that have only
2578 Ubuntu packages). Thus, I prepared compatibility packages educlient
2579 and eduroaming, hoping not to use them ;-)
</p>
2581 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?
</strong></p>
2583 <p>I have a Debian Stable PDC at school (Kerberos, NIS, NFS) with
2584 mixed Debian and Ubuntu clients. If you think that this triad
2585 combination is exotic... well I discovered right yesterday that
2586 <a href=
"http://moo.nac.uci.edu/~hjm/Perceus-Report.html">Perceus
</a>
2589 <p>For myself I run Debian wheezy/sid, but this combination is good
2590 only I you have enough competence to fix stuff for yourself, if
2591 something breaks. Daily I use texmacs, gnumeric, a little bit of R
2592 statistics, kmplot, and less frequently OpenOffice.org.
</p>
2594 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
2595 get schools to use free software?
</strong></p>
2597 <P>I think that the only real argument that school managers "hear" is
2598 cost reduction. They don't give too much weight on quality, stability,
2599 just because they are normally not open to change.
</p>
2601 <p>Students adapts very quickly to GNU/Linux (and for them being able
2602 to switch between different OS is a plus value); teachers and managers
2605 <p>We decided to move to Linux because students at our school have own
2606 laptop and we have the responsibility to keep the laptop ready to use;
2607 we were really unsatisfied with Microsoft since every Monday we had
20
2608 machine to fix for viral infections... With Linux this has been
2609 reduced to zero, since people installs almost only from official
2610 repositories. I think that our special needs brought us to Linux.
2611 Those who don't have such needs will hardly move to Linux.
</p>
2617 Tags:
<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/intervju">intervju
</a>.
2622 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2626 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_activity_to_standardise_video_codec.html">IETF activity to standardise video codec
</a>
2633 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html">Opus
2634 codec made
</a> it into
<a href=
"http://www.ietf.org/">IETF
</a> as
2635 <a href=
"http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716">RFC
6716</a>, I had a look
2636 to see if there is any activity in IETF to standardise a video codec
2637 too, and I was happy to discover that there is some activity in this
2638 area. A non-"working group" mailing list
2639 <a href=
"https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/video-codec">video-codec
</a>
2641 <a href=
"http://ietf.10.n7.nabble.com/New-Non-WG-Mailing-List-video-codec-Video-codec-BoF-discussion-list-td119548.html">created
2012-
08-
20</a>. It is intended to discuss the topic and if a
2642 formal working group should be formed.
</p>
2644 <p>I look forward to see how this plays out. There is already
2645 <a href=
"http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/video-codec/current/msg00003.html">an
2646 email from someone
</a> in the MPEG group at ISO asking people to
2647 participate in the ISO group. Given how ISO failed with OOXML and given
2648 that it so far (as far as I can remember) only have produced
2649 multimedia formats requiring royalty payments, I suspect
2650 joining the ISO group would be a complete waste of time, but I am not
2651 involved in any codec work and my opinion will not matter much.
</p>
2653 <p>If one of my readers is involved with codec work, I hope she will
2654 join this work to standardise a royalty free video codec within
2661 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen
</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>.
2666 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2670 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html">IETF standardize its first multimedia codec: Opus
</a>
2676 <p>Yesterday,
<a href=
"http://www.ietf.org/">IETF
</a> announced the
2678 <a href=
"http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716">RFC
6716, the Definition
2679 of the Opus Audio Codec
</a>, a low latency, variable bandwidth, codec
2680 intended for both VoIP, film and music. This is the first time, as
2681 far as I know, that IETF have standardized a multimedia codec. In
2682 <a href=
"http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3533">RFC
3533</a>, IETF
2683 standardized the OGG container format, and it has proven to be a great
2684 royalty free container for audio, video and movies. I hope IETF will
2685 continue to standardize more royalty free codeces, after ISO and MPEG
2686 have proven incapable of securing everyone equal rights to publish
2687 multimedia content on the Internet.
</p>
2689 <p>IETF require two interoperating independent implementations to
2690 ratify a standard, and have so far ensured to only standardize royalty
2691 free specifications. Both are key factors to allow everyone (rich and
2692 poor), to compete on equal terms on the Internet.
</p>
2694 <p>Visit the
<a href=
"http://opus-codec.org/">Opus project page
</a> if
2695 you want to learn more about the solution.
</p>
2701 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen
</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>.
2706 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2710 <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>
2717 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">mentioned
2718 this summer
</a>, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
2719 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
2720 <a href=
"https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook">Gitorious
2721 repository for the project
</a>.
</p>
2723 <p>If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
2724 to the HTML version. To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
2725 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
2726 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.
</p>
2728 <p>Want to sing? You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
2729 PostScript formats at
2730 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's Computer
2731 Science Songbook
</a>.
</p>
2737 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>.
2742 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2746 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_software_forced_Microsoft_to_open_Office__and_don_t_forget_Officeshots_.html">Free software forced Microsoft to open Office (and don't forget Officeshots)
</a>
2752 <p>I came across a great comment from Simon Phipps today, about how
2753 <a href=
"http://www.infoworld.com/d/open-source-software/how-microsoft-was-forced-open-office-200233">Microsoft
2754 have been forced to open Office
</a>, and it made me remember and
2755 revisit the great site
2756 <a href=
"http://www.officeshots.org/">officeshots
</a> which allow you
2757 to check out how different programs present the ODF file format. I
2758 recommend both to those of my readers interested in ODF. :)
</p>
2764 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard
</a>.
2769 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2773 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Half_way_there_with_translated_docbook_version_of_Free_Culture.html">Half way there with translated docbook version of Free Culture
</a>
2779 <p>In my spare time, I currently work on a Norwegian
2780 <a href=
"http://www.docbook.org/">docbook
</a> version of the
2004 book
2781 <a href=
"http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture
</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
2782 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with the copyright law
2783 I can give to my parents and others that are reluctant to read an
2784 English book. It is a marvellous set of examples on how the ever
2785 expanding copyright regulations hurt culture and society. When the
2786 translation is done, I hope to find funding to print and ship a copy
2787 to all the members of the Norwegian parliament, before they sit down
2788 to debate the latest revisions to the Norwegian copyright law. This
2790 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">called
2791 for volunteers
</a> to help me, and I have been able to secure the
2792 valuable contribution from at least one other Norwegian.
</p>
2794 <p>Two days ago, we finally broke the
50% mark. Then more than
50% of
2795 the number of strings to translate (normally paragraphs, but also
2796 titles and index entries are also counted). All parts from the
2797 beginning up to and including chapter four is translated. So is
2798 chapters six, seven and the conclusion. I created a graph to show the
2801 <img width=
"80%" align=
"center" src=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png">
2803 <p>The number of strings to translate increase as I insert the index
2804 entries into the docbook. They were missing with the docbook version
2805 I initially started with. There are still quite a few index entries
2806 missing, but everyone starting with A, B, O, Z and Y are done. I
2807 currently focus on completing the index entries, to get a complete
2808 english version of the docbook source.
</p>
2810 <p>There is still need for translators and people with docbook
2811 knowledge, to be able to get a good looking book (I still struggle
2812 with dblatex, xmlto and docbook-xsl) as well as to do the draft
2813 translation and proof reading. And I would like the figures to be
2814 redrawn as SVGs to make it easy to translate them. Any SVG master
2815 around? I am sure there are some legal terms that are unfamiliar to
2816 me. If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out the
2817 project files currently available from
<a
2818 href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github
</a>.
</p>
2820 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
2822 <a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF
</a>
2824 <a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB
</a>
2825 are published on github. The HTML version is published as well, but
2826 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
2827 saw no point in linking to that version.
</p>
2833 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture
</a>.
2838 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2842 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Notes_on_language_codes_for_Norwegian_docbook_processing___.html">Notes on language codes for Norwegian docbook processing...
</a>
2848 <p>In
<a href=
"http://www.docbook.org/">docbook
</a> one can specify
2849 the language used at the top, and the processing pipeline will use
2850 this information to pick the correct translations for 'chapter', 'see
2851 also', 'index' etc. And for most languages used with docbook, I guess
2852 this work just fine. For example a German user can start the document
2853 with
<book
lang="de"
>, and the document will show up with the
2854 correct content with any of the docbook processors. This is not the
2855 case for the language
2856 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Culture_in_Norwegian___5_chapters_done__74_percent_left_to_do.html">I
2857 am working with at the moment
</a>, Norwegian Bokmål.
</p>
2859 <p>For a while, I was confused about which language code to use,
2860 because I was unable to find any language code that would work across
2861 all tools. I am currently testing dblatex, xmlto, docbook-xsl, and
2862 dbtoepub, and they do not handle Norwegian Bokmål the same way. Some
2863 of them do not handle it at all.
</p>
2865 <p>A bit of background information is probably needed to understand
2866 this mess. Norwegian is not one, but two written variants. The
2867 variants are Norwegian Nynorsk and Norwegian Bokmål. There are three
2868 two letter language codes associated with these languages, Norwegian
2869 is 'no', Norwegian Nynorsk is 'nn' and Norwegian Bokmål is 'nb'.
2870 Historically the 'no' language code was used for Norwegian Bokmål, but
2871 many years ago this was found to be å bad idea, and the recommendation
2872 is to use the most specific language code instead, to avoid confusion.
2873 In the transition period it is a good idea to make sure 'no' was an
2876 <p>Back to docbook processing tools in Debian. The dblatex tool only
2877 understand 'nn'. There are translations for 'no', but not 'nb' (BTS
2878 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/684391">#
684391</a>), but due to a bug
2879 (BTS
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/682936">#
682936</a>) the 'no'
2880 language code is not recognised. The docbook-xsl tool chain only
2881 recognise 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'. The xmlto tool only recognise
2882 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'. The end result that there is no language
2883 code I can use to get the docbook file working with all of these tools
2884 at the same time. :(
</p>
2886 <p>The correct solution is to use
<book
lang="nb"
>, but it will
2887 take time before that will work with all the free software docbook
2890 <p>Oh, the joy of well integrated tools. :/
</p>
2896 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture
</a>.
2901 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2905 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Best_way_to_create_a_docbook_book_.html">Best way to create a docbook book?
</a>
2911 <p>I tried to send this text to the
2912 <a href=
"https://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook-apps/">docbook-apps
2913 mailing list at lists.oasis-open.org
</a>, but it only accept messages
2914 from subscribers and rejected my post, and I completely lack the
2915 bandwidth required to subscribe to another mailing list, so instead I
2916 try to post my message here and hope my blog readers can help me
2919 <p>I am quite new to docbook processing, and am climbing a steep
2920 learning curve at the moment.
</p>
2922 <p>To give you some background, I am working on a Norwegian
2923 translation of the book Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig, and I use
2924 docbook to handle the process. The files to build the book are
2926 <a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github
</a>.
2927 The book got around
400 pages with parts, images, footnotes, tables,
2928 index entries etc, which has proven to be a challenge for the free
2929 software docbook processors. My build platform is Debian GNU/Linux
2932 <p>I want to build PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book, and have
2933 tried different tool chains to do the conversion from docbook to these
2934 formats. I am currently focusing on the PDF version, and have a few
2939 <li>Using dblatex, the
<part
> handling is not the way I want to,
2940 as
</part
> do not really end the
<part
>. (See
2941 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/683166">BTS report #
683166</a>), the
2942 xetex backend (needed to process UTF-
8) give incorrect hyphens in
2943 index references spanning several pages (See
2944 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/682901">BTS report #
682901</a>), and
2945 I am unable to get the norwegian template texts (See
2946 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/682936">BTS report #
682936</a>).
</li>
2948 <li>Using straight xmlto fail with some latex error (See
2949 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/683163">BTS report
2952 <li>Using xmlto with the fop backend fail to handle images (do not
2953 show up in the PDF), fail to handle a long footnote (overlap
2954 footnote and text body, see
2955 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/683197">BTS report #
683197</a>), and
2956 fail to create a correct index (some lack page ref, and the page
2957 refs listed are not right).
</li>
2959 <li>Using xmlto with the dblatex backend behave like dblatex.
</li>
2961 <li>Using docbook-xls with xsltproc + fop have the same footnote and
2962 index problems the xmlto + fop processing.
</li>
2966 <p>So I wonder, what would be the best way to create the PDF version
2967 of this book? Are some of the bugs found above solved in new or
2968 experimental versions of some docbook tool chain?
</p>
2970 <p>What about HTML and EPUB versions?
</p>
2976 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture
</a>.
2981 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2985 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Culture_in_Norwegian___5_chapters_done__74_percent_left_to_do.html">Free Culture in Norwegian -
5 chapters done,
74 percent left to do
</a>
2991 <p>I reported earlier that I am working on
2992 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">a
2993 norwegian version
</a> of the book
2994 <a href=
"http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture
</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
2995 Progress is good, and yesterday I got a major contribution from Anders
2996 Hagen Jarmund completing chapter six. The source files as well as a
2997 PDF and EPUB version of this book are available from
2998 <a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github
</a>.
</p>
3000 <p>I am happy to report that the draft for the first two chapters
3001 (preface, introduction) is complete, and three other chapters are also
3002 completely translated. This completes
26 percent of the number of
3003 strings (equivalent to paragraphs) in the book, and there is thus
74
3004 percent left to translate. A graph of the progress is present at the
3005 bottom of the github project page. There is still room for more
3006 contributors. Get in touch or send github pull requests with fixes if
3007 you got time and are willing to help make this book make it to
3010 <p>The book translation framework could also be a good basis for other
3011 translations, if you want the book to be available in your
3018 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture
</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>.
3023 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3027 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Call_for_help_from_docbook_expert_to_tag_Free_Culture_by_Lawrence_Lessig.html">Call for help from docbook expert to tag Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig
</a>
3033 <p>I am currently working on a
3034 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">project
3035 to translate
</a> the book
3036 <a href=
"http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture
</a> by Lawrence Lessig
3037 to Norwegian. And the source we base our translation on is the
3038 <a href=
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DocBook">docbook
</a> version, to
3039 allow us to use po4a and .po files to handle the translation, and for
3040 this to work well the docbook source document need to be properly
3041 tagged. The source files of this project is available from
3042 <a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github
</a>.
</p>
3044 <p>The problem is that the docbook source have flaws, and we have
3045 no-one involved in the project that is a docbook expert. Is there a
3046 docbook expert somewhere that is interested in helping us create a
3047 well tagged docbook version of the book, and adjust our build process
3048 for the PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book? This will provide a
3049 well tagged English version (our source document), and make it a lot
3050 easier for us to create a good Norwegian version. If you can and want
3051 to help, please get in touch with me or fork the github project and
3052 send pull requests with fixes. :)
</p>
3058 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture
</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>.
3063 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3067 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__George_Bredberg.html">Debian Edu interview: George Bredberg
</a>
3073 <p>The
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
3074 Skolelinux
</a> project have users all over the globe, but until
3075 recently we have not known about any users in Norway's neighbour
3076 country Sweden. This changed when George Bredberg showed up in March
3077 this year on the mailing list, asking interesting questions about how
3078 to adjust and scale the just released
3079 <a href=
"http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
3080 Wheezy
</a> setup to his liking. He granted me an interview, and I am
3081 happy to share his answers with you here.
</p>
3083 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
</strong></p>
3085 <p>I'm a
44 year old country guy that have been working
12 years at
3086 the same school as
50% IT-manager and
50% Teacher. My educational
3087 background is fil.kand in history and religious beliefs, an exam as a
3088 "folkhighschool" teacher, that is, for teaching grownups. In
3089 Norwegian I believe it's called "Vuxenupplaring". I also have a master
3090 in "Technology and social change". So I'm not really a tech guy, I
3091 just like to study how humans and technology interact and that is my
3092 perspective when working with IT.
</p>
3094 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
3095 project?
</strong></p>
3097 I have followed the Skolelinux project for quite some time by
3098 now. Earlier I tested out the K12-LTSP project, which we used for some
3099 time, but I really like the idea of having a distribution aimed to be
3100 a complete solution for schools with necessary tools integrated. When
3101 K12-LTSP abandoned that idea some years ago, I started to look more
3102 seriously into Skolelinux instead.
3104 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
3107 The big point of Skolelinux to me is that it is a complete
3108 distribution, ready to install. It has LDAP-support, MS Windows
3109 integration tools and so forth already configured, saving an
3110 administrator a lot of time and headache. We were using another Linux
3111 based thin-client system called Thinlinc, that has served us very
3112 well. But that Skolelinux is based on VNC and LTSP, to me, is better
3113 when it comes to the kind of multimedia used in schools. That is
3114 showing videos from Youtube or educational TV. It is also easier to
3115 mix thin clients with workstations, since the user settings will be the
3116 same. In our VNC-based solution you had to "beat around the bush" by
3117 setting up a second, hidden, home-directory for user settings for the
3118 workstations, because they will be different from the ones used on the
3119 thin clients. Skolelinux support for diskless workstations are very
3120 convenient since a school today often need to use a class room
3121 projector showing videos in full screen. That is easily done with a
3122 small integrated media computer running as a diskless workstation. You
3123 have only two installs to update and configure. One for the thin
3124 clients and one for the workstations. Also saving a lot of time. Our
3125 old system was also based on Redhat and CentOS. They are both very
3126 nice distributions, but they are sometimes painfully slow when it
3127 comes to updating multimedia support and multimedia programs (even
3128 such as Gimp), leaving us with a bit "oldish" applications. Debian is
3131 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
3134 <p>Debian is a bit too quick when it comes to updating. As an example
3135 we use old HP terminals as thinclients, and two times already this
3136 year (
2012) the updates you get from the repositories has stopped
3137 sound from working with them. It's a kernel/ALSA issue. So you have
3138 to be more careful properly testing the updates before you run them in
3139 a production environment. This has never happened with CentOS.
</p>
3141 <p>I also would like to be able to set my own domain-settings at
3142 install time. In Skolelinux they are kind of hard coded into the
3143 distribution, when it comes to LDAP and at least samba integration.
3144 That is more a cosmetic/translation issue, and not a real problem.
3145 Running MS Windows applications within the Skolelinux environment needs
3146 to be better supported. That is, running them seamlessly via RDP, and
3147 support for single-sign on. That will make the transition to free
3148 software easier, because you can keep the applications you really
3149 need. No support will make it impossible if you work in a school where
3150 some applications can't be open source. As for us we really need to
3151 run Adobe InDesign in our journalist classes. We run a journalist
3152 education, and is one of the very few non university ones that is ok:d
3153 by Svenska journalistförbundet (Swedish journalist association). Our
3154 education gives the pupils the right of membership there, once they
3155 are done. This is important if you want to get a job.
</p>
3157 <p>Adobe InDesign is the program most commonly used in newspapers and
3158 magazines. We used Quark Express before, but they seem to loose there
3159 market to Adobe. The only "equivalent" to InDesign in the opensource
3160 world is Scribus, and its not advanced enough. At least not according
3161 to the teacher. I think it would be possible to use it, because they
3162 are not supposed to learn a program, they are supposed to learn how to
3163 edit and compile a newspaper. But politically at our school we are not
3164 there yet. And Scribus lacks a lot of things you find i InDesign.
</p>
3166 <p>We used even a windows program for sound editing when it comes to
3167 the radio-journalist part. The year to come we are going to try
3168 Audacity. That software has the same kind of limitations compared to
3169 Adobe Audition, but that teacher is a bit more open minded. We have
3170 tried Ardour also, but that instead is more like a music studio
3171 program, not intended for the kind of editing taking place in a radio
3172 studio. Its way to complex and the GUI is to scattered when you only
3173 want to cut, make pass-overs, add extra channels and normalise. Those
3174 things you can do in Audacity, but its not as easy as in Audition. You
3175 have to do more things manually with envelopes, and that is a bit old
3176 fashion and timewasting. Its also harder to cut and move sound from
3177 one channel to another, which is a thing that you do frequently
3178 because you often find yourself needing to rearrange parts of the
3181 <p>So, I am not sure we will succeed in replacing even Audition, but we
3182 will try. The problem is the students have certain expectations when
3183 they start an education towards a profession. So the programs has to
3184 look and feel professional. Good thing with radio, there are many
3185 programs out there, that radio studios use, so its not as standardised
3186 as Newspaper editing. That means, it does not really matter what
3187 program they learn, because once they start working they still have to
3188 learn the program the studio uses, so instead focus has to be to learn
3189 the editing part without to much focus on a specific software.
</p>
3191 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?
</strong></p>
3193 <p>Myself I'm running Linux Mint, or Ubuntu these days. I use almost
3194 only open source software, and preferably Linux based. When it comes
3195 to most used applications its OpenOffice, and Firefox (of course ;)
3198 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
3199 get schools to use free software?
</strong></p>
3201 <p>To get schools to use free software there has to be good open
3202 source software that are windows based, to ease the transition. But
3203 it's also very important that the multimedia support is working
3204 flawlessly. The problems with Youtube, Twitter, Facebook and whatever
3205 will create problems when it comes to both teachers and
3206 students. Economy are also important for schools, so using thin
3207 clients, as long as they have good multimedia support, is a very good
3208 idea. It's also important that the open source software works even for
3209 the administration. It's hard to convince the teachers to stick with
3210 open source, if the principal has to run Windows. It also creates a
3211 problem if some classes has to use Windows for there tasks, since that
3212 will create a difference in "status" between classes, so a good
3213 support for running windows applications via the thin client (Linux)
3214 desktop is essential. At least at our school, where we have mixed
3215 level of educations, from high-school to journalist-school.
</p>
3217 <p>Update
2012-
07-
09 08:
30: Paul Wise tipped me on IRC about three
3218 useful sources related to Free Software for radio stations: the LWN
3219 article
<a href=
"https://lwn.net/Articles/481607/">Radio station
3220 management with Airtime
</a>,
3221 <a href=
"http://www.sourcefabric.org/en/airtime/">Airtime
</a> which
3222 claim to be a Free open source radio automation software and
3223 <a href=
"http://www.rivendellaudio.org/">Rivendell
</a> which claim to
3224 be complete radio broadcast automation solution. All of them seem
3225 useful to the aspiring radio producer.
</p>
3231 Tags:
<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/intervju">intervju
</a>.
3236 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3240 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_do_schools_waste_money_on_IT_.html">Why do schools waste money on IT?
</a>
3246 <p>In the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project, we have realised that one
3247 of the major blockers for the project success is the purchasing skills
3248 in schools and municipalities. We provide what the happy users of
3249 Debian Edu / Skolelinux say they need and to a lower cost than the
3250 alternatives, and yet so few schools decide to use our solution. I
3251 was pleased to discover the same observation done by mySociety and Tom
3252 Steinberg in his blog post
3253 "
<a href=
"http://www.mysociety.org/2012/06/19/can-you-recognize-the-million-pound-chair/">Can
3254 you recognize the million pound chair?
</a>". Read it and weep for the
3255 spending of your tax money.</p>
3257 <p>Of course there are other factors involved as well, like our
3258 projects bad marketing skills and the Linux community fragmentation
3259 causing worry with the people on the outside, so we as a project need
3260 to keep working hard to gain users, but it is a up-hill battle when
3261 public decision makers are unable to understand computer system
3268 Tags: <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>.
3273 <div class="padding
"></div>
3277 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Timetabling_Software___nice_free_software.html
">Free Timetabling Software - nice free software</a>
3283 <p>Included in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/
">Debian Edu /
3284 Skolelinux</a> is a large collection of end user and school specific
3285 software. It is one of the packages not installed by default but
3286 provided in the Debian archive for schools to install if they want to,
3287 is a system to automatically plan the school time table using
3288 information about available teachers, classes and rooms, combined with
3289 the list of required courses and how many hours each topic should
3290 receive. The software is
3292 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/
">named FET</a>, and it provide a
3293 graphical user interface to input the required information, save the
3294 result in a fairly simple XML format, and generate time tables for
3295 both teachers and students. It is available both for
3296 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/download.html
">Linux, MacOSX and
3299 <p>This is <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/features.html
">the
3300 feature list</a>, liftet from the project web site:</p>
3304 <li>FET is free software, licensed under the GNU GPL v2 or later.
3305 You can freely use, copy, modify and redistribute it </li>
3307 <li>Localized to en_US (US English, default), ar (Arabic), ca
3308 (Catalan), da (Danish), de (German), el (Greek), es (Spanish), fa
3309 (Persian), fr (French), gl (Galician), he (Hebrew), hu
3310 (Hungarian), id (Indonesian), it (Italian), lt (Lithuanian), mk
3311 (Macedonian), ms (Malay), nl (Dutch), pl (Polish), pt_BR
3312 (Brazilian Portuguese), ro (Romanian), ru (Russian), si (Sinhala),
3313 sk (Slovak), sr (Serbian), tr (Turkish), uk (Ukrainian), uz
3314 (Uzbek) and vi (Vietnamese) (incompletely for some languages)
3317 <li>Fully automatic generation algorithm, allowing also
3318 semi-automatic or manual allocation</li>
3320 <li>Platform independent implementation, allowing running on
3321 GNU/Linux, Windows, Mac and any system that Qt supports </li>
3323 <li>Flexible modular XML format for the input file, allowing editing
3324 with an XML editor or by hand (besides FET interface)</li>
3326 <li>Import/export from CSV format</li>
3328 <li>The resulted timetables are exported into HTML, XML and CSV
3331 <li>Flexible students structure, organized into sets: years, groups
3332 and subgroups. FET allows overlapping years and groups and
3333 non-overlapping subgroups. You can even define individual students
3334 (as separate sets)</li>
3336 <li>Each constraint has a weight percentage, from 0.0% to 100.0%
3337 (but some special constraints are allowed to have only 100% weight
3340 <li>Limits for the algorithm (all these limits can be increased on
3341 demand, as a custom version, because this would require a bit more
3344 <li>Maximum total number of hours (periods) per day: 60</li>
3345 <li>Maximum number of working days per week: 35</li>
3346 <li>Maximum total number of teachers: 6000</li>
3347 <li>Maximum total number of sets of students: 30000</li>
3348 <li>Maximum total number of subjects: 6000</li>
3349 <li>Virtually unlimited number of activity tags</li>
3350 <li>Maximum number of activities: 30000</li>
3351 <li>Maximum number of rooms: 6000</li>
3352 <li>Maximum number of buildings: 6000</li>
3353 <li>Possibility of adding multiple teachers and
3354 students sets for each activity. (it is possible
3355 also to have no teachers or no students sets for an
3357 <li>Virtually unlimited number of time constraints</li>
3358 <li>Virtually unlimited number of space constraints</li>
3361 <li>A large and flexible palette of time constraints:
3363 <li>Break periods</li>
3366 <li>Not available periods</li>
3367 <li>Max/min days per week</li>
3368 <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
3369 <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
3370 <li>Min hours daily</li>
3371 <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
3373 <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
3376 <li>For students (sets):
3378 <li>Not available periods</li>
3379 <li>Begins early (specify max allowed beginnings at second hour)</li>
3380 <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
3381 <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
3382 <li>Min hours daily</li>
3383 <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
3385 <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
3388 <li>For an activity or a set of activities/subactivities:
3390 <li>A single preferred starting time</li>
3391 <li>A set of preferred starting times</li>
3392 <li>A set of preferred time slots</li>
3393 <li>Min/max days between them</li>
3394 <li>End(s) students day</li>
3395 <li>Same starting time/day/hour</li>
3396 <li>Occupy max time slots from selection (a complex and
3397 flexible constraint, useful in many situations)</li>
3398 <li>Consecutive, ordered, grouped (for 2 or 3 (sub)activities)</li>
3399 <li>Not overlapping</li>
3400 <li>Max simultaneous in selected time slots</li>
3401 <li>Min gaps between a set of (sub)activities</li>
3405 <li>A large and flexible palette of space constraints:
3407 <li>Room not available periods</li>
3410 <li>Home room(s)</li>
3411 <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
3412 <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
3416 <li>For students (sets):
3418 <li>Home room(s)</li>
3419 <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
3420 <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
3423 <li>Preferred room(s):
3425 <li>For a subject</li>
3426 <li>For an activity tag</li>
3427 <li>For a subject and an activity tag</li>
3428 <li>Individually for a (sub)activity</li>
3432 <li>For a set of activities:
3434 <li>Occupy a maximum number of different rooms</li>
3441 <p>I have not used it myself, as I am not involved in time table
3442 planning at a school, but it seem to work fine when I test it. If you
3443 need to set up your schools time table, and is tired of doing it
3444 manually, check it out.
3446 A quick summary on how to use it can be found in
3447 <a href="http://marvelsoft.co.in/wp/
2012/
03/generate-timetable-for-state-cbse-icse-igcse-schools-free/
">a
3448 blog post from MarvelSoft</a>. If you find FET useful, please provide
3449 a recipe for the Debian Edu project in the
3450 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu#Howtos
">Debian Edu HowTo
3457 Tags: <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>.
3462 <div class="padding
"></div>
3466 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Can_Zimbra_be_told_to_send_autoreplies_to_the_From__address_.html
">Can Zimbra be told to send autoreplies to the From: address?</a>
3472 <p>In the NUUG <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/
">FiksGataMi</a>
3473 project (Norwegian version of
3474 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/
">FixMyStreet</a> from
3475 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/
">mySociety</a>), we have discovered
3476 a problem with the municipalities using
3477 <a href="http://www.zimbra.com/
">Zimbra</a>. When FiksGataMi send a
3478 problem report to the government, the email From: address is set to
3479 the address of the person reporting the problem, while envelope sender
3480 is set to the FiksGataMi contact address. The intention is to make
3481 sure the municipality send any replies to the person reporting the
3482 problem, while any email delivery problems are sent to us in NUUG.
3483 This work well in most cases, but not for Karmøy municipality using
3484 Zimbra. Karmøy is using the vacation message function in Zimbra to
3485 send an automatic reply to report that the message has been received,
3486 and this message is sent to the envelope sender and not the address in
3487 the From: header.</p>
3489 <p>This causes the automatic message from Karmøy to go to NUUGs
3490 request-tracker instance instead of to the person reporting the
3491 problem. We can not really change the envelope sender address, as
3492 this would make it impossible for us to discover when there are
3493 problems with the MTAs receiving problem reports. We have been in
3494 contact with the people at Karmøy municipality, and they are willing
3495 to adjust Zimbra if something can be changed there to get a better
3498 <p>The default behaviour of Zimbra is as far as I can tell according
3499 to the specification in RFC 3834, which recommend that vacation
3500 messages are sent to the envelope sender and not to the From: address.
3501 But I wonder if it is possible to adjust or configure Zimbra to behave
3502 differently. Anyone know? Please let us know at
3503 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami
">fiksgatami
3504 (at) nuug.no</a>.</p>
3510 Tags: <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/nuug
">nuug</a>.
3515 <div class="padding
"></div>
3519 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Jos__Luis_Redrejo_Rodr_guez.html
">Debian Edu interview: José Luis Redrejo Rodríguez</a>
3525 <p>I've been too busy at home, but finally I found time to wrap up
3526 another interview with the people behind
3527 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/
">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>.
3528 This time we get to know José Luis Redrejo Rodríguez, one of our great
3529 helpers from Spain. His effort was the reason we added support for
3530 several desktop types (KDE, Gnome and most recently LXDE) in Debian
3531 Edu, and have all of these available in the recently published
3532 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/
2012/
20120311.html
">Debian Edu
3533 Squeeze</a> version.</p>
3535 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
3537 <p>I'm a father, teacher and engineer who is working for the Education
3538 ministry of the Region of Extremadura (Spain) in the implementation of
3541 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
3542 project?</strong></p>
3544 <p>At 2006, I verified that both, we in Extremadura and Skolelinux
3545 project, had been working in parallel for some years, doing very
3546 similar things, using very similar tools and with similar targets, so
3547 I decided it was time to join forces as much as possible.</p>
3549 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
3552 <p>A community of highly skilled experts working together, with a
3553 really open schema of collaboration and work. I really love the
3554 concepts of Do-ocracy and Merit-ocracy and the way these concepts are
3555 been used everyday inside Debian Edu.</p>
3557 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
3560 <p>Sometimes the differences in the implementations, laws or
3561 economical and technical resources in the different countries don't
3562 allow us to agree in the same solution for all of us, and several
3563 approaches are needed, what is a waste of effort. Also, there is a
3564 lack of more man power to be able to follow the fast evolution of the
3565 technologies in school.</p>
3567 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
3569 <p>Debian, of course, and due to my kind of job I am most of my time
3570 between Iceweasel, <a href="http://www.geany.org/
">Geany</a> and
3571 <a href="http://www.ohloh.net/p/gnome-terminator
">Terminator</a>.</p>
3573 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
3574 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
3576 <p>I think there is not a single strategy because there are very
3577 different scenarios: schools with mixed proprietary and free
3578 environments, schools using only workstations, other schools using
3579 laptops, netbooks, tablets, interactive white-boards, etc.</p>
3581 <p>Also the range of ages of the students is very broad and you can
3582 not use the same solutions for primary schools and secondary or even
3583 universities. So different strategies are needed.</p>
3585 <p>But, looking at these differences, and looking back to the things
3586 we've done and implemented, and the places were we have spent most of
3587 our forces, I think we should focus as much as possible in free
3588 multi-platform environments, using only standards tools, and moving
3589 more and more to Internet or network solutions that could be deployed
3590 using wireless. I think we'll see more and more personal devices in
3591 the schools, devices the students and teachers will take home with
3592 them, so the solutions must be able to be taken at home and continue
3599 Tags: <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/intervju
">intervju</a>.
3604 <div class="padding
"></div>
3608 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html
">Song book for Computer Scientists</a>
3614 <p>Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
3615 <a href="http://www.uit.no/
">University of Tromsø</a>, I started
3616 collecting computer related songs for use at parties. The original
3617 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
3618 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
3619 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format. I have
3620 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
3621 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
3622 help me extend and update the book. If anyone is volunteering to help
3623 me with this, send me an email. Also let me know if there are songs
3624 missing in my book.</p>
3626 <p>I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
3627 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
3628 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
3629 Especially now that <a href="http://debconf12.debconf.org/
">Debconf
3630 12</a> is about to start (and I am not going). Want to sing? Check
3631 out <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/
">Petter's
3632 Computer Science Songbook</a>.
3638 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>.
3643 <div class="padding
"></div>
3647 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu___some_ideas_for_the_future_versions.html
">Debian Edu - some ideas for the future versions</a>
3653 <p>During my work on
3654 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/
2012/
20120311.nb.html
">Debian Edu
3655 based on Squeeze</a>, I came across some issues that should be
3656 addressed in the Wheezy release. I finally found time to wrap up my
3657 notes and provide quick summary of what I found, with a bit
3662 <li>We need to rewrite our package installation framework, as tasksel
3663 changed from using tasksel tasks to using meta packages (aka packages
3664 with dependencies like our education-* packages), and our installation
3665 system depend on tasksel tasks in
3666 /usr/share/tasksel/debian-edu-tasks.desc for package
3669 <li>Enable Kerberos login for more services. Now with the Kerberos
3670 foundation in place, we should use it to get single sign on with more
3671 services, and avoiding unneeded password / login questions. We should
3672 at least try to enable it for these services:
3675 <li>CUPS for admins to add/configure printers and users when using
3677 <li>Nagios for admins checking the system status.</li>
3678 <li>GOsa for admins updating LDAP and users changing their passwords.</li>
3679 <li>LDAP for admins updating LDAP.</li>
3680 <li>Squid for users when exam mode / filtering is active.</li>
3681 <li>ssh for admins and users to save a password prompt.</li>
3685 <li>When we move GOsa to use Kerberos instead of LDAP bind to
3686 authenticate users, we should try to block or at least limit access to
3687 use LDAP bind for authentication, to ensure Kerberos is used when it
3688 is intended, and nothing fall back to using the less safe LDAP bind</li>
3690 <li>Merge debian-edu-config and debian-edu-install. The split made
3691 sense when d-e-install did a lot more, but these days it is just an
3692 inconvenience when we update the debconf preseeding values.</li>
3694 <li>Fix partman-auto to allow us to abort the installation before
3695 touching the disk if the disk is too small. This is
3696 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/
653305">BTS report #653305</a> and the
3697 d-i developers are fine with the patch and someone just need to apply
3698 it and upload. After this is done we need to adjust
3699 debian-edu-install to use this new hook.</li>
3701 <li>Adjust to new LTSP framework (boot time config instead of install
3702 time config). LTSP changed its design, and our hooks to install
3703 packages and update the configuration is most likely not going to work
3706 <li>Consider switching to NBD instead of NFS for LTSP root, to allow
3707 the Kernel to cache files in its normal file cache, possibly speeding
3708 up KDE login on slow networks.</li>
3710 <li>Make it possible to create expired user passwords that need to
3711 change on first login. This is useful when handing out password on
3712 paper, to make sure only the user know the password. This require
3713 fixes to the PAM handling of kdm and gdm.</li>
3715 <li>Make GUI for adding new machines automatically from sitesummary.
3716 The current command line script is not very friendly to people most
3717 familiar with GUIs. This should probably be integrated into GOsa to
3718 have it available where the admin will be looking for it..</li>
3720 <li>We should find way for Nagios to check that the DHCP service
3721 actually is working (as in handling out IP addresses). None of the
3722 Nagios checks I have found so far have been working for me.</li>
3724 <li>We should switch from libpam-nss-ldapd to sssd for all profiles
3725 using LDAP, and not only on for roaming workstations, to have less
3726 packages to configure and consistent setup across all profiles.</li>
3728 <li>We should configure Kerberos to update LDAP and Samba password
3729 when changing password using the Kerberos protocol. The hook was
3730 requested in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/
588968">BTS report
3731 #588968</a> and is now available in Wheezy. We might need to write a
3732 MIT Kerberos plugin in C to get this.</li>
3734 <li>We should clean up the set of applications installed by default.
3737 <li>reduce the number of chemistry visualisers</li>
3738 <li>consider dropping xpaint</li>
3739 <li>and probably more?</li>
3742 <li>Some hardware need external firmware to work properly. This is
3743 mostly the case for WiFi network cards, but there are some other
3744 examples too. For popular laptops to work out of the box, such
3745 firmware need to be installed from non-free, and we should provide
3746 some GUI to do this. Ubuntu already have this implemented, and we
3747 could consider using their packages. At the moment we have some
3748 command line script to do this (one for the running system, another
3749 for the LTSP chroot).</li>
3752 <li>In Squeeze, we provide KDE, Gnome and LXDE as desktop options. We
3753 should extend the list to Xfce and Sugar, and preferably find a way to
3754 install several and allow the admin or the user to select which one to
3757 <li>The golearn tool from the goplay package make it easy to check out
3758 interesting educational packages. We should work on the package
3759 tagging in Debian to ensure it represent all the useful educational
3760 packages, and extend the tool to allow it to use packagekit to install
3761 new applications with a simple mouse click.</li>
3763 <li>The Squeeze version got half a exam solution already in place,
3764 with the introduction of iptable based network blocking, but for it to
3765 be a complete exam solution the Squid proxy need to enable
3766 filtering/blocking as well when the exam mode is enabled. We should
3767 implement a way to easily enable this for the schools that want it,
3768 instead of the "it is documented" method of today.
</li>
3770 <li>A feature used in several schools is the ability for a teacher to
3771 "take over" the desktop of individual or all computers in the room.
3772 There are at least three implementations,
3773 <a href=
"italc.sourceforge.net/">italc
</a>,
3774 <a href=
"http://www.itais.net/help/en/">controlaula
</a> og
3775 <a href=
"http://www.epoptes.org/">epoptes
</a> and we should pick one of
3776 them and make it trivial to set it up in a school. The challenges is
3777 how to distribute crypto keys and how to group computers in one room
3778 and how to set up which machine/user can control the machines in a
3781 <li>Tablets and surf boards are getting more and more popular, and we
3782 should look into providing a good solution for integrating these into
3783 the Debian Edu network. Not quite sure how. Perhaps we should
3784 provide a installation profile with better touch screen support for
3785 them, or add some sync services to allow them to exchange
3786 configuration and data with the central server. This should be
3791 <p>I guess we will discover more as we continue to work on the Wheezy
3798 Tags:
<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>.
3803 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3807 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/TV_with_face_recognition__for_improved_viewer_experience.html">TV with face recognition, for improved viewer experience
</a>
3813 <p>Slashdot got a story about Intel planning a
3814 <a href=
"http://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/12/06/09/0012247/intel-to-launch-tv-service-with-facial-recognition-by-end-of-the-year">TV
3815 with face recognition
</a> to recognise the viewer, and it occurred to
3816 me that it would be more interesting to turn it around, and do face
3817 recognition on the TV image itself. It could let the viewer know who
3818 is present on the screen, and perhaps look up their credibility,
3819 company affiliation, previous appearances etc for the viewer to better
3820 evaluate what is being said and done. That would be a feature I would
3821 be willing to pay for.
</p>
3823 <p>I would not be willing to pay for a TV that point a camera on my
3824 household, like the big brother feature apparently proposed by Intel.
3825 It is the telescreen idea fetched straight out of the book
3826 <a href=
"http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021.txt">1984 by George
3833 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance
</a>.
3838 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3842 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Web_service_to_look_up_HP_and_Dell_computer_hardware_support_status.html">Web service to look up HP and Dell computer hardware support status
</a>
3849 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/SOAP_based_webservice_from_Dell_to_check_server_support_status.html">I
3850 reported how to get
</a> the support status out of Dell using an
3851 unofficial and undocumented SOAP API, which I since have found out was
3852 <a href=
"http://lists.us.dell.com/pipermail/linux-poweredge/2012-February/045959.html">discovered
3853 by Daniel De Marco in february
</a>. Combined with my web scraping
3854 code for HP, Dell and IBM
3855 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">from
3856 2009</a>, I got inspired and wrote
3857 <a href=
"https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/">a
3858 web service
</a> based on Scraperwiki to make it easy to look up the
3859 support status and get a machine readable result back.
</p>
3861 <p>This is what it look like at the moment when asking for the JSON
3865 % GET
<a href=
"https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/?format=json&vendor=Dell&servicetag=2v1xwn1">https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/?format=json&vendor=Dell&servicetag=
2v1xwn1
</a>
3866 supportstatus({"servicetag": "
2v1xwn1", "warrantyend": "
2013-
11-
24", "shipped": "
2010-
11-
24", "scrapestamputc": "
2012-
06-
06T20:
26:
56.965847", "scrapedurl": "http://
143.166.84.118/services/assetservice.asmx?WSDL", "vendor": "Dell", "productid": ""})
3870 <p>It currently support Dell and HP, and I am hoping for help to add
3871 support for other vendors. The python source is available on
3872 Scraperwiki and I welcome help with adding more features.
</p>
3878 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
3883 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3887 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html">Debian Edu interview: Mike Gabriel
</a>
3893 <p>Back in
2010, Mike Gabriel showed up on the
3894 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux
</a>
3895 mailing list. He quickly proved to be a valuable developer, and
3896 thanks to his tireless effort we now have Kerberos integrated into the
3897 <a href=
"http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
3898 Squeeze
</a> version.
</p>
3900 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
</strong></p>
3902 <p>My name is Mike Gabriel, I am
38 years old and live near Kiel,
3903 Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. I live together with a wonderful partner
3904 (Angela Fuß) and two own children and two bonus children (contributed
3907 <p>During the day I am part-time employed as a system administrator
3908 and part-time working as an IT consultant. The consultancy work
3909 touches free software topics wherever and whenever possible. During
3910 the nights I am a free software developer. In the gaps I also train in
3911 becoming an osteopath.
</p>
3913 <p>Starting in
2010 we (Andreas Buchholz, Angela Fuß, Mike Gabriel)
3914 have set up a free software project in the area of Kiel that aims at
3915 introducing free software into schools. The project's name is
3916 "IT-Zukunft Schule" (IT future for schools). The project links IT
3917 skills with communication skills.
</p>
3919 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
3920 project?
</strong></p>
3922 <p>While preparing our own customised Linux distribution for
3923 "IT-Zukunft Schule" we were repeatedly asked if we really wanted to
3924 reinvent the wheel. What schools really need is already available,
3925 people said. From this impulse we started evaluating other Linux
3926 distributions that target being used for school networks.
</p>
3928 <p>At the end we short-listed two approaches and compared them: a
3929 commercial Linux distribution developed by a company in Bremen,
3930 Germany, and Skolelinux / Debian Edu. Between
12/
2010 and
03/
2011 we
3931 went to several events and met people being responsible for marketing
3932 and development of either of the distributions. Skolelinux / Debian
3933 Edu was by far much more convincing compared to the other product that
3934 got short-listed beforehand--across the full spectrum. What was most
3935 attractive for me personally: the perspective of collaboration within
3936 the developmental branch of the Debian Edu project itself.
</p>
3938 <p>In parallel with this, we talked to many local and not-so-local
3939 people. People teaching at schools, headmasters, politicians, data
3940 protection experts, other IT professionals.
</p>
3942 <p>We came to two conclusions:
</p>
3944 <p>First, a technical conclusion: What schools need is available in
3945 bits and pieces here and there, and none of the solutions really fit
3946 by
100%. Any school we have seen has a very individual IT setup
3947 whereas most of each school's requirements could mapped by a standard
3948 IT solution. The requirement to this IT solution is flexibility and
3949 customisability, so that individual adaptations here and there are
3950 possible. In terms of re-distributing and rolling out such a
3951 standardised IT system for schools (a system that is still to some
3952 degree customisable) there is still a lot of work to do here
3953 locally. Debian Edu / Skolelinux has been our choice as the starting
3956 <p>Second, a holistic conclusion: What schools need does not exist at
3957 all (or we missed it so far). There are several technical solutions
3958 for handling IT at schools that tend to make a good impression. What
3959 has been missing completely here in Germany, though, is the enrolment
3960 of people into using IT and teaching with IT. "IT-Zukunft Schule"
3961 tries to provide an approach for this.
</p>
3963 <p>Only some schools have some sort of a media concept which explains,
3964 defines and gives guidance on how to use IT in class. Most schools in
3965 Northern Germany do not have an IT service provider, the school's IT
3966 equipment is managed by one or (if the school is lucky) two (admin)
3967 teachers, most of the workload these admin teachers get done in there
3970 <p>We were surprised that only a very few admin teachers were
3971 networked with colleagues from other schools. Basically, every school
3972 here around has its individual approach of providing IT equipment to
3973 teachers and students and the exchange of ideas has been quasi
3974 non-existent until
2010/
2011.
</p>
3976 <p>Quite some (non-admin) teachers try to avoid using IT technology in
3977 class as a learning medium completely. Several reasons for this
3978 avoidance do exist.
</p>
3980 <p>We discovered that no-one has ever taken a closer look at this
3981 social part of IT management in schools, so far. On our quest journey
3982 for a technical IT solution for schools, we discussed this issue with
3983 several teachers, headmasters, politicians, other IT professionals and
3984 they all confirmed: a holistic approach of considering IT management
3985 at schools, an approach that includes the people in place, will be new
3986 and probably a gain for all.
</p>
3988 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
3991 <p>There is a list of advantages: international context, openness to
3992 any kind of contributions, do-ocracy policy, the closeness to Debian,
3993 the different installation scenarios possible (from stand-alone
3994 workstation to complex multi-server sites), the transparency within
3995 project communication, honest communication within the group of
3996 developers, etc.
</p>
3998 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4001 <p>Every coin has two sides:
</p>
4003 <p>Technically:
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/311188">BTS issue
4004 #
311188</a>, tricky upgradability of a Debian Edu main server, network
4005 client installations on top of a plain vanilla Debian installation
4006 should become possible sometime in the near future, one could think
4007 about splitting the very complex package debian-edu-config into
4008 several portions (to make it easier for new developers to
4011 <p>Another issue I see is that we (as Debian Edu developers) should
4012 find out more about the network of people who do the marketing for
4013 Debian Edu / Skolelinux. There is a very active group in Germany
4014 promoting Skolelinux on the bigger Linux Days within Germany. Are
4015 there other groups like that in other countries? How can we bring
4016 these marketing people together (marketing group A with group B and
4017 all of them with the group of Debian Edu developers)? During the last
4018 meeting of the German Skolelinux group, I got the impression of people
4019 there being rather disconnected from the development department of
4020 Debian Edu / Skolelinux.
</p>
4022 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?
</strong></p>
4024 <p>For my daily business, I do not use commercial software at all.
</p>
4026 <p>For normal stuff I use Iceweasel/Firefox, Libreoffice.org. For
4027 serious text writing I prefer LaTeX. I use gimp, inkscape, scribus for
4028 more artistic tasks. I run virtual machines in KVM and Virtualbox.
</p>
4030 <p>I am one of the upstream developers of X2Go. In
2010 I started the
4031 development of a Python based X2Go Client, called PyHoca-GUI.
4032 PyHoca-GUI has brought forth a Python X2Go Client API that currently
4033 is being integrated in Ubuntu's software center.
</p>
4035 <p>For communications I have my own Kolab server running using Horde
4036 as web-based groupware client. For IRC I love to use irssi, for Jabber
4037 I have several clients that I use, mostly pidgin, though. I am also
4038 the Debian maintainer of Coccinella, a Jabber-based interactive
4041 <p>My favourite terminal emulator is KDE's Yakuake.
</p>
4043 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
4044 get schools to use free software?
</strong></p>
4046 <p>Communicate, communicate, communicate. Enrol people, enrol people,
4053 Tags:
<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/intervju">intervju
</a>.
4058 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4062 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/SOAP_based_webservice_from_Dell_to_check_server_support_status.html">SOAP based webservice from Dell to check server support status
</a>
4068 <p>A few years ago I wrote
4069 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">how
4070 to extract support status
</a> for your Dell and HP servers. Recently
4071 I have learned from colleges here at the
4072 <a href=
"http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo
</a> that Dell have
4073 made this even easier, by providing a SOAP based web service. Given
4074 the service tag, one can now query the Dell servers and get machine
4075 readable information about the support status. This perl code
4076 demonstrate how to do it:
</p>
4083 my $GUID = '
11111111-
1111-
1111-
1111-
111111111111';
4085 my $servicetag = $ARGV[
0] or die "Please supply a servicetag. $!\n";
4086 my ($deal, $latest, @dates);
4088 -
> uri('http://support.dell.com/WebServices/')
4089 -
> on_action( sub { join '', @_ } )
4090 -
> proxy('http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx')
4092 my $a = $s-
>GetAssetInformation(
4093 SOAP::Data-
>name('guid')-
>value($GUID)-
>type(''),
4094 SOAP::Data-
>name('applicationName')-
>value($App)-
>type(''),
4095 SOAP::Data-
>name('serviceTags')-
>value($servicetag)-
>type(''),
4097 print Dumper($a -
> result) ;
4100 <p>The output can look like this:
</p>
4106 'EntitlementData' =
> [
4108 'EntitlementType' =
> 'Expired',
4109 'EndDate' =
> '
2009-
07-
29T00:
00:
00',
4111 'StartDate' =
> '
2006-
07-
29T00:
00:
00',
4115 'EntitlementType' =
> 'Expired',
4116 'EndDate' =
> '
2009-
07-
29T00:
00:
00',
4118 'StartDate' =
> '
2006-
07-
29T00:
00:
00',
4122 'EntitlementType' =
> 'Expired',
4123 'EndDate' =
> '
2007-
07-
29T00:
00:
00',
4125 'StartDate' =
> '
2006-
07-
29T00:
00:
00',
4130 'AssetHeaderData' =
> {
4131 'SystemModel' =
> 'GX620',
4132 'ServiceTag' =
> '
8DSGD2J',
4133 'SystemShipDate' =
> '
2006-
07-
29T19:
00:
00-
05:
00',
4135 'Region' =
> 'Europe',
4136 'SystemID' =
> 'PLX_GX620',
4137 'SystemType' =
> 'OptiPlex'
4143 <p>I have not been able to find any documentation from Dell about this
4145 <a href=
"http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx?op=GetAssetInformation">inline
4146 documentation
</a>, and according to
4147 <a href=
"http://iboyd.net/index.php/2012/02/14/updated-dell-warranty-information-script/">one
4148 comment
</a> it can have stability issues, but it is a lot better than
4149 scraping HTML pages. :)
</p>
4151 <p>Wonder if HP and other server vendors have a similar service. If
4152 you know of one, drop me an email. :)
</p>
4158 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
4163 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4167 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_monitor_calibration_using_ColorHug.html">First monitor calibration using ColorHug
</a>
4173 <p>A few days ago my color calibration gadget
4174 <a href=
"http://www.hughski.com/index.html">ColorHug
</a> arrived in the
4175 mail, and I've had a few days to test it. As all my machines are
4176 running Debian Squeeze, where
4177 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html">the
4178 calibration software
</a> is missing (it is present in Wheezy and Sid),
4179 I ran the calibration using the Fedora based live CD. This worked
4180 just fine. So far I have only done the quick calibration. It was
4181 slow enough for me, so I will leave the more extensive calibration for
4184 <p>After calibration, I get a
4185 <a href=
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICC_profile">ICC color
4186 profile
</a> file that can be passed to programs understanding such
4187 tools. KDE do not seem to understand it out of the box, so I searched
4188 for command line tools to use to load the color profile into X.
4189 xcalib was the first one I found, and it seem to work fine for single
4190 monitor setups. But for my video player, a laptop with a flat screen
4191 attached, it was unable to load the color profile for the correct
4192 monitor. After searching a bit, I
4193 <a href=
"http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1347896">discovered
</a>
4194 that the dispwin tool from the argyll package would do what I wanted,
4198 dispwin -d
1 profile.icc
4201 <p>later I had the color profile loaded for the correct monitor. The
4202 result was a bit more pink than I expected. I guess I picked the
4203 wrong monitor type for the "led" monitor I got, but the result is good
4210 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
4215 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4219 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Ralf_Gesellensetter.html">Debian Edu interview: Ralf Gesellensetter
</a>
4225 <p>In
2003, a German teacher showed up on the
4226 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux
</a>
4227 mailing list with interesting problems and reports proving he setting
4228 up Linux for a (for us at the time) lot of pupils. His name was Ralf
4229 Gesellensetter, and he has been an important tester and contributor
4230 since then, helping to make sure the
4231 <a href=
"http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
4232 Squeeze
</a> release became as good as it is..
</p>
4234 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
</strong></p>
4236 <p>I am a teacher from Germany, and my subjects are Geography,
4237 Mathematics, and Computer Science ("Informatik"). During the past
12
4238 years (since
2000), I have been working for a comprehensive (and soon,
4239 also inclusive) school leading to all kind of general levels, such as
4240 O- or A-level ("Abitur"). For quite as long, I've been taking care of
4241 our computer network.
</p>
4243 <p>Now, in my early
40s, I enjoy the privilege of spending a lot of my
4244 spare time together with my wife, our son (
3 years) and our daughter
4247 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
4248 project?
</strong></p>
4250 <p>We had tried different Linux based school servers, when members of
4251 my local Linux User Group (LUG OWL) detected Skolelinux. I remember
4252 very well, being part of a party celebrating the Linux New Media Award
4253 ("Best Newcomer Distribution", also nominated: Ubuntu) that was given
4254 to Skolelinux at Linux World Exposition in Frankfurt,
2005 (IIRC). Few
4255 months later, I had the chance to join a developer meeting in Ulsrud
4256 (Oslo) and to hand out the award to Knut Yrvin and others. For more
4257 than
7 years, Skolelinux is part of our schools infrastructure, namely
4258 our main server (tjener), one LTSP (today without thin clients), and
4259 approximately
50 work stations. Most of these have the option to boot a
4260 locally installed Skolelinux image. As a consequence, I joined quite
4261 a few events dealing with free software or Linux, and met many Debian
4262 (Edu) developers. All of them seemed quite nice and competent to me,
4263 one more reason to stick to Skolelinux.
</p>
4265 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4268 <p>Debian driven, you are given all the advantages of a community
4269 project including well maintained updates. Once, you are familiar with
4270 the network layout, you can easily roll out an entire educational
4271 computer infrastructure, from just one installation media. As only
4272 free software (FOSS) is used, that supports even elderly hardware,
4273 up-sizing your IT equipment is only limited by space (i.e. available
4274 labs). Especially if you run a LTSP thin client server, your
4275 administration costs tend towards zero.
</p>
4277 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4280 <p>While Debian's stability has loads of advantages for servers, this
4281 might be different in some cases for clients: Schools with unlimited
4282 budget might buy new hardware with components that are not yet
4283 supported by Debian stable, or wish to use more recent versions of
4284 office packages or desktop environments. These schools have the
4285 option to run Debian testing or other distributions - if they have the
4286 capacity to do so. Another issue is that Debian release cycles
4287 include a wide range of changes; therefor a high percentage of human
4288 power seems to be absorbed by just keeping the features of Skolelinux
4289 within the new setting of the version to come. During this process,
4290 the cogs of Debian Edu are getting more and more professional,
4291 i.e. harder to understand for novices.
</p>
4293 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?
</strong></p>
4295 <p>LibreOffice, Wikipedia, Openstreetmap, Iceweasel (Mozilla Firefox),
4296 KMail, Gimp, Inkscape - and of course the Linux Kernel (not only on
4297 PC, Laptop, Mobile, but also our SAT receiver)
</p>
4299 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
4300 get schools to use free software?
</strong></p>
4304 <li>Support computer science as regular subject in schools to make
4305 people really "own" their hardware, to make them understand the
4306 difference between proprietary software products, and free software
4309 <li>Make budget baskets corresponding: In Germany's public schools
4310 there are more or less fixed budgets for IT equipment (including
4311 licenses), so schools won't benefit from any savings here. This
4312 privilege is left to private schools which have consequently a large
4313 share among German Skolelinux schools.
</li>
4315 <li>Get free software in the seminars where would-be teachers are
4316 trained. In many cases, teachers' software customs are respected by
4317 decision makers rather than the expertise of any IT experts.
</li>
4319 <li>Don't limit ourself to free software run natively. Everybody uses
4320 free software or free licenses (for instance Wikipedia), and this
4321 general concept should get expanded to free educational content to be
4322 shared world wide (school books e.g.).
</li>
4324 <li>Make clear where ever you can that the market share of free (libre)
4325 office suites is much above
20 p.c. today, and that you pupils don't
4326 need to know the "ribbon menu" in order to get employed.
</li>
4328 <li>Talk about the difference between freeware and free software.
</li>
4330 <li>Spread free software, or even collections of portable free apps
4331 for USB pen drives. Endorse students to get a legal copy of
4332 Libreoffice rather than accepting them to use illegal serials. And
4333 keep sending documents in ODF formats.
</li>
4341 Tags:
<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/intervju">intervju
</a>.
4346 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4350 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_cost_of_ODF_and_OOXML.html">The cost of ODF and OOXML
</a>
4356 <p>I just come across a blog post from Glyn Moody reporting the
4357 claimed cost from Microsoft on requiring ODF to be used by the UK
4358 government. I just sent him an email to let him know that his
4359 assumption are most likely wrong. Sharing it here in case some of my
4360 blog readers have seem the same numbers float around in the UK.
</p>
4362 <p><blockquote> <p>Hi. I just noted your
4363 <a href=
"http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/does-microsoft-office-lock-in-cost-the-uk-government-500-million/index.htm">http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/
2012/
04/does-microsoft-office-lock-in-cost-the-uk-government-
500-million/index.htm
</a>
4366 <p><blockquote>"They're all in Danish, not unreasonably, but even
4367 with the help of Google Translate I can't find any figures about the
4368 savings of "moving to a flexible two standard
" as claimed by the
4369 Microsoft email. But I assume it is backed up somewhere, so let's take
4370 it, and the £500 million figure for the UK, on trust."
4373 <p>I can tell you that the Danish reports are inflated. I believe it is
4374 the same reports that were used in the Norwegian debate around
2007,
4375 and Gisle Hannemyr (a well known IT commentator in Norway) had a look
4376 at the content. In short, the reason it is claimed that using ODF
4377 will be so costly, is based on the assumption that this mean every
4378 existing document need to be converted from one of the MS Office
4379 formats to ODF, transferred to the receiver, and converted back from
4380 ODF to one of the MS Office formats, and that the conversion will cost
4381 10 minutes of work time for both the sender and the receiver. In
4382 reality the sender would have a tool capable of saving to ODF, and the
4383 receiver would have a tool capable of reading it, and the time spent
4384 would at most be a few seconds for saving and loading, not
20 minutes
4385 of wasted effort.
</p>
4387 <p>Microsoft claimed all these costs were saved by allowing people to
4388 transfer the original files from MS Office instead of spending
10
4389 minutes converting to ODF. :)
</p>
4392 <a href=
"http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php">http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php
</a>
4394 <a href=
"http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php">http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php
</a>
4395 for background information. Norwegian only, sorry. :)
</p>
4402 Tags:
<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>.
4407 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4411 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ColorHug___USB_and_free_software_based_screen_color_calibration.html">ColorHug - USB and free software based screen color calibration
</a>
4418 <a href=
"http://blog.cihar.com/archives/2012/01/17/colorhug-has-arrived/">discovered
4419 the ColorHug
</a>, a USB dongle from
4420 <a href=
"http://www.hughski.com/index.html">Hughski
</a> to calibrate
4421 the color on a computer screen. The software required is
4422 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html">included
4423 in Debian
</a>, and I decided back then to preorder from the next
4424 batch. Yesterday I finally heard back from them, and got the
4425 opportunity to order. Today I ordered mine, and eagerly await the
4426 delivery. I hope it arrive next week, as I got a confirmation that it
4427 should go in the mail on monday. :)
</p>
4429 <p>If you want to ensure the colors on the screen match the intended
4430 colors, I suggest you check out this cheap tool with free software
4437 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
4442 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4446 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__J_rgen_Leibner.html">Debian Edu interview: Jürgen Leibner
</a>
4452 <p>It has been a few busy weeks for me, but I am finally back to
4453 publish another interview with the people behind
4454 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux
</a>.
4455 This time it is one of our German developers, who have helped out over the
4456 years to make sure both a lot of major but also a lot of the minor
4457 details get right before release.
4459 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
</strong></p>
4461 <p>My name is Jürgen Leibner, I'm
49 years old and living in
4462 Bielefeld, a town in northern Germany. I worked nearly
20 years as
4463 certified engineer in the department for plant design and layout of an
4464 international company for machinery and equipment. Since
2011 I'm a
4465 certified technical writer (tekom e.V.) and doing technical
4466 documentations for a steam turbine manufacturer. From April this year
4467 I will manage the department of technical documentation at a
4468 manufacturer of automation and assembly line engineering.
</p>
4470 <p>My first contact with linux was around
1993. Since that time I used
4471 it at work and at home repeatedly but not exclusively as I do now at
4472 home since
2006.
</p>
4474 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
4475 project?
</strong></p>
4477 <p>Once a day in the early year of
2001 when I wanted to fetch my
4478 daughter from primary school, there was a teacher sitting in the
4479 middle of
20 old computers trying to boot them and he failed. I helped
4480 him to get them booting. That was seen by the school director and she
4481 asked me if I would like to manage that the school gets all that old
4482 computers in use. I answered: "Yes".
</p>
4484 <p>Some weeks later every of the
10 classrooms had one computer
4485 running Windows98. I began to collect old computers and equipment as
4486 gifts and installed the first computer room with a peer-to-peer
4487 network. I did my work at school without being payed in my spare time
4488 and with a lot of fun. About one year later the school was connected
4489 to Internet and a local area network was installed in the school
4490 building. That was the time to have a server and I knew it must be a
4491 Linux server to be able to fulfil all the wishes of the teachers and
4492 being able to do this in a transparent and economic way, without extra
4493 costs for things like licence and software. So I searched for a
4494 school server system running under Linux and I found a couple of
4495 people nearby who founded 'skolelinux.de'. It was the Skolelinux
4496 prerelease
32 I first tried out for being used at the school. I
4497 managed the IT of that school until the municipal authority took over
4498 the IT management and centralised the services for all schools in
4499 Bielefeld in December of
2006.
</p>
4501 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4504 <p>When I'm looking back to the beginning, there were other advantages
4505 for me as today.
</p>
4507 <p>In the past there were advantages like:
</p>
4511 <li>I don't need to buy it so it generates no costs to the school as
4512 they had little money to spent for computers and software.
</li>
4514 <li>It has a licence which grands all rights to use it without
4517 <li>It was more able to fit all requirements of a server system for
4518 schools than a Microsoft server system, even if there are only Windows
4519 clients because of it's preconfigured overall concept of being a
4520 infrastructure solution and community for schools, not only a
4523 <li>I was able to configure the server to the needs of the
4528 <p>Today some of the advantages has been lost, changed or new ones
4529 came up in this way:
</p>
4533 <li>Most schools here do have money to buy hardware and software
4536 <li>They are today mostly managed from central IT departments which
4537 have own concepts which often do not fit to Debian Edu concepts
4538 because they are to close to Microsoft ideology.
</li>
4540 <li>With the Squeeze version of Debian Edu which now uses GOsa² for
4541 management I feel more able to manage the daily tasks than with the
4542 interfaces used in the past.
</li>
4544 <li>It is more modular than in the past and fits even better to the
4545 different needs.
</li>
4547 <li>The documentation is usable and gets better every day.
</li>
4549 <li>More people than ever before are using Debian Edu all over the
4550 world and so the community, which is an very important part I think,
4551 is sharing knowledge and minds.
</li>
4553 <li>Most, maybe all, of the technical requirements for schools are
4554 solved today by Debian Edu.
</li>
4558 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4563 <li>There are too few IT companies able to integrate Debian Edu into
4564 their product portfolio for serving schools with concepts or even
4565 whole municipality areas.
</li>
4567 <li>Debian Edu has beside other free and open software projects not
4568 enough lobbyists which promote free and open software to
4571 <li>Technically there are no disadvantages I'm aware of.
</li>
4575 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?
</strong></p>
4577 <p>I use Debian stable on my home server and on my little desktop
4578 computer. On my laptop I use Debian testing/sid. The applications I
4579 use on my laptop and my desktop are Open/Libre-office, Iceweasel,
4580 KMail, DigiKam, Amarok, Dolphin, okular and all the other programs I
4581 need from the KDE environment. On console I use newsbeuter, mutt,
4582 screen, irssi and all the other famous and useful tools.
</p>
4584 <p>My home server provides mail services with exim, dovecot, roundcube
4585 and mutt over ssh on the console, file services with samba, NFS,
4586 rsync, web services with apache, moinmoin-wiki, multimedia services
4587 with gallery2 and mediatomb and database services with MySQL for me
4588 and the whole family. I probably forgot something.
</p>
4590 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
4591 get schools to use free software?
</strong></p>
4593 <p>I believe, we should provide concepts for IT companies to integrate
4594 Debian Edu into their product portfolio with use cases for different
4595 countries and areas all over the world.
</p>
4601 Tags:
<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/intervju">intervju
</a>.
4606 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4610 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Cutting_it_short___and_picking_the_right_tool_for_the_job.html">Cutting it short - and picking the right tool for the job
</a>
4616 <p><!-- IMG_5869.JPG -->
4617 <img src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/panasonic-er-1611.jpeg"></p>
4619 <p>I normally cut my hair short, and my tool of choice has been a
4620 common hair/beard cutter, bought in a electrical shop here in Norway.
4621 But the last ones have not really been up to the task. My last
4622 cutter, some model from Braun, could only cut a few of my hairs at the
4623 time, and cutting my head took forever. And the one before that did
4624 not work very well either. We have looked for something better for a
4625 while, but it was not until I ended up visiting a hairdresser that we
4626 discovered that there are indeed better tools available. But these
4627 are not marketed and sold to "regular consumers". The hair saloons
4628 can get them through their suppliers, but their suppliers only sell
4629 companies. The models they sell, are very different from the ones
4630 available from Elkjøp and Lefdal. The main difference is their
4631 efficiency. It would cut my hair in
5 minutes, instead of the
30-
40
4632 minutes required by my impotent Braun. The hairdresser I visited had
4633 a Panasonic ER160, which unfortunately is no longer available from the
4634 producer. But I found it had a successor, the Panasonic ER1611.
</p>
4636 <p>The next step was to find somewhere to buy it. This was not
4637 straight forward. The list of suppliers I got from the hairdresser
4638 did not want to sell anything to me. But searching for the model on
4639 the web we found a supplier in Norway willing to sell it to us for
4640 around NOK
4000,-. This was a bit much. We kept searching and
4641 finally found a Danish supplier
4642 <a href=
"http://nicehair.dk/panasonic-er-1611-professionel-hartrimmer.html">selling
4643 it for around NOK
1800,-
</a>. We ordered one, and it arrived a few
4646 <p>The instructions said it had to charge for
8 hours when we started
4647 to use it, so we left it charging over night. Normally it will only
4648 need one hour to charge. The following evening we successfully tested
4649 it, and I can warmly recommend it to anyone looking for a real hair
4650 cutter. The ones we have used until now have been hair cutter
4657 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
4662 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4666 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/HTC_One_X___Your_video___What_do_you_mean_.html">HTC One X - Your video? What do you mean?
</a>
4672 <p>In
<a href=
"http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article243690.ece">an
4673 article today
</a> published by Computerworld Norway, the photographer
4674 <a href=
"http://www.urke.com/eirik/">Eirik Helland Urke
</a> reports
4675 that the video editor application included with
4676 <a href=
"http://www.htc.com/www/smartphones/htc-one-x/#specs">HTC One
4677 X
</a> have some quite surprising terms of use. The article is mostly
4678 based on the twitter message from mister Urke, stating:
4681 "
<a href=
"http://twitter.com/urke/status/194062269724897280">Drøy
4682 brukeravtale: HTC kan bruke MINE redigerte videoer kommersielt. Selv
4683 kan jeg KUN bruke dem privat.
</a>"
4686 <p>I quickly translated it to this English message:</p>
4689 "Arrogant user agreement: HTC can use MY edited videos
4690 commercially. Although I can ONLY use them privately.
"
4693 <p>I've been unable to find the text of the license term myself, but
4694 suspect it is a variation of the MPEG-LA terms I
4695 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Terms_of_use_for_video_produced_by_a_Canon_IXUS_130_digital_camera.html
">discovered
4696 with my Canon IXUS 130</a>. The HTC One X specification specifies that
4697 the recording format of the phone is .amr for audio and .mp3 for
4699 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_Multi-Rate_audio_codec#Licensing_and_patent_issues
">Adaptive
4700 Multi-Rate audio codec</a> with patents which according to the
4701 Wikipedia article require an license agreement with
4702 <a href="http://www.voiceage.com/
">VoiceAge</a>. MP4 is
4703 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H
.264/MPEG-
4_AVC#Patent_licensing
">MPEG4 with
4704 H.264</a>, which according to Wikipedia require a licence agreement
4705 with <a href="http://www.mpegla.com/
">MPEG-LA</a>.</p>
4707 <p>I know why I prefer
4708 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition
">free and open
4709 standards</a> also for video.</p>
4715 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan
">digistan</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/personvern
">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard
">standard</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>.
4720 <div class="padding
"></div>
4724 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/RAND_terms___non_reasonable_and_discriminatory.html
">RAND terms - non-reasonable and discriminatory</a>
4730 <p>Here in Norway, the
4731 <a href="http://www.regjeringen.no/nb/dep/fad.html?id=
339"> Ministry of
4732 Government Administration, Reform and Church Affairs</a> is behind
4733 a <a href="http://standard.difi.no/forvaltningsstandarder
">directory of
4734 standards</a> that are recommended or mandatory for use by the
4735 government. When the directory was created, the people behind it made
4736 an effort to ensure that everyone would be able to implement the
4737 standards and compete on equal terms to supply software and solutions
4738 to the government. Free software and non-free software could compete
4739 on the same level.</p>
4741 <p>But recently, some standards with RAND
4742 (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_and_non-discriminatory_licensing
">Reasonable
4743 And Non-Discriminatory</a>) terms have made their way into the
4744 directory. And while this might not sound too bad, the fact is that
4745 standard specifications with RAND terms often block free software from
4746 implementing them. The reasonable part of RAND mean that the cost per
4747 user/unit is low,and the non-discriminatory part mean that everyone
4748 willing to pay will get a license. Both sound great in theory. In
4749 practice, to get such license one need to be able to count users, and
4750 be able to pay a small amount of money per unit or user. By
4751 definition, users of free software do not need to register their use.
4752 So counting users or units is not possible for free software projects.
4753 And given that people will use the software without handing any money
4754 to the author, it is not really economically possible for a free
4755 software author to pay a small amount of money to license the rights
4756 to implement a standard when the income available is zero. The result
4757 in these situations is that free software are locked out from
4758 implementing standards with RAND terms.</p>
4760 <p>Because of this, when I see someone claiming the terms of a
4761 standard is reasonable and non-discriminatory, all I can think of is
4762 how this really is non-reasonable and discriminatory. Because free
4763 software developers are working in a global market, it does not really
4764 help to know that software patents are not supposed to be enforceable
4765 in Norway. The patent regimes in other countries affect us even here.
4766 I really hope the people behind the standard directory will pay more
4767 attention to these issues in the future.</p>
4769 <p>You can find more on the issues with RAND, FRAND and RAND-Z terms
4771 (<a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/
2010/
11/rand-not-so-reasonable/
">RAND:
4772 Not So Reasonable?</a>).</p>
4774 <p>Update 2012-04-21: Just came across a
4775 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/
2012/
04/of-microsoft-netscape-patents-and-open-standards/index.htm
">blog
4776 post from Glyn Moody</a> over at Computer World UK warning about the
4777 same issue, and urging people to speak out to the UK government. I
4778 can only urge Norwegian users to do the same for
4779 <a href="http://www.standard.difi.no/hoyring/hoyring-om-nye-anbefalte-it-standarder
">the
4780 hearing taking place at the moment</a> (respond before 2012-04-27).
4781 It proposes to require video conferencing standards including
4782 specifications with RAND terms.</p>
4788 Tags: <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/nuug
">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard
">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video
">video</a>.
4793 <div class="padding
"></div>
4797 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Andreas_Mundt.html
">Debian Edu interview: Andreas Mundt</a>
4803 <p>Behind <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/
">Debian Edu and
4804 Skolelinux</a> there are a lot of people doing the hard work of
4805 setting together all the pieces. This time I present to you Andreas
4806 Mundt, who have been part of the technical development team several
4807 years. He was also a key contributor in getting GOsa and Kerberos set
4808 up in the recently released
4809 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze
">Debian
4810 Edu Squeeze</a> version.</p>
4812 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
4814 <p>My name is Andreas Mundt, I grew up in south Germany. After
4815 studying Physics I spent several years at university doing research in
4816 Quantum Optics. After that I worked some years in an optics company.
4817 Finally I decided to turn over a new leaf in my life and started
4818 teaching 10 to 19 years old kids at school. I teach math, physics,
4819 information technology and science/technology.</p>
4821 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
4822 project?</strong></p>
4824 <p>Already before I switched to teaching, I followed the Debian Edu
4825 project because of my interest in education and Debian. Within the
4826 qualification/training period for the teaching, I started
4829 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4832 <p>The advantages of Debian Edu are the well known name, the
4833 out-of-the-box philosophy and of course the great free software of the
4836 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4839 <p>As every coin has two sides, the out-of-the-box philosophy has its
4840 downside, too. In my opinion, it is hard to modify and tweak the
4841 setup, if you need or want that. Further more, it is not easily
4842 possible to upgrade the system to a new release. It takes much too
4843 long after a Debian release to prepare the -Edu release, perhaps
4844 because the number of developers working on the core of the code is
4845 rather small and often busy elsewhere.</p>
4847 <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianLAN
">Debian LAN</a>
4848 project might fill the use case of a more flexible system.</p>
4850 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
4852 <p>I am only using non-free software if I am forced to and run Debian
4853 on all my machines. For documents I prefer LaTeX and PGF/TikZ, then
4854 mutt and iceweasel for email respectively web browsing. At school I
4855 have Arduino and Fritzing in use for a micro controller project.</p>
4857 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
4858 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
4860 <p>One of the major problems is the vendor lock-in from top to bottom:
4861 Especially in combination with ignorant government employees and
4862 politicians, this works out great for the "market-leader". The school
4863 administration here in Baden-Wuerttemberg is occupied by that vendor.
4864 Documents have to be prepared in non-free, proprietary formats. Even
4865 free browsers do not work for the school administration. Publishers
4866 of school books provide software only for proprietary platforms.
</p>
4868 <p>To change this, political work is very important. Parts of the
4869 political spectrum have become aware of the problem in the last years.
4870 However it takes quite some time and courageous politicians to 'free'
4871 the system. There is currently some discussion about "Open Data" and
4872 "Free/Open Standards". I am not sure if all the involved parties have
4873 a clue about the potential of these ideas, and probably only a
4874 fraction takes them seriously. However it might slowly make free
4875 software and the philosophy behind it more known and popular.
</p>
4881 Tags:
<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/intervju">intervju
</a>.
4886 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4890 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Justin_B__Rye.html">Debian Edu interview: Justin B. Rye
</a>
4896 <p>It take all kind of contributions to create a Linux distribution
4897 like
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a>,
4898 and this time I lend the ear to Justin B. Rye, who is listed as a big
4900 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">Debian
4901 Edu Squeeze release manual
</a>.
4903 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
</strong></p>
4905 <p>I'm a
44-year-old linguistics graduate living in Edinburgh who has
4906 occasionally been employed as a sysadmin.
</p>
4908 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
4909 project?
</strong></p>
4911 <p>I'm neither a developer nor a Skolelinux/Debian Edu user! The only
4912 reason my name's in the credits for the documentation is that I hang
4913 around on debian-l10n-english waiting for people to mention things
4914 they'd like a native English speaker to proofread... So I did a sweep
4915 through the wiki for typos and Norglish and inconsistent spellings of
4918 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4921 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4924 <p>These questions are too hard for me - I don't use it! In fact I
4925 had hardly any contact with I.T. until long after I'd got out of the
4926 education system.
</p>
4928 <p>I can tell you the advantages of Debian for me though: it soaks up
4929 as much of my free time as I want and no more, and lets me do
4930 everything I want a computer for without ever forcing me to spend
4931 money on the latest hardware.
</p>
4933 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?
</strong></p>
4935 <p>I've been using Debian since Rex; popularity-contest says the
4936 software that I use most is xinit, xterm, and xulrunner (in other
4937 words, I use a distinctly retro sort of desktop).
</p>
4939 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
4940 get schools to use free software?
</strong></p>
4942 <p>Well, I don't know. I suppose I'd be inclined to try reasoning
4943 with the people who make the decisions, but obviously if that worked
4944 you would hardly need a strategy.
</p>
4950 Tags:
<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/intervju">intervju
</a>.
4955 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4959 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_the_KDE_menu_is_slow_when__usr__is_NFS_mounted___and_a_workaround.html">Why the KDE menu is slow when /usr/ is NFS mounted - and a workaround
</a>
4965 <p>Recently I have spent time with
4966 <a href=
"http://www.slxdrift.no/">Skolelinux Drift AS
</a> on speeding
4967 up a
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a>
4968 Lenny installation using LTSP diskless workstations, and in the
4969 process I discovered something very surprising. The reason the KDE
4970 menu was responding slow when using it for the first time, was mostly
4971 due to the way KDE find application icons. I discovered that showing
4972 the Multimedia menu would cause more than
20 000 IP packages to be
4973 passed between the LTSP client and the NFS server. Most of these were
4975 NFS LOOKUP calls, resulting in a NFS3ERR_NOENT response. Because the
4976 ping times between the client and the server were in the range
2-
20
4977 ms, the menus would be very slow. Looking at the strace of kicker in
4978 Lenny (or plasma-desktop i Squeeze - same problem there), I see that
4979 the source of these NFS calls are access(
2) system calls for
4980 non-existing files. KDE can do hundreds of access(
2) calls to find
4981 one icon file. In my example, just finding the mplayer icon required
4982 around
230 access(
2) calls.
</p>
4984 <p>The KDE code seem to search for icons using a list of icon
4985 directories, and the list of possible directories is large. In
4986 (almost) each directory, it look for files ending in .png, .svgz, .svg
4987 and .xpm. The result is a very slow KDE menu when /usr/ is NFS
4988 mounted. Showing a single sub menu may result in thousands of NFS
4989 requests. I am not the first one to discover this. I found a
4990 <a href=
"https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=211416">KDE bug report
4991 from
2009</a> about this problem, and it is still unsolved.
</p>
4993 <p>My solution to speed up the KDE menu was to create a package
4994 kde-icon-cache that upon installation will look at all .desktop files
4995 used to generate the KDE menu, find their icons, search the icon paths
4996 for the file that KDE will end up finding at run time, and copying the
4997 icon file to /var/lib/kde-icon-cache/. Finally, I add symlinks to
4998 these icon files in one of the first directories where KDE will look
4999 for them. This cut down the number of file accesses required to find
5000 one icon from several hundred to less than
5, and make the KDE menu
5001 almost instantaneous. I'm not quite sure where to make the package
5002 publicly available, so for now it is only available on request.
</p>
5004 <p>The bug report mention that this do not only affect the KDE menu
5005 and icon handling, but also the login process. Not quite sure how to
5006 speed up that part without replacing NFS with for example NBD, and
5007 that is not really an option at the moment.
</p>
5009 <p>If you got feedback on this issue, please let us know on debian-edu
5010 (at) lists.debian.org.
</p>
5016 Tags:
<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>.
5021 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5025 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_in_the_Linux_Weekly_News.html">Debian Edu in the Linux Weekly News
</a>
5031 <p>About two weeks ago, I was interviewed via email about
5032 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux
</a> by
5033 Bruce Byfield in Linux Weekly News. The result was made public for
5034 non-subscribers today. I am pleased to see liked our Linux solution
5035 for schools. Check out his article
5036 <a href=
"https://lwn.net/Articles/488805/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux: A
5037 distribution for education
</a> if you want to learn more.
</p>
5043 Tags:
<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>.
5048 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5052 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Wolfgang_Schweer.html">Debian Edu interview: Wolfgang Schweer
</a>
5058 <p>Germany is a core area for the
5059 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux
</a>
5060 user community, and this time I managed to get hold of Wolfgang
5061 Schweer, a valuable contributor to the project from Germany.
5063 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
</strong></p>
5065 <p>I've studied Mathematics at the university 'Ruhr-Universität' in
5066 Bochum, Germany. Since
1981 I'm working as a teacher at the school
5067 "
<a href=
"http://www.westfalenkolleg-dortmund.de/">Westfalen-Kolleg
5068 Dortmund
</a>", a second chance school. Here, young adults is given
5069 the opportunity to get further education in order to do the school
5070 examination 'Abitur', which will allow to study at a university. This
5071 second chance is of value for those who want a better job perspective
5072 or failed to get a higher school examination being teens.</p>
5074 <p>Besides teaching I was involved in developing online courses for a
5075 blended learning project called 'abitur-online.nrw' and in some other
5076 information technology related projects. For about ten years I've been
5077 teacher and coordinator for the 'abitur-online' project at my
5078 school. Being now in my early sixties, I've decided to leave school at
5079 the end of April this year.</p>
5081 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
5082 project?</strong></p>
5084 <p>The first information about Skolelinux must have come to my
5085 attention years ago and somehow related to LTSP (Linux Terminal Server
5086 Project). At school, we had set up a network at the beginning of 1997
5087 using Suse Linux on the desktop, replacing a Novell network. Since
5088 2002, we used old machines from the city council of Dortmund as thin
5089 clients (LTSP, later Ubuntu/Lessdisks) cause new hardware was out of
5090 reach. At home I'm using Debian since years and - subscribed to the
5091 Debian news letter - heard from time to time about Skolelinux. About
5092 two years ago I proposed to replace the (somehow undocumented and only
5093 known to me) system at school by a well known Debian based system:
5096 <p>Students and teachers appreciated the new system because of a
5097 better look and feel and an enhanced access to local media on thin
5098 clients. The possibility to alter and/or reset passwords using a GUI
5099 was welcomed, too. Being able to do administrative tasks using a GUI
5100 and to easily set up workstations using PXE was of very high value for
5101 the admin teachers.</p>
5103 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
5106 <p>It's open source, easy to set up, stable and flexible due to it's
5107 Debian base. It integrates LTSP out-of-the-box. And it is documented!
5108 So it was a perfect choice.</p>
5110 <p>Being open source, there are no license problems and so it's
5111 possible to point teachers and students to programs like
5112 OpenOffice.org, ViewYourMind (mind mapping) and The Gimp. It's of
5113 high value to be able to adapt parts of the system to special needs of
5114 a school and to choose where to get support for this.</p>
5116 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
5121 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
5123 <p>At home (Debian Sid with Gnome Desktop): Iceweasel, LibreOffice,
5124 Mutt, Gedit, Document Viewer, Midnight Commander, flpsed (PDF
5125 Annotator). At school (Skolelinux Lenny): Iceweasel, Gedit,
5128 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
5129 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
5131 <p>Some time ago I thought it was enough to tell people about it. But
5132 that doesn't seem to work quite well. Now I concentrate on those more
5133 interested and hope to get multiplicators that way.</p>
5139 Tags: <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/intervju
">intervju</a>.
5144 <div class="padding
"></div>
5148 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_screencast__Checking_email_with_kmail_using_Kerberos_authentication.html
">Debian Edu screencast: Checking email with kmail using Kerberos authentication</a>
5154 <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
5156 <p>The same Debian Edu developer that did the last screen cast I
5157 published, Wolfgang Schweer, has created a new screen cast showing how
5158 to set up Kmail in Debian Edu Squeze to authenticate using Kerberos,
5159 allowing users to check their local email account without providing
5160 any password. The video is embedded here in quarter size,
5161 and also available from <a href="https://vimeo.com/
38601767">vimeo</a>
5163 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/
2012-
03-
14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv
">Ogg
5164 Theora</a> file. Check it out below.</p>
5166 <p><video id="kmail-kerberos-movie
" width="256" height="184" preload controls>
5167 <source src="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/
2012-
03-
14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv
" type='video/ogg; codecs="theora, vorbis
"' />
5168 <p>Download video as
5169 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/
2012-
03-
14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv
">Ogg</a>.</p>
5176 Tags: <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>.
5181 <div class="padding
"></div>
5185 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__John_Ingleby.html
">Debian Edu interview: John Ingleby</a>
5191 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/
">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
5192 users are spread all across the globe. The second inteview after
5193 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/
2012/
03/msg00001.html
">the
5194 Squeeze release</a> was publised is with John Ingleby, a teacher and
5195 long time Linux user in United Kingdom.</p>
5197 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
5199 <p>I teach ICT part time at the Rudolf Steiner School in Kings
5200 Langley, near London, UK. Previously I worked as a technical
5201 author/trainer while my children attended the school, and I also
5202 contributed to the Schoolforge UK community with the aim of
5203 encouraging UK schools to adopt free/open source software. Five or six
5204 years ago we had about 50 schools interested in some way, but we
5205 weren't able to convert many of them into sustainable
5208 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
5209 project?</strong></p>
5211 <p>Skolelinux had two representatives at an early Edubuntu meeting in
5212 London which I attended. However at that time our school network had
5213 just been installed using CentOS, LTSP 4 and GNOME. When LTSP 5 came
5214 along we switched to Edubuntu thin client servers so now we have a
5215 mixed environment which includes Windows PCs and student laptops, as
5216 well as their MacBooks and iPads. However, the proprietary systems
5217 have always been rather problematic, and we never built a GUI for the
5218 LDAP server, so when I discovered Skolelinux is configured for all
5219 these things we decided to try it.</p>
5221 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
5224 <p>By far the biggest advantage is the Debian Edu community. Apart
5225 from that I have always believed in the same "sustainable computing"
5226 goals that Skolelinux is built on: installing Linux on computers which
5227 would otherwise be thrown away, to provide a reliable, secure and
5228 low-cost IT environment for schools. From my own experience I know
5229 that a part-time person can teach and manage a network of about
25
5230 Linux computers, but it would take much more of my time if we had
5231 proprietary software everywhere.
</p>
5233 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
5236 <p>As a newcomer I'm just finding out who's who in the community and
5237 how you're organised, and what your procedures are for dealing with
5238 various things such as editing manual pages and so-on. The only
5239 English language mailing list seems to be for developers as well as
5240 users, so my inbox needs heavy pruning each day!
</p>
5242 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?
</strong></p>
5244 <p>Besides the software already mentioned at school we use Samba,
5245 OpenLDAP, CUPS, Nagios and Dansguardian for the network, and on the
5246 desktops we have LibreOffice, Firefox, GIMP and Inkscape. At home I
5247 use Ubuntu and an Android
4 eePad Transformer (but I'm not sure if
5250 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
5251 get schools to use free software?
</strong></p>
5253 <p>That's a tough question! For very many years UK schools installed
5254 and taught only proprietary software, so that at the highest levels
5255 the notion of "computer" means simply "proprietary office
5256 applications". However, schools today are experiencing budget
5257 constraints, and many are having to think hard about upgrading Windows
5258 XP. At the same time, we have students showing teachers how to use
5259 iPads, MacBooks and Android, so the choice of operating system is no
5260 longer quite so automatic. What is more, our government at last
5261 realised that we need people with programming skills, so they're
5262 putting coding back in the curriculum! And it's encouraging that the
5263 first
10,
000 Raspberry Pi units sold out in
2 hours.
</p>
5265 <p>I don't really know what strategy is going to get UK schools to use
5266 free software, but building an active community of Skolelinux/Debian
5267 Edu users in this country has to be part of it.
</p>
5273 Tags:
<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/intervju">intervju
</a>.
5278 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5282 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Writing_and_translating_documentation_in_Debian_Edu.html">Writing and translating documentation in Debian Edu
</a>
5288 <p>Documentation in Debian Edu is provided in several languages, and
5289 it is important to make it both easy to contribute and to keep the
5290 translated versions in sync. To do this we have come up with what we
5291 believe is a very efficient work flow.
</p>
5295 <li>The documentation is written in a
5296 <a href=
"http://moinmo.in">moinmoin wiki
</a> (see for example
5297 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">the
5298 Squeeze release manual
</a>) with support for exporting the content as
5301 <li>This docbook document is given to po4a to extract a gettext style
5302 .pot file with the content, which in turn is used to create .po files
5303 with the translated text.
</li>
5305 <li>The .po files are given to translators, and they can always tell
5306 which part of the original wiki document is new or changed. They can
5307 use their normal translation tools like lokalize or poedit to write
5308 the translation. There is even a system in place to handle translated
5311 <li>The translated .po files are combined with the original docbook
5312 XML document using po4a to create a translated docbook document.
</li>
5314 <li>The final step is to use all the generated docbook files and
5315 create PDF and HTML version of the original and translated documents.
</li>
5319 <p>This setup work very well, but have a few issues. The biggest
5320 issue is that
<a href=
"http://moinmo.in/DocBook">the docbook support
5321 we use in moinmoin
</a> is not actively maintained. The docbook
5322 support is also buggy, and our build system contain workarounds to
5323 make sure the generated docbook is usable despite these bugs.
</p>
5325 <p>If you want to have a look at our setup, it is all there in the
5326 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-doc">debian-edu-doc
5333 Tags:
<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>.
5338 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5342 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_is_out_.html">Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze is out!
</a>
5348 <p>This weekend we finally published the first stable release of
5349 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu
</a> based
5350 on Debian/Squeeze. The full announcement is
5351 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">available
</a>
5352 from the project announcement list. Now is a good time to test if it
5353 you have not done so already.
</p>
5355 <p>I plan to present the new version at
5356 <a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20120313-skolelinux/">a NUUG
5357 meeting
</a> on tuesday. I look forward to seeing you there if you are
5358 in Oslo, Norway.
</p>
5364 Tags:
<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>.
5369 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5373 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Nigel_Barker.html">Debian Edu interview: Nigel Barker
</a>
5379 <p>Inspired by
<a href=
"http://raphaelhertzog.com/tag/interview/">the
5380 interview series
</a> conducted by Raphael, I started a Norwegian
5381 interview series with people involved in the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
5382 community. This was so popular that I believe it is time to move to a
5383 more international audience.
</p>
5385 <p>While
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
5386 Skolelinux
</a> originated in France and Norway, and have most users in
5387 Europe, there are users all around the globe. One of those far away
5388 from me is Nigel Barker, a long time Debian Edu system administrator
5389 and contributor. It is thanks to him that Debian Edu is adjusted to
5390 work out of the box in Japan. I got him to answer a few questions,
5391 and am happy to share the response with you. :)
5394 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
</strong></p>
5396 <p>My name is Nigel Barker, and I am British. I am married to Yumiko,
5397 and we have three lovely children, aged
15,
14 and
4(!) I am the IT
5398 Coordinator at Hiroshima International School, Japan. I am also a
5399 teacher, and in fact I spend most of my day teaching Mathematics,
5400 Science, IT, and Chemistry. I was originally a Chemistry teacher, but
5401 I have always had an interest in computers. Another teacher teaches
5402 primary school IT, but apart from that I am the only computer person,
5403 so that means I am the network manager, technician and webmaster,
5404 also, and I help people with their computer problems. I teach python
5405 to beginners in an after-school club. I am way too busy, so I really
5406 appreciate the simplicity of Skolelinux.
</p>
5408 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
5409 project?
</strong></p>
5411 <p>In around
2004 or
5 I discovered the ltsp project, and set up a
5412 server in the IT lab. I wanted some way to connect it to our central
5413 samba server, which I was also quite poor at configuring. I discovered
5414 Edubuntu when it came out, but it didn't really improve my setup. I
5415 did various desperate searches for things like "school Linux server"
5416 and ended up in a document called "Drift" something or other. Reading
5417 there it became clear that Skolelinux was going to solve all my
5418 problems in one go. I was very excited, but apprehensive, because my
5419 previous attempts to install Debian had ended in failure (I used
5420 Mandrake for everything - ltsp, samba, apache, mail, ns...). I
5421 downloaded a beta version, had some problems, so subscribed to the
5422 Debian Edu list for help. I have remained subscribed ever since, and
5423 my school has run a Skolelinux network since Sarge.
</p>
5425 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
5428 <p>For me the integrated setup. This is not just the server, or the
5429 workstation, or the ltsp. Its all of them, and its all configured
5430 ready to go. I read somewhere in the early documentation that it is
5431 designed to be setup and managed by the Maths or Science teacher, who
5432 doesn't necessarily know much about computers, in a small Norwegian
5433 school. That describes me perfectly if you replace Norway with
5436 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
5439 <p>The desktop is fairly plain. If you compare it with Edubuntu, who
5440 have fun themes for children, or with distributions such as Mint, who
5441 make the desktop beautiful. They create a good impression on people
5442 who don't need to understand how to use any of it, but who might be
5443 important to the school. School administrators or directors, for
5444 instance, or parents. Even kids. Debian itself usually has ugly
5445 default theme settings. It was my dream a few years back that some
5446 kind of integration would allow Edubuntu to do the desktop stuff and
5447 Debian Edu the servers, but now I realise how impossible that is. A
5448 second disadvantage is that if something goes wrong, or you need to
5449 customise something, then suddenly the level of expertise required
5450 multiplies. For example, backup wasn't working properly in Lenny. It
5451 took me ages to learn how to set up my own server to do rsync backups.
5452 I am afraid of anything to do with ldap, but perhaps Gosa will
5455 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?
</strong></p>
5457 <p>Nowadays I only use Debian on my personal computers. I have one for
5458 studio work (I play guitar and write songs), running AV Linux
5459 (customised Debian) a netbook running Squeeze, and a bigger laptop
5460 still running Skolelinux Lenny workstation. I have a Tjener in my
5461 house, that's very useful for the family photos and music. At school
5462 the students only use Skolelinux. (Some teachers and the office still
5463 have windows). So that means we only use free software all day every
5464 day. Open office, The GIMP, Firefox/Iceweasel, VLC and Audacity are
5465 installed on every computer in school, irrespective of OS. We also
5466 have Koha on Debian for the library, and Apache, Moodle, b2evolution
5467 and Etomite on Debian for the www. The firewall is Untangle.
</p>
5469 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
5470 get schools to use free software?
</strong></p>
5472 <p>Current trends are in our favour. Open source is big in industry,
5473 and ordinary people have heard of it. The spread of Android and the
5474 popularity of Apple have helped to weaken the impression that you have
5475 to have Microsoft on everything. People complain to me much less about
5476 file formats and Word than they did
5 years ago. The Edu aspect is
5477 also a selling point. This is all customised for schools. Where is the
5478 Windows-edu, or the Mac-edu? But of course the main attraction is
5479 budget.The trick is to convince people that the quality is not
5480 compromised when you stop paying and use free software instead. That
5481 is one reason why I say the desktop experience is a weakness. People
5482 are not impressed when their USB drive doesn't work, or their browser
5483 doesn't play flash, for example.
</p>
5489 Tags:
<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/intervju">intervju
</a>.
5494 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5498 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_screencast__Mass_creation_of_user_accounts_in_Squeeze.html">Debian Edu screencast: Mass creation of user accounts in Squeeze
</a>
5504 <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
5506 <p>One of the Debian Edu developers, Wolfgang Schweer, just created a
5507 screen cast documenting how to create a lot of new users in LDAP on
5508 Debian Edu Squeeze. The video is embedded here in quarter size, and
5509 also available from
<a href=
"http://vimeo.com/37675399">vimeo
</a> and
5511 <a href=
"http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg
5512 Theora
</a> file. Check it out below.
</p>
5514 <p><video id=
"gosa-mass-user-create-movie" width=
"256" height=
"184" preload controls
>
5515 <source src=
"http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv" type='video/ogg;
codecs=
"theora, vorbis"'
/>
5516 <p>Download video as
5517 <a href=
"http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg
</a>.
</p>
5524 Tags:
<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>.
5529 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5533 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Third release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze
</a>
5539 <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the third release
5540 candidate for
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
5541 Skolelinux
</a> based on Squeeze. The full announcement is
5542 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00000.html">available
</a>
5543 from the project announcement list. Check it out if you
5544 need a software solution for your school.
</p>
5550 Tags:
<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>.
5555 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5559 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Stopmotion_for_making_stop_motion_animations_on_Linux___reloaded.html">Stopmotion for making stop motion animations on Linux - reloaded
</a>
5565 <p>Many years ago, the
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
5566 / Debian Edu project
</a> initiated a student project to create a tool
5567 for making stop motion movies. The proposal came from a teacher
5568 needing such tool on Skolelinux. The project, called "stopmotion",
5569 was manned by two extraordinary students and won a school award and a
5570 national aware with this great project. The project was initiated and
5571 mentored by Herman Robak, and manned by the students Bjørn Erik Nilsen
5572 and Fredrik Berg Kjølstad. They got in touch with people at Aardman
5573 Animation studio and received feedback on how professionals would like
5574 such stopmotion tool to work, and the end result was and is used by
5575 animators around the globe. But as is usual after studying, both got
5576 jobs and went elsewhere, and did not have time to properly tend to the
5577 project, and it has been lingering for a few years now. Until last
5580 <p>Last year some of the users got together with Herman, and moved the
5581 project to Sourceforge and in effect restarted the project under a new
5583 <a href=
"http://sourceforge.net/projects/linuxstopmotion/">linuxstopmotion
</a>.
5584 The name change was done to make it possible to find the project using
5585 Internet search engines (try to search for 'stopmotion' to see what I
5586 mean). I've been following
5587 <a href=
"https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/linuxstopmotion-community">the
5588 mailing list
</a> and the improvement already in place and planned for
5589 the future is encouraging. If you want to make stop motion movies.
5590 Check it out. :)
</p>
5596 Tags:
<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/video">video
</a>.
5601 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5605 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Second release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze
</a>
5611 <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the second release
5612 candidate for
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
5613 Skolelinux
</a> based on Squeeze. The full announcement did for some
5614 reason not make it the project announcement list, but is
5615 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2012/02/msg00015.html">available
</a>
5616 from the Debian development announcement list. Check it out if you
5617 need a software solution for your school.
</p>
5623 Tags:
<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>.
5628 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5632 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">First release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze
</a>
5638 <p>One week delayed due to DVD build problems, we managed today to
5639 wrap up and publish the first release candidate for
5640 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a> based
5641 on Squeeze. The full announcement is
5642 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00001.html">available
</a>
5643 on the project announcement list. Check it out if you need a software
5644 solution for your school.
</p>
5650 Tags:
<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>.
5655 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5659 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_figure_out_which_RAID_disk_to_replace_when_it_fail.html">How to figure out which RAID disk to replace when it fail
</a>
5665 <p>Once in a while my home server have disk problems. Thanks to Linux
5666 Software RAID, I have not lost data yet (but
5667 <a href=
"http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.linux.raid/34532">I was
5668 close
</a> this summer :). But once a disk is starting to behave
5669 funny, a practical problem present itself. How to get from the Linux
5670 device name (like /dev/sdd) to something that can be used to identify
5671 the disk when the computer is turned off? In my case I have SATA
5672 disks with a unique ID printed on the label. All I need is a way to
5673 figure out how to query the disk to get the ID out.
</p>
5675 <p>After fumbling a bit, I
5676 <a href=
"http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-getting-scsi-ide-harddisk-information/">found
5677 that hdparm -I
</a> will report the disk serial number, which is
5678 printed on the disk label. The following (almost) one-liner can be
5679 used to look up the ID of all the failed disks:
</p>
5682 for d in $(cat /proc/mdstat |grep '(F)'|tr ' ' "\n"|grep '(F)'|cut -d\[ -f1|sort -u);
5684 printf "Failed disk $d: "
5685 hdparm -I /dev/$d |grep 'Serial Num'
5689 <p>Putting it here to make sure I do not have to search for it the
5690 next time, and in case other find it useful.
</p>
5692 <p>At the moment I have two failing disk. :(
</p>
5695 Failed disk sdd1: Serial Number: WD-WCASJ1860823
5696 Failed disk sdd2: Serial Number: WD-WCASJ1860823
5697 Failed disk sde2: Serial Number: WD-WCASJ1840589
5700 <p>The last time I had failing disks, I added the serial number on
5701 labels I printed and stuck on the short sides of each disk, to be able
5702 to figure out which disk to take out of the box without having to
5703 remove each disk to look at the physical vendor label. The vendor
5704 label is at the top of the disk, which is hidden when the disks are
5705 mounted inside my box.
</p>
5707 <p>I really wish the check_linux_raid Nagios plugin for checking Linux
5708 Software RAID in the
5709 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nagios-plugins.html">nagios-plugins-standard
</a>
5710 debian package would look up this value automatically, as it would
5711 make the plugin a lot more useful when my disks fail. At the moment
5712 it only report a failure when there are no more spares left (it really
5713 should warn as soon as a disk is failing), and it do not tell me which
5714 disk(s) is failing when the RAID is running short on disks.
</p>
5720 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid
</a>.
5725 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5729 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_proxy_configuration_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux.html">Automatic proxy configuration with Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a>
5735 <p>New in the Squeeze version of
5736 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a> is the
5737 ability for clients to automatically configure their proxy settings
5738 based on their environment. We want all systems on the client to use
5739 the WPAD based proxy definition fetched from
<tt>http://wpad/wpad.dat
</tt>, to
5740 allow sites to control the proxy setting from a central place and make
5741 sure clients do not have hard coded proxy settings. The schools can
5742 change the global proxy setting by editing
5743 <tt>tjener:/etc/debian-edu/www/wpad.dat
</tt> and the change propagate
5744 to all Debian Edu clients in the network.
</p>
5746 <p>The problem is that some systems do not understand the WPAD system.
5747 In other words, how do one get from a WPAD file like this (this is a
5748 simple one, they can run arbitrary code):
</p>
5751 function FindProxyForURL(url, host)
5753 if (!isResolvable(host) ||
5754 isPlainHostName(host) ||
5755 dnsDomainIs(host, ".intern"))
5758 return "PROXY webcache:
3128; DIRECT";
5762 <p>to a proxy setting in the process environment looking like this:
</p>
5765 http_proxy=http://webcache:
3128/
5766 ftp_proxy=http://webcache:
3128/
5769 <p>To do this conversion I developed a perl script that will execute
5770 the javascript fragment in the WPAD file and return the proxy that
5772 <tt><a href=
"http://www.debian.org/">http://www.debian.org/
</a></tt>,
5773 and insert this extracted proxy URL in
<tt>/etc/environment
</tt> and
5774 <tt>/etc/apt/apt.conf
</tt>. The perl script wpad-extract work just
5775 fine in Squeeze, but in Wheezy the library it need to run the
5776 javascript code is
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/631045">no longer
5777 able to build
</a> because the C library it depended on is now a C++
5778 library. I hope someone find a solution to that problem before Wheezy
5779 is frozen. An alternative would be for us to rewrite wpad-extract to
5780 use some other javascript library currently working in Wheezy, but no
5781 known alternative is known at the moment.
</p>
5783 <p>This automatic proxy system allow the roaming workstation (aka
5784 laptop) setup in Debian Edu/Squeeze to use the proxy when the laptop
5785 is connected to the backbone network in a Debian Edu setup, and to
5786 automatically use any proxy present and announced using the WPAD
5787 feature when it is connected to other networks. And if no proxy is
5788 announced, direct connections will be used instead.
</p>
5790 <p>Silently using a proxy announced on the network might be a privacy
5791 or security problem. But those controlling DHCP and DNS on a network
5792 could just as easily set up a transparent proxy, and force all HTTP
5793 and FTP connections to use a proxy anyway, so I consider that
5794 distinction to be academic. If you are afraid of using the wrong
5795 proxy, you should avoid connecting to the network in question in the
5796 first place. In Debian Edu, the proxy setup is updated using dhcp and
5797 ifupdown hooks, to make sure the configuration is updated every time
5798 the network setup changes.
</p>
5800 <p>The WPAD system is documented in a
5801 <a href=
"http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-wrec-wpad-01">IETF
5803 <a href=
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Proxy_Autodiscovery_Protocol">Wikipedia
5804 page
</a> for those that want to learn more.
</p>
5810 Tags:
<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>.
5815 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5819 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Saving_power_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_using_shutdown_at_night.html">Saving power with Debian Edu / Skolelinux using shutdown-at-night
</a>
5825 <p>Since the Lenny version of
5826 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a>, a
5827 feature to save power have been included. It is as simple as it is
5828 practical: Shut down unused clients at night, and turn them on again
5829 in the morning. This is done using the
5830 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/shutdown-at-night.html">shutdown-at-night
</a> Debian package.
</p>
5832 <p>To enable this feature on a client, the machine need to be added to
5833 the netgroup shutdown-at-night-hosts. For Debian Edu, this is done in
5834 LDAP, and once this is in place, the machine in question will check
5835 every hour from
16:
00 until
06:
00 to see if the machine is unused, and
5836 shut it down if it is. If the hardware in question is supported by
5838 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nvram-wakeup.html">nvram-wakeup
</a>
5839 package, the BIOS is told to turn the machine back on around
07:
00 +-
5840 10 minutes. If this isn't working, one can configure wake-on-lan to
5841 try to turn on the client. The wake-on-lan option is only documented
5842 and not enabled by default in Debian Edu.
</p>
5844 <p>It is important to not turn all machines on at once, as this can
5845 blow a fuse if several computers are connected to the same fuse like
5846 the common setup for a classroom. The nvram-wakeup method only work
5847 for machines with a functioning hardware/BIOS clock. I've seen old
5848 machines where the BIOS battery were dead and the hardware clock were
5849 starting from
0 (or was it
1990?) every boot. If you have one of
5850 those, you have to turn on the computer manually.
</p>
5852 <p>The shutdown-at-night package is completely self contained, and can
5853 also be used outside the Debian Edu environment. For those without a
5854 central LDAP server with netgroups, one can instead touch the file
5855 <tt>/etc/shutdown-at-night/shutdown-at-night
</tt> to enable it.
5856 Perhaps you too can use it to save some power?
</p>
5862 Tags:
<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>.
5867 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5871 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_beta_version_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Third beta version of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze
</a>
5877 <p>I am happy to announce that finally we managed today to wrap up and
5878 publish the third beta version of
5879 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a> based
5880 on Squeeze. If you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with
5881 out of the box PXE configuration for running diskless machines and
5882 installing new machines, check it out. If you need a software
5883 solution for your school, check it out too. The full announcement is
5884 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00000.html">available
</a>
5885 on the project announcement list.
</p>
5887 <p>I am very happy to report these changes and improvements since
5888 beta2 (there are more, see announcement for full list):
</p>
5892 <li>It is now possible to change the pre-configured IP subnet from
5893 10.0.0.0/
8 to something else by using the subnet-change tool after
5894 the installation.
</li>
5896 <li>Too full partitions are now automatically extended on the Main
5897 Server, based on the rules specified in /etc/fsautoresizetab.
</li>
5899 <li>The CUPS queues are now automatically flushed every night, and all
5900 disabled queues are restarted every hour. This should cut down on
5901 the amount of manual administration needed for printers.
</li>
5903 <li>The set of initial users have been changed. Now a personal user
5904 for the local system administrator is created during installation
5905 instead of the previously created localadmin and super-admin users,
5906 and this user is granted administrative privileges using group
5907 membership. This reduces the number of passwords one need to keep
5908 up to date on the system.
</li>
5912 <p>The new main server seem to work so well that I am testing it as my
5913 private DNS/LDAP/Kerberos/PXE/LTSP server at home. I will use it look
5914 for issues we could fix to polish Debian Edu even further before the
5915 final Squeeze release is published.
</p>
5917 <p>Next weekend the project organise a
5918 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00001.html">developer
5919 gathering
</a> in Oslo. We will continue the work on the Squeeze
5920 version, and start initial planning for the Wheezy version. Perhaps I
5921 will see you there?
</p>
5927 Tags:
<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>.
5932 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5936 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Handling_non_free_firmware_in_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html">Handling non-free firmware in Debian Edu/Squeeze
</a>
5942 <p>With some computer hardware, one need non-free firmware blobs.
5943 This is the sad fact of todays computers. In the next version of
5944 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a> based
5945 on Squeeze, we provide several scripts and modifications to make
5946 firmware blobs easier to handle. The common use case I run into is a
5947 laptop with a wireless network card requiring non-free firmware to
5948 work, but there are other use cases as well.
</p>
5950 <p>First and foremost, Debian Edu provide ISO images for DVD and CD
5951 with all firmware packages in the Debian sections main and non-free
5952 included, to ensure debian-installer find and can install all of them
5953 during installation. This take care firmware for network devices used
5954 by the installer when installing from from local media. But for
5955 example multimedia devices are not activated in the installer and are
5956 not taken care of by this.
</p>
5958 <p>For non-network devices, we provide the script
5959 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/auto-addfirmware
</tt> which
5960 search through the
<tt>dmesg
</tt> output for drivers requesting extra
5961 firmware. The firmware file name is looked up in the Contents-ARCH.gz
5962 file available in the package repository, and the packages providing
5963 the requested firmware file(s) is installed. I have proposed to do
5964 something similar in debian-installer (BTS report
5965 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/655507">#
655507</a>), to allow PXE
5966 installs of Debian to handle firmware installation better. Run the
5967 script as root from the command line to fetch and install the needed
5968 firmware packages.
</p>
5970 <p>Debian Edu provide PXE installation of Debian out of the box, and
5971 because some machines need firmware to get their network cards
5972 working, the installation initrd some times need extra firmware
5973 included to be able to install at all. To fill the PXE installation
5974 initrd with extra firmware, the
5975 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/pxe-addfirmware
</tt> script is
5976 provided. Again, just run it as root on the command line to fill the
5977 PXE initrd with firmware packages.
</p>
5979 <p>Last, some LTSP clients might also need firmware to get their
5980 network cards working. For this,
5981 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/ltsp-addfirmware
</tt> is
5982 provided to update the LTSP initrd with firmware blobs. It is used
5983 the same way as the other firmware related tools.
</p>
5985 <p>At the moment, we do not run any of these during installation. We
5986 do not know if this is acceptable for the local administrator to use
5987 non-free software, and it is their choice.
</p>
5989 <p>We plan to release beta3 this weekend. You might want to give it a
5996 Tags:
<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>.
6001 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6005 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Setting_up_a_new_school_with_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html">Setting up a new school with Debian Edu/Squeeze
</a>
6011 <p>The next version of
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu
6012 / Skolelinux
</a> will include a new tool
6013 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp
</tt>, which can be used to quickly set up all
6014 the computers in a school without much manual labour. Here is a short
6015 summary on how to use it to set up a new school.
</p>
6017 <p>First, install a combined Main Server and Thin Client Server as the
6018 central server in the network. Next, PXE boot all the client machines
6019 as thin clients and wait
5 minutes after the last client booted to
6020 allow the clients to report their existence to the central server. When
6021 this is done, log on to the central server and run
6022 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a
</tt> in the
<tt>konsole
</tt> to use the
6023 collected information to generate system objects in LDAP. The output
6024 will look similar to this:
</p>
6026 <p><blockquote><pre>
6027 % sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a
6028 info: Updating machine tjener.intern [
10.0.2.2] id ether-
00:
01:
02:
03:
04:
05.
6029 info: Create GOsa machine for auto-mac-
00-
01-
02-
03-
04-
06 [
10.0.16.20] id ether-
00:
01:
02:
03:
04:
06.
6031 Enter password if you want to activate these changes, and ^c to abort.
6033 Connecting to LDAP as cn=admin,ou=ldap-access,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
6034 enter password: *******
6036 </pre></blockquote></p>
6038 <p>After providing the LDAP administrative password (the same as the
6039 root password set during installation), the LDAP database will be
6040 populated with system objects for each PXE booted machine with
6041 automatically generated names. The final step to set up the school is
6042 then to log into
<a href=
"https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/">GOsa
</a>,
6043 the web based user, group and system administration system to change
6044 system names, add systems to the correct host groups and finally
6045 enable DHCP and DNS for the systems. All clients that should be used
6046 as diskless workstations should be added to the workstation-hosts
6047 group. After this is done, all computers can be booted again via PXE
6048 and get their assigned names and group based configuration
6051 <p>We plan to release beta3 with the updated version of this feature
6052 enabled this weekend. You might want to give it a try.
</p>
6054 <p>Update
2012-
01-
28: When calling sitesummary2ldapdhcp to add new
6055 hosts, one need to add the option -a. I forgot to mention this in my
6056 original text, and have added it to the text now.
</p>
6062 Tags:
<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>.
6067 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6071 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Changing_the_default_Iceweasel_start_page_in_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html">Changing the default Iceweasel start page in Debian Edu/Squeeze
</a>
6077 <p>In the Squeeze version of
6078 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a> soon
6079 to be released, users of the system will get their default browser
6080 start page set from LDAP, allowing the system administrator to point
6081 all users to the school web page by updating one setting in LDAP. In
6082 addition to setting the default start page when a machine boots, users
6083 are shown the same page as a welcome page when they log in for the
6086 <p>The LDAP object dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no have an attribute
6087 labeledURI with "http://www/ LDAP for Debian Edu/Skolelinux" as the
6088 default content. By changing this value to another URL, all users get
6089 to see the page behind this new URL.
</p>
6091 <p>An easy way to update it is by using the ldapvi tool. It can be
6092 called as "
<tt>ldapvi -ZD '(cn=admin)'
</tt>' to update LDAP with the
6095 <p>We have written the code to adjust the default start page and show
6096 the welcome page, and I wonder if there is an easier way to do this
6097 from within Iceweasel instead.
</p>
6103 Tags:
<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/web">web
</a>.
6108 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6112 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_beta_version_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Second beta version of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze
</a>
6118 <p>I am happy to announce that today we managed to wrap up and publish
6119 the second beta version of
6120 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a>. If
6121 you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with out of the box PXE
6122 configuration for running diskless machines and installing new
6123 machines, check it out. If you need a software solution for your
6124 school, check it out too. The full announcement is
6125 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00000.html">available
</a>
6126 on the project announcement list.
</p>
6132 Tags:
<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>.
6137 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6141 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fixing_an_hanging_debian_installer_for_Debian_Edu.html">Fixing an hanging debian installer for Debian Edu
</a>
6147 <p>During christmas, I have been working getting the next version of
6148 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a> ready
6149 for release. The initial problem I looked at was particularly
6152 <P>The installer would hang at the end when it was doing it
6153 post-installation configuration, and whatevery I did to try to find
6154 the cause and fix it always worked while I tested it, but never when I
6155 integrated it into the installer and ran the installation from
6156 scratch. I would try to restart processes, close file descriptors,
6157 remove or create files, and the installer would always unblock and
6158 wrap up its tasks.
</p>
6160 <p>Eventually the cause was found. The kernel was simply running out
6161 of entropy, causing the Kerberos setup to hang waiting for more.
6162 Pressing keys was adding entropy to the kernel, and thus all my tries
6163 to fix the problem worked not because what I was typing to fix it, but
6164 because I was typing.
</P>
6166 <p>The fix I implemented was to add a background process looking at
6167 the level of entropy in the kernel (by checking
6168 /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail), and if it was too small, the
6169 installer will flush the kernel file buffers and do 'find /' to
6170 generate some disk IO. Disk IO generate entropy in the kernel, and is
6171 one of the few things that can be initated from within the system to
6172 generate entropy.
</p>
6175 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/Installation">beta1
6176 of the Debian Edu/Squeeze
</a> version, and we
6177 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu">welcome more testers and
6178 developers
</a>. We plan to release beta2 this weekend.
</p>
6184 Tags:
<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>.
6189 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6193 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html">Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge
</a>
6199 <p>At work we have heaps of servers. I believe the total count is
6200 around
1000 at the moment. To be able to get help from the vendors
6201 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
6202 up to date. If the firmware isn't the latest and greatest, the
6203 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
6204 firmware is upgraded. So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
6205 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
6206 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
6207 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
6208 the tools to do so.
</p>
6210 <p>To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
6211 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got. Most of
6212 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
6213 so far. This blog post is about the Dell part.
</P>
6215 <p>On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
6216 <a href=
"ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz">an XML file
</a>
6217 with firmware information for all
11th generation servers, listing
6218 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
6219 site I can find it. Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
6220 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
6221 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
6222 be activated on the first reboot.
</p>
6224 <p>This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
6225 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
6226 servers at a site? Please get in touch and lets share resources.
</p>
6232 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
6234 # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
6236 'XML::Simple' =
> 'perl-XML-Simple',
6238 for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
6239 eval "use $module;";
6241 my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
6242 system("yum install -y $pkg");
6243 eval "use $module;";
6247 my $errorsto = 'pere@hungry.com';
6253 sub run_firmware_script {
6254 my ($opts, $script) = @_;
6256 print STDERR "fail: missing script name\n";
6259 print STDERR "Running $script\n\n";
6261 if (
0 == system("sh $script $opts")) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
6262 print STDERR "success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n";
6264 print STDERR "fail: firmware script returned error\n";
6268 sub run_firmware_scripts {
6269 my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
6270 # Run firmware packages
6271 for my $dir (@dirs) {
6272 print STDERR "info: Running scripts in $dir\n";
6273 opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die "Unable to open directory $dir: $!";
6274 while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
6275 next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
6276 run_firmware_script($opts, "$dir/$s");
6284 print STDERR "info: Downloading $url\n";
6285 system("wget --quiet \"$url\"");
6290 my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
6293 if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
6295 # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
6296 system('yum install -y compat-libstdc++-
33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail');
6298 my $tmpdir = tempdir(
6302 fetch_dell_fw('catalog/Catalog.xml.gz');
6303 system('gunzip Catalog.xml.gz');
6304 my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list('Catalog.xml');
6305 # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
6308 for my $url (@paths) {
6309 fetch_dell_fw($url);
6311 run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
6313 print STDERR
"error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
6314 print STDERR
"error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
6318 print STDERR
"error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
6319 print STDERR
"error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
6325 my $url =
"ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path";
6329 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
6330 # firmware packages to download from Dell. Only work for Linux
6331 # machines and
11th generation Dell servers.
6332 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
6333 my $filename = shift;
6335 my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
6337 my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
6339 print STDERR
"Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n";
6341 my $xml = XMLin($filename);
6343 for my $bundle (@{$xml-
>{SoftwareBundle}}) {
6344 my $brand = $bundle-
>{TargetSystems}-
>{Brand}-
>{Display}-
>{content};
6345 my $model = $bundle-
>{TargetSystems}-
>{Brand}-
>{Model}-
>{Display}-
>{content};
6347 if ("ARRAY" eq ref $bundle-
>{TargetOSes}-
>{OperatingSystem}) {
6348 $oscode = $bundle-
>{TargetOSes}-
>{OperatingSystem}[
0]-
>{osCode};
6350 $oscode = $bundle-
>{TargetOSes}-
>{OperatingSystem}-
>{osCode};
6352 if ($mybrand eq $brand && $mymodel eq $model && "LIN" eq $oscode)
6354 @paths = map { $_-
>{path} } @{$bundle-
>{Contents}-
>{Package}};
6357 for my $component (@{$xml-
>{SoftwareComponent}}) {
6358 my $componenttype = $component-
>{ComponentType}-
>{value};
6360 # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
6361 next if 'APAC' eq $componenttype;
6363 my $cpath = $component-
>{path};
6364 for my $path (@paths) {
6365 if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
6366 push(@paths, $cpath);
6374 <p>The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
6375 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking. Anyone know a
6376 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers? At the
6377 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
6384 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>.
6389 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6393 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_e_book_kiosk_for_the_public_libraries_.html">Free e-book kiosk for the public libraries?
</a>
6399 <p>Here in Norway the public libraries are debating with the
6400 publishing houses how to handle electronic books. Surprisingly, the
6401 libraries seem to be willing to accept digital restriction mechanisms
6402 (DRM) on books and renting e-books with artificial scarcity from the
6403 publishing houses. Time limited renting (
2-
3 years) is one proposed
6404 model, and only allowing X borrowers for each book is another.
6405 Personally I find it amazing that libraries are even considering such
6408 <p>Anyway, while reading
<a href=
"http://boklaben.no/?p=220">part of
6409 this debate
</a>, it occurred to me that someone should present a more
6410 sensible approach to the libraries, to allow its borrowers to get used
6411 to a better model. The idea is simple:
</p>
6413 <p>Create a computer system for the libraries, either in the form of a
6414 Live DVD or a installable distribution, that provide a simple kiosk
6415 solution to hand out free e-books. As a start, the books distributed
6416 by
<a href=
"http://www.gutenberg.org/">Project Gutenberg
</a> (about
6417 36,
000 books),
<a href=
"http://runeberg.org/">Project Runenberg
</a>
6418 (
1149 books) and
<a href=
"http://www.archive.org/details/texts">The
6419 Internet Archive
</a> (
3,
033,
748 books) could be included, but any book
6420 where the copyright has expired or with a free licence could be
6423 <p>The computer system would make it easy to:
</p>
6427 <li>Copy e-books into a USB stick, reading tablets, cell phones and
6428 other relevant equipment.
</li>
6430 <li>Show the books for reading on the the screen in the library.
</li>
6434 <p>In addition to such kiosk solution, there should probably be a web
6435 site as well to allow people easy access to these books without
6436 visiting the library. The site would be the distribution point for
6437 the kiosk systems, which would connect regularly to fetch any new
6438 books available.
</p>
6440 <p>Are there anyone working on a system like this? I guess it would
6441 fit any library in the world, and not just the Norwegian public
6448 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett
</a>.
6453 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6457 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ripping_problematic_DVDs_using_dvdbackup_and_genisoimage.html">Ripping problematic DVDs using dvdbackup and genisoimage
</a>
6463 <p>For convenience, I want to store copies of all my DVDs on my file
6464 server. It allow me to save shelf space flat while still having my
6465 movie collection easily available. It also make it possible to let
6466 the kids see their favourite DVDs without wearing the physical copies
6467 down. I prefer to store the DVDs as ISOs to keep the DVD menu and
6468 subtitle options intact. It also ensure that the entire film is one
6469 file on the disk. As this is for personal use, the ripping is
6470 perfectly legal here in Norway.
</p>
6472 <p>Normally I rip the DVDs using dd like this:
</p>
6476 # apt-get install lsdvd
6477 title=$(lsdvd
2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $
3}')
6478 dd if=/dev/dvd of=/storage/dvds/$title.iso bs=
1M
6481 <p>But some DVDs give a input/output error when I read it, and I have
6482 been looking for a better alternative. I have no idea why this I/O
6483 error occur, but suspect my DVD drive, the Linux kernel driver or
6484 something fishy with the DVDs in question. Or perhaps all three.
</p>
6486 <p>Anyway, I believe I found a solution today using dvdbackup and
6487 genisoimage. This script gave me a working ISO for a problematic
6488 movie by first extracting the DVD file system and then re-packing it
6493 # apt-get install lsdvd dvdbackup genisoimage
6495 tmpdir=/storage/dvds/
6496 title=$(lsdvd
2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $
3}')
6497 dvdbackup -i /dev/dvd -M -o $tmpdir -n$title
6498 genisoimage -dvd-video -o $tmpdir/$title.iso $tmpdir/$title
6499 rm -rf $tmpdir/$title
6502 <p>Anyone know of a better way available in Debian/Squeeze?
</p>
6504 <p>Update
2011-
09-
18: I got a tip from Konstantin Khomoutov about the
6505 readom program from the wodim package. It is specially written to
6506 read optical media, and is called like this:
<tt>readom dev=/dev/dvd
6507 f=image.iso
</tt>. It got
6 GB along with the problematic Cars DVD
6508 before it failed, and failed right away with a Timmy Time DVD.
</p>
6510 <p>Next, I got a tip from Bastian Blank about
6511 <a href=
"http://bblank.thinkmo.de/blog/new-software-python-dvdvideo">his
6512 program python-dvdvideo
</a>, which seem to be just what I am looking
6513 for. Tested it with my problematic Timmy Time DVD, and it succeeded
6514 creating a ISO image. The git source built and installed just fine in
6515 Squeeze, so I guess this will be my tool of choice in the future.
</p>
6521 Tags:
<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/video">video
</a>.
6526 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6530 <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>
6536 <p>Wouter Verhelst have some
6537 <a href=
"http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot">interesting
6538 comments and opinions
</a> on my blog post on
6539 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">the
6540 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian
</a> and my blog post about
6541 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">the
6542 default KDE desktop in Debian
</a>. I only have time to address one
6543 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
6544 misunderstanding he bring forward:
</p>
6547 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
6548 single-user system (by adding 'single' to the kernel command line;
6549 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
6552 <p>This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
6553 and booting into runlevel
1 is the same. I am not surprised he
6554 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
6555 thing to believe. But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
6556 runlevel
1 do not work properly and it isn't the same as single user
6557 mode. I'll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
6558 hard to explain.
</p>
6560 <p>Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
6561 "
<tt>~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin
</tt>". This means the only thing that is
6562 executed in single user mode is sulogin. Single user mode is a boot
6563 state "between
" the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
6564 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
6565 enters the single user state. When switching to runlevel 1, the state
6566 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
6567 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
6568 runs "init -t1 S
" to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
6569 1. It is confusing that the 'S' (single user) init mode is not the
6570 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
6573 <p>This summary might make it clearer. When booting for the first
6574 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
6575 "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin
</tt>". When booting into
6576 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc
6577 S; /etc/init.d/rc
1; /sbin/sulogin
</tt>". A problem show up when
6578 trying to continue after visiting single user mode. Not all services
6579 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
6580 unpredicatble state. This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
6581 after visiting single user mode.</p>
6583 <p>A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
6584 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/. When switching from say runlevel 2
6585 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
6586 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
6587 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
6588 2-5. I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
6589 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not <strong>required</strong> to get a
6590 functioning single user mode during boot.</p>
6592 <p>I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
6593 and discovered this problem a few years ago. I suspect it originates
6594 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.</p>
6600 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>.
6605 <div class="padding
"></div>
6609 <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>
6615 <p>In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
6616 are started from /etc/rcS.d/. In fact, there is a bite more of them
6617 than make sense, and this causes a few problems. What kind of
6618 problems, you might ask. There are at least two problems. The first
6619 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
6620 runlevel 1. One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
6621 the expected state. The other is that single user boot will sometimes
6622 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
6623 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
6624 machine from a problem in that subsystem. A minor additional point is
6625 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
6626 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
6627 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.</p>
6629 <p>So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/. In short, only the
6630 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
6631 presented during a single user boot should go there. Everything else
6632 should go into the numeric runlevels. This means things like
6633 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
6634 the numeric runlevels. Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
6635 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
6636 out. Do your package have one of them? Please help us make single
6637 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.</p>
6639 <p>Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
6640 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
6641 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
6644 <p>As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound. To keep
6645 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
6646 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
6647 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
6648 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
6649 moved first. This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
6650 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
6651 the system state correct. This will require some coordination when it
6652 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
6653 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
6654 on them. Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
6655 package, while others are still left to do. I wish I had time to work
6656 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
6657 find time to push this forward.</p>
6663 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>.
6668 <div class="padding
"></div>
6672 <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>
6678 <p>While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
6679 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
6680 desktop to be useful for more people. The use case for this is my
6681 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
6684 <p>I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
6685 implement. After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
6686 do this in Debian we would have a source.</p>
6690 <li><strong>Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.</strong> When there
6691 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
6692 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
6693 tool to handle it. I have no problem guiding both of my parents
6694 through the process over the phone. If a kernel reboot is required,
6695 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool. Last
6696 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
6699 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
6700 plugins.</strong> When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
6701 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
6702 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
6703 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
6704 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
6705 Packages file in the APT archive). If one or more packages are found,
6706 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
6707 type. If the package require the user to accept some non-free
6708 license, this is explained to the user. The entire process make it
6709 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
6710 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
6711 not the browser for any missing features.</li>
6713 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
6714 handlers.</strong> When the media players encounter a format or codec
6715 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
6716 should search for a package that would add support for it. This
6717 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264. The selection
6718 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
6719 plugin handling. This is as far as I know implemented using a
6720 gstreamer hook. The end result is that the user easily get access to
6721 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
6722 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.</li>
6724 <li><strong>Better browser handling of some MIME types.</strong> When
6725 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
6726 start emacs to show it. If I remember correctly, when doing the same
6727 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser. At least I
6728 know Opera will show text files within the browser. I much prefer the
6729 latter behaviour.</li>
6733 <p>There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
6734 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
6735 it do not matter much.</p>
6737 <p>I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
6738 Debian release. It would require the coordinated effort of several
6739 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.</p>
6745 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>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web
">web</a>.
6750 <div class="padding
"></div>
6754 <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>
6760 <p>The Norwegian <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/
">FiksGataMi</A>
6761 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
6762 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
6763 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
6764 security support for a few years.</p>
6766 <p>The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
6767 that are missing in Debian at the moment. It would be great if these
6768 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
6769 their own <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com
">FixMyStreet</a> clone
6770 in their own country using only Debian packages. The list of modules
6771 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn't very long, and I hope the perl group
6772 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
6773 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
6774 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
6775 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
6776 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
6777 easier in the future.</p>
6779 <p>Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
6780 installed on my server was a simple call to 'cpan2deb Module::Name'
6781 and 'dpkg -i' to install the resulting package. But this leave me
6782 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
6783 do not have time for.</p>
6789 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>.
6794 <div class="padding
"></div>
6798 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Software_vs__proprietary_softare___.html
">Free Software vs. proprietary softare...</a>
6805 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/
2011/
06/
20/open-source-vs-closed-source-eulas/
">the
6806 thingiverse blog</a>, I came across two highlights of interesting
6808 <a href="http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Autodesk_EULA
">Autodesk</a>
6810 <a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/
2011/
06/things-you-cant-do-with-the-microsoft-kinect-sdk.html
">Microsoft
6811 Kinect</a> End User License Agreements (EULAs), which illustrates
6812 quite well why I stay away from software with EULAs. Whenever I take
6813 the time to read their content, the terms are simply unacceptable.</p>
6819 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett
">opphavsrett</a>.
6824 <div class="padding
"></div>
6828 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Experimental_Open311_API_for_the_mySociety_fixmystreet_system.html
">Experimental Open311 API for the mySociety fixmystreet system</a>
6834 <p>Today, the first draft implementation of an
6835 <a href="http://www.open311.org/
">Open311 API</a> for the Norwegian
6836 service <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/
">FiksGataMi</a> started to
6837 work. It is only available on the developer server for now, and I
6838 have not tested it using any existing Open311 client (I lack the
6839 platforms needed to run the clients I have found so far), but it is
6840 able to query the database and extract a list of open and closed
6841 requests within a given category and reported to a given municipality.
6842 I believe that is a good start to create a useful service for those
6843 that want to do data mining on the requests submitted so far.</p>
6845 <p>Where is it? Visit
6846 <a href="http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/
">http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/</a>
6847 to have a look. Please send feedback to the
6848 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami
">fiksgatami
6849 (at) nuug.no</a> mailing list.</p>
6855 Tags: <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/open311
">open311</a>.
6860 <div class="padding
"></div>
6864 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Initial_notes_on_adding_Open311_server_API_on_FixMyStreet.html
">Initial notes on adding Open311 server API on FixMyStreet</a>
6870 <p>The last few days I have spent some time trying to add support for
6871 the <a href="http://www.open311.org/
">Open311 API</a> in the
6872 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/
">Norwegian FixMyStreet service</a>.
6873 Earlier I believed Open311 would be a useful API to use to submit
6874 reports to the municipalities, but when I noticed that the
6875 <a href="http://fixmystreet.org.nz/
">New Zealand version</a> of
6876 FixMyStreet had implemented Open311 on the server side, it occurred to
6877 me that this was a nice way to allow the public, press and
6878 municipalities to do data mining directly in the FixMyStreet service.
6879 Thus I went to work implementing the Open311 specification for
6880 FixMyStreet. The implementation is not yet ready, but I am starting
6881 to get a draft limping along. In the process, I have discovered a few
6882 issues with the Open311 specification.</p>
6884 <p>One obvious missing feature is the lack of natural language
6885 handling in the specification. The specification seem to assume all
6886 reports will be written in English, and do not provide a way for the
6887 receiving end to specify which languages are understood there. To be
6888 able to use the same client and submit to several Open311 receivers,
6889 it would be useful to know which language to use when writing reports.
6890 I believe the specification should be extended to allow the receivers
6891 of problem reports to specify which language they accept, and the
6892 submitter to specify which language the report is written in.
6893 Language of a text can also be automatically guessed using statistical
6894 methods, but for multi-lingual persons like myself, it is useful to
6895 know which language to use when writing a problem report. I suspect
6896 some lang=nb,nn kind of attribute would solve it.</p>
6898 <p>A key part of the Open311 API is the list of services provided,
6899 which is similar to the categories used by FixMyStreet. One issue I
6900 run into is the need to specify both name and unique identifier for
6901 each category. The specification do not state that the identifier
6902 should be numeric, but all example implementations have used numbers
6903 here. In FixMyStreet, there is no number associated with each
6904 category. As the specification do not forbid it, I will use the name
6905 as the unique identifier for now and see how open311 clients handle
6908 <p>The report format in open311 and the report format in FixMyStreet
6909 differ in a key part. FixMyStreet have a title and a description,
6910 while Open311 only have a description and lack the title. I'm not
6911 quite sure how to best handle this yet. When asking for a FixMyStreet
6912 report in Open311 format, I just merge title an description into the
6913 open311 description, but this is not going to work if the open311 API
6914 should be used for submitting new reports to FixMyStreet.</p>
6916 <p>The search feature in Open311 is missing a way to ask for problems
6917 near a geographic location. I believe this is important if one is to
6918 use Open311 as the query language for mobile units. The specification
6919 should be extended to handle this, probably using some new lat=, lon=
6920 and range= options.</p>
6922 <p>The final challenge I see is that the FixMyStreet code handle
6923 several administrations in one interface, while the Open311 API seem
6924 to assume only one administration. For FixMyStreet, this mean a
6925 report can be sent to several administrations, and the categories
6926 available depend on the location of the problem. Not quite sure how
6927 to best handle this. I've noticed
6928 <a href="http://seeclickfix.com/open311/
">SeeClickFix</a> added
6929 latitude and longitude options to the services request, but it do not
6930 solve the problem of what to return when no location is specified.
6931 Will have to investigate this a bit more.</p>
6933 <p>My distaste for web forums have kept me from bringing these issues
6934 up with the open311 developer group. I really wish they had a email
6935 list available via <a href="http://www.gmane.org/
">Gmane</a> to use for
6936 discussions instead of only
6937 <a href="http://lists.open311.org/groups/discuss
">a forum<a/>. Oh,
6938 well. That will probably resolve itself, one way or another. I've
6939 also tried visiting the IRC channel #open311 on FreeNode, but no-one
6940 seem to reply to my questions there. This make me wonder if I just
6941 fail to understand how the open311 community work. It sure do not
6942 work like the free software project communities I am used to.</p>
6948 Tags: <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/open311
">open311</a>.
6953 <div class="padding
"></div>
6957 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_enteres_Google_Summer_of_Code_2011.html
">Gnash enteres Google Summer of Code 2011</a>
6963 <p><a href="http://www.getgnash.org/
">The Gnash project</a> is still
6964 the most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation.
6965 A few days ago the project
6966 <a href="http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnash-dev/
2011-
04/msg00011.html
">announced</a>
6967 that it will participate in Google Summer of Code. I hope many
6968 students apply, and that some of them succeed in getting AVM2 support
6975 Tags: <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>.
6980 <div class="padding
"></div>
6984 <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>
6990 <p>Here is a small update for my English readers. Most of my blog
6991 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
6992 update in English.</p>
6994 <p>The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
6995 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
6996 of the British service
6997 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/
">FixMyStreet</a> up and running,
6998 and it has been running for a month now. The entire project has been
6999 organised by me and two others. Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
7000 to fund the development work. In January I drafted a contract with
7001 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/
">mySociety</a> on what to develop,
7002 and in February the development took place. Most of it involved
7003 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
7004 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
7005 running in any country by now. The Norwegian
7006 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/
">FiksGataMi</a> is using
7007 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/
">OpenStreetmap</a> as the map
7008 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
7009 support for this had to be added/fixed.</p>
7011 <p>The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
7012 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th. The system is
7013 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
7014 problem reports in a few weeks. Soon we hope to announce the Android
7015 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
7016 public infrastructure.</p>
7018 <p>Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
7025 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>.
7030 <div class="padding
"></div>
7034 <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>
7040 <p>The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
7041 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo. My idea is that
7042 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
7043 available on the Internet, and check our locally
7044 maintained/distributed software against this information. It should
7045 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten. The
7046 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
7047 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
7048 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
7049 out which security holes were present in our free software
7052 <p>After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
7053 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
7054 consistent way across data sources. I considered several ways to do
7055 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
7056 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
7057 existing naming scheme. And it seem like I am not the first one to
7058 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
7059 solution. Enter the <a href="http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html
">Common
7060 Platform Enumeration</a> dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
7061 software, hardware and other platform components. The CPE ids are
7062 mapped to CVEs in the <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/
">National
7063 Vulnerability Database</a>, allowing me to look up know security
7064 issues for any CPE name. With this in place, all I need to do is to
7065 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
7066 This is fairly trivial (I google for 'cve cpe $package' and check the
7067 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).</p>
7069 <p>To give you an example. The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
7070 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip. If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
7071 check out, one could look up
7072 <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
7073 in NVD</a> and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
7074 The most recent one is
7075 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-
2010-
0001">CVE-2010-0001</a>,
7076 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
7077 list of affected versions is provided.</p>
7079 <p>The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
7080 for offline processing of issues. Using this dump, I've written a
7081 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
7082 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs. One give it CPEs
7083 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
7084 security issues out.</p>
7086 <p>Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
7087 information need to be high. For that to happen, I believe as many as
7088 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database. I notice
7090 <a href="https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt
">a
7091 map from CVE to CPE</a>, indicating that they are using the CPE
7092 information. I'm not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.</p>
7094 <p>To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
7095 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
7096 the CVE database in NVD. The result look fairly good, but there are
7097 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
7098 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
7099 Debian believe are affected by a CVE). Hope to find time to improve
7100 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
7101 someone maintaining it. So far my three emails with questions and
7102 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
7103 established soon.</p>
7105 <p>An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
7106 mapping. It would be useful to know which packages in for example
7107 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
7108 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
7109 for their packages.</p>
7115 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>.
7120 <div class="padding
"></div>
7124 <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>
7131 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data
">discover-data</a>
7132 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
7133 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
7134 information. One part of this script that I find very useful when
7135 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
7136 to the PCI device it claims. It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
7137 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with. To see
7138 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
7139 <tt>/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3>&1</tt>. The relevant output on
7140 one of my machines like this:</p>
7144 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
7147 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
7156 <p>The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
7157 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:</p>
7160 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
7161 echo loaded pci modules:
7163 cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
7164 for address in * ; do
7165 if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
7166 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
7167 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
7168 address=$(echo $address |sed s/
0000://)
7169 id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n
1 | awk '{print $
3}'`
7179 <p>Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
7183 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
7184 echo loaded usb modules:
7186 cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
7187 for address in * ; do
7188 if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
7189 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
7190 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
7191 address=$(echo $address |sed s/
0000://)
7192 id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n
1 | awk '{print $
6}')
7204 <p>This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
7211 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>.
7216 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7220 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_video_format_most_supported_in_web_browsers_.html">The video format most supported in web browsers?
</a>
7226 <p>The video format struggle on the web continues, and the three
7227 contenders seem to be Ogg Theora, H
.264 and WebM. Most video sites
7228 seem to use H
.264, while others use Ogg Theora. Interestingly enough,
7229 the comments I see give me the feeling that a lot of people believe
7230 H
.264 is the most supported video format in browsers, but according to
7231 the Wikipedia article on
7232 <a href=
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video">HTML5 video
</a>,
7233 this is not true. Check out the nice table of supprted formats in
7234 different browsers there. The format supported by most browsers is
7235 Ogg Theora, supported by released versions of Mozilla Firefox, Google
7236 Chrome, Chromium, Opera, Konqueror, Epiphany, Origyn Web Browser and
7237 BOLT browser, while not supported by Internet Explorer nor Safari.
7238 The runner up is WebM supported by released versions of Google Chrome
7239 Chromium Opera and Origyn Web Browser, and test versions of Mozilla
7240 Firefox. H
.264 is supported by released versions of Safari, Origyn
7241 Web Browser and BOLT browser, and the test version of Internet
7242 Explorer. Those wanting Ogg Theora support in Internet Explorer and
7243 Safari can install plugins to get it.
</p>
7245 <p>To me, the simple conclusion from this is that to reach most users
7246 without any extra software installed, one uses Ogg Theora with the
7247 HTML5 video tag. Of course to reach all those without a browser
7248 handling HTML5, one need fallback mechanisms. In
7249 <a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG
</a>, we provide first fallback to a
7250 plugin capable of playing MPEG1 video, and those without such support
7251 we have a second fallback to the Cortado java applet playing Ogg
7252 Theora. This seem to work quite well, as can be seen in an
<a
7253 href=
"http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20110111-semantic-web/">example
7254 from last week
</a>.
</p>
7256 <p>The reason Ogg Theora is the most supported format, and H
.264 is
7257 the least supported is simple. Implementing and using H
.264
7258 require royalty payment to MPEG-LA, and the terms of use from MPEG-LA
7259 are incompatible with free software licensing. If you believed H
.264
7260 was without royalties and license terms, check out
7261 "
<a href=
"http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H
.264 – Not The Kind Of
7262 Free That Matters
</a>" by Simon Phipps.</p>
7264 <p>A incomplete list of sites providing video in Ogg Theora is
7266 <a href="http://wiki.xiph.org/index.php/List_of_Theora_videos
">the
7267 Xiph.org wiki</a>, if you want to have a look. I'm not aware of a
7268 similar list for WebM nor H.264.</p>
7270 <p>Update 2011-01-16 09:40: A question from Tollef on IRC made me
7271 realise that I failed to make it clear enough this text is about the
7272 <video> tag support in browsers and not the video support
7273 provided by external plugins like the Flash plugins.</p>
7279 Tags: <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>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video
">video</a>.
7284 <div class="padding
"></div>
7288 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Chrome_plan_to_drop_H_264_support_for_HTML5__lt_video_gt_.html
">Chrome plan to drop H.264 support for HTML5 <video></a>
7294 <p>Today I discovered
7295 <a href="http://www.digi.no/
860070/google-dropper-h264-stotten-i-chrome
">via
7296 digi.no</a> that the Chrome developers, in a surprising announcement,
7297 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/
2011/
01/html-video-codec-support-in-chrome.html
">yesterday
7298 announced</a> plans to drop H.264 support for HTML5 <video> in
7299 the browser. The argument used is that H.264 is not a "completely
7300 open" codec technology. If you believe H
.264 was free for everyone
7301 to use, I recommend having a look at the essay
7302 "
<a href=
"http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H
.264 – Not The Kind Of
7303 Free That Matters
</a>". It is not free of cost for creators of video
7304 tools, nor those of us that want to publish on the Internet, and the
7305 terms provided by MPEG-LA excludes free software projects from
7306 licensing the patents needed for H.264. Some background information
7307 on the Google announcement is available from
7308 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/
24243/Google_To_Drop_H264_Support_from_Chrome
">OSnews</a>.
7311 <p>Personally, I believe it is great that Google is taking a stand to
7312 promote equal terms for everyone when it comes to video publishing on
7313 the Internet. This can only be done by publishing using free and open
7314 standards, which is only possible if the web browsers provide support
7315 for these free and open standards. At the moment there seem to be two
7316 camps in the web browser world when it come to video support. Some
7317 browsers support H.264, and others support
7318 <a href="http://www.theora.org/
">Ogg Theora</a> and
7319 <a href="http://www.webmproject.org/
">WebM</a>
7320 (<a href="http://www.diracvideo.org/
">Dirac</a> is not really an option
7321 yet), forcing those of us that want to publish video on the Internet
7322 and which can not accept the terms of use presented by MPEG-LA for
7323 H.264 to not reach all potential viewers.
7324 Wikipedia keep <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video
">an
7325 updated summary</a> of the current browser support.</p>
7327 <p>Not surprising, several people would prefer Google to keep
7328 promoting H.264, and John Gruber
7329 <a href="http://daringfireball.net/
2011/
01/simple_questions
">presents
7330 the mind set</a> of these people quite well. His rhetorical questions
7331 provoked a reply from Thom Holwerda with another set of questions
7332 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/
24245/
10_Questions_for_John_Gruber_Regarding_H_264_WebM
">presenting
7333 the issues with H.264</a>. Both are worth a read.</p>
7335 <p>Some argue that if Google is dropping H.264 because it isn't free,
7336 they should also drop support for the Adobe Flash plugin. This
7337 argument was covered by Simon Phipps in
7338 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/
2011/
01/google-and-h264---far-from-hypocritical/index.htm
">todays
7339 blog post</a>, which I find to put the issue in context. To me it
7340 make perfect sense to drop native H.264 support for HTML5 in the
7341 browser while still allowing plugins.</p>
7343 <p>I suspect the reason this announcement make so many people protest,
7344 is that all the users and promoters of H.264 suddenly get an uneasy
7345 feeling that they might be backing the wrong horse. A lot of TV
7346 broadcasters have been moving to H.264 the last few years, and a lot
7347 of money has been invested in hardware based on the belief that they
7348 could use the same video format for both broadcasting and web
7349 publishing. Suddenly this belief is shaken.</p>
7351 <p>An interesting question is why Google is doing this. While the
7352 presented argument might be true enough, I believe Google would only
7353 present the argument if the change make sense from a business
7354 perspective. One reason might be that they are currently negotiating
7355 with MPEG-LA over royalties or usage terms, and giving MPEG-LA the
7356 feeling that dropping H.264 completely from Chroome, Youtube and
7357 Google Video would improve the negotiation position of Google.
7358 Another reason might be that Google want to save money by not having
7359 to pay the video tax to MPEG-LA at all, and thus want to move to a
7360 video format not requiring royalties at all. A third reason might be
7361 that the Chrome development team simply want to avoid the
7362 Chrome/Chromium split to get more help with the development of Chrome.
7363 I guess time will tell.</p>
7365 <p>Update 2011-01-15: The Google Chrome team provided
7366 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/
2011/
01/more-about-chrome-html-video-codec.html
">more
7367 background and information on the move</a> it a blog post yesterday.</p>
7373 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard
">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video
">video</a>.
7378 <div class="padding
"></div>
7382 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_standards_are_Free_and_Open_as_defined_by_Digistan_.html
">What standards are Free and Open as defined by Digistan?</a>
7389 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Ogg_Theora_a_free_and_open_standard_.html
">compare
7391 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition
">the Digistan
7392 definition</a> of a free and open standard, I concluded that this need
7393 to be done for more standards and started on a framework for doing
7394 this. As a start, I want to get the status for all the standards in
7395 the Norwegian reference directory, which include UTF-8, HTML, PDF, ODF,
7396 JPEG, PNG, SVG and others. But to be able to complete this in a
7397 reasonable time frame, I will need help.</p>
7399 <p>If you want to help out with this work, please visit
7400 <a href="http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/standard/digistan-analyse
">the
7401 wiki pages I have set up for this</a>, and let me know that you want
7402 to help out. The IRC channel #nuug on irc.freenode.net is a good
7403 place to coordinate this for now, as it is the IRC channel for the
7404 NUUG association where I have created the framework (I am the leader
7405 of the Norwegian Unix User Group).</p>
7407 <p>The framework is still forming, and a lot is left to do. Do not be
7408 scared by the sketchy form of the current pages. :)</p>
7414 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan
">digistan</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>.
7419 <div class="padding
"></div>
7423 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_many_definitions_of_a_open_standard.html
">The many definitions of a open standard</a>
7429 <p>One of the reasons I like the Digistan definition of
7430 "<a href=
"http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">Free and
7431 Open Standard
</a>" is that this is a new term, and thus the meaning of
7432 the term has been decided by Digistan. The term "Open Standard
" has
7433 become so misunderstood that it is no longer very useful when talking
7434 about standards. One end up discussing which definition is the best
7435 one and with such frame the only one gaining are the proponents of
7436 de-facto standards and proprietary solutions.</p>
7438 <p>But to give us an idea about the diversity of definitions of open
7439 standards, here are a few that I know about. This list is not
7440 complete, but can be a starting point for those that want to do a
7441 complete survey. More definitions are available on the
7442 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard
">wikipedia
7445 <p>First off is my favourite, the definition from the European
7446 Interoperability Framework version 1.0. Really sad to notice that BSA
7447 and others has succeeded in getting it removed from version 2.0 of the
7448 framework by stacking the committee drafting the new version with
7449 their own people. Anyway, the definition is still available and it
7450 include the key properties needed to make sure everyone can use a
7451 specification on equal terms.</p>
7455 <p>The following are the minimal characteristics that a specification
7456 and its attendant documents must have in order to be considered an
7461 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
7462 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
7463 open decision-making procedure available to all interested parties
7464 (consensus or majority decision etc.).</li>
7466 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
7467 document is available either freely or at a nominal charge. It must be
7468 permissible to all to copy, distribute and use it for no fee or at a
7471 <li>The intellectual property - i.e. patents possibly present - of
7472 (parts of) the standard is made irrevocably available on a royalty-
7475 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.</li>
7480 <p>Another one originates from my friends over at
7481 <a href="http://www.dkuug.dk/
">DKUUG</a>, who coined and gathered
7482 support for <a href="http://www.aaben-standard.dk/
">this
7483 definition</a> in 2004. It even made it into the Danish parlament as
7484 <a href="http://www.ft.dk/dokumenter/tingdok.aspx?/samling/
20051/beslutningsforslag/B103/som_fremsat.htm
">their
7485 definition of a open standard</a>. Another from a different part of
7486 the Danish government is available from the wikipedia page.</p>
7490 <p>En åben standard opfylder følgende krav:</p>
7494 <li>Veldokumenteret med den fuldstændige specifikation offentligt
7497 <li>Frit implementerbar uden økonomiske, politiske eller juridiske
7498 begrænsninger på implementation og anvendelse.</li>
7500 <li>Standardiseret og vedligeholdt i et åbent forum (en såkaldt
7501 "standardiseringsorganisation") via en åben proces.
</li>
7507 <p>Then there is
<a href=
"http://www.fsfe.org/projects/os/def.html">the
7508 definition
</a> from Free Software Foundation Europe.
</p>
7512 <p>An Open Standard refers to a format or protocol that is
</p>
7516 <li>subject to full public assessment and use without constraints in a
7517 manner equally available to all parties;
</li>
7519 <li>without any components or extensions that have dependencies on
7520 formats or protocols that do not meet the definition of an Open
7521 Standard themselves;
</li>
7523 <li>free from legal or technical clauses that limit its utilisation by
7524 any party or in any business model;
</li>
7526 <li>managed and further developed independently of any single vendor
7527 in a process open to the equal participation of competitors and third
7530 <li>available in multiple complete implementations by competing
7531 vendors, or as a complete implementation equally available to all
7538 <p>A long time ago, SUN Microsystems, now bought by Oracle, created
7540 <a href=
"http://blogs.sun.com/dennisding/resource/Open%20Standard%20Definition.pdf">Open
7541 Standards Checklist
</a> with a fairly detailed description.
</p>
7544 <p>Creation and Management of an Open Standard
7548 <li>Its development and management process must be collaborative and
7553 <li>Participation must be accessible to all those who wish to
7554 participate and can meet fair and reasonable criteria
7555 imposed by the organization under which it is developed
7558 <li>The processes must be documented and, through a known
7559 method, can be changed through input from all
7562 <li>The process must be based on formal and binding commitments for
7563 the disclosure and licensing of intellectual property rights.
</li>
7565 <li>Development and management should strive for consensus,
7566 and an appeals process must be clearly outlined.
</li>
7568 <li>The standard specification must be open to extensive
7569 public review at least once in its life-cycle, with
7570 comments duly discussed and acted upon, if required.
</li>
7578 <p>Use and Licensing of an Open Standard
</p>
7581 <li>The standard must describe an interface, not an implementation,
7582 and the industry must be capable of creating multiple, competing
7583 implementations to the interface described in the standard without
7584 undue or restrictive constraints. Interfaces include APIs,
7585 protocols, schemas, data formats and their encoding.
</li>
7587 <li> The standard must not contain any proprietary "hooks" that create
7588 a technical or economic barriers
</li>
7590 <li>Faithful implementations of the standard must
7591 interoperate. Interoperability means the ability of a computer
7592 program to communicate and exchange information with other computer
7593 programs and mutually to use the information which has been
7594 exchanged. This includes the ability to use, convert, or exchange
7595 file formats, protocols, schemas, interface information or
7596 conventions, so as to permit the computer program to work with other
7597 computer programs and users in all the ways in which they are
7598 intended to function.
</li>
7600 <li>It must be permissible for anyone to copy, distribute and read the
7601 standard for a nominal fee, or even no fee. If there is a fee, it
7602 must be low enough to not preclude widespread use.
</li>
7604 <li>It must be possible for anyone to obtain free (no royalties or
7605 fees; also known as "royalty free"), worldwide, non-exclusive and
7606 perpetual licenses to all essential patent claims to make, use and
7607 sell products based on the standard. The only exceptions are
7608 terminations per the reciprocity and defensive suspension terms
7609 outlined below. Essential patent claims include pending, unpublished
7610 patents, published patents, and patent applications. The license is
7611 only for the exact scope of the standard in question.
7615 <li> May be conditioned only on reciprocal licenses to any of
7616 licensees' patent claims essential to practice that standard
7617 (also known as a reciprocity clause)
</li>
7619 <li> May be terminated as to any licensee who sues the licensor
7620 or any other licensee for infringement of patent claims
7621 essential to practice that standard (also known as a
7622 "defensive suspension" clause)
</li>
7624 <li> The same licensing terms are available to every potential
7630 <li>The licensing terms of an open standards must not preclude
7631 implementations of that standard under open source licensing terms
7632 or restricted licensing terms
</li>
7638 <p>It is said that one of the nice things about standards is that
7639 there are so many of them. As you can see, the same holds true for
7640 open standard definitions. Most of the definitions have a lot in
7641 common, and it is not really controversial what properties a open
7642 standard should have, but the diversity of definitions have made it
7643 possible for those that want to avoid a level marked field and real
7644 competition to downplay the significance of open standards. I hope we
7645 can turn this tide by focusing on the advantages of Free and Open
7652 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan
</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>.
7657 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7661 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Ogg_Theora_a_free_and_open_standard_.html">Is Ogg Theora a free and open standard?
</a>
7667 <p><a href=
"http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">The
7668 Digistan definition
</a> of a free and open standard reads like this:
</p>
7672 <p>The Digital Standards Organization defines free and open standard
7677 <li>A free and open standard is immune to vendor capture at all stages
7678 in its life-cycle. Immunity from vendor capture makes it possible to
7679 freely use, improve upon, trust, and extend a standard over time.
</li>
7681 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
7682 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
7683 open decision-making procedure available to all interested
7686 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
7687 document is available freely. It must be permissible to all to copy,
7688 distribute, and use it freely.
</li>
7690 <li>The patents possibly present on (parts of) the standard are made
7691 irrevocably available on a royalty-free basis.
</li>
7693 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.
</li>
7697 <p>The economic outcome of a free and open standard, which can be
7698 measured, is that it enables perfect competition between suppliers of
7699 products based on the standard.
</p>
7702 <p>For a while now I have tried to figure out of Ogg Theora is a free
7703 and open standard according to this definition. Here is a short
7704 writeup of what I have been able to gather so far. I brought up the
7705 topic on the Xiph advocacy mailing list
7706 <a href=
"http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/advocacy/2009-July/001632.html">in
7707 July
2009</a>, for those that want to see some background information.
7708 According to Ivo Emanuel Gonçalves and Monty Montgomery on that list
7709 the Ogg Theora specification fulfils the Digistan definition.
</p>
7711 <p><strong>Free from vendor capture?
</strong></p>
7713 <p>As far as I can see, there is no single vendor that can control the
7714 Ogg Theora specification. It can be argued that the
7715 <a href=
"http://www.xiph.org/">Xiph foundation
</A> is such vendor, but
7716 given that it is a non-profit foundation with the expressed goal
7717 making free and open protocols and standards available, it is not
7718 obvious that this is a real risk. One issue with the Xiph
7719 foundation is that its inner working (as in board member list, or who
7720 control the foundation) are not easily available on the web. I've
7721 been unable to find out who is in the foundation board, and have not
7722 seen any accounting information documenting how money is handled nor
7723 where is is spent in the foundation. It is thus not obvious for an
7724 external observer who control The Xiph foundation, and for all I know
7725 it is possible for a single vendor to take control over the
7726 specification. But it seem unlikely.
</p>
7728 <p><strong>Maintained by open not-for-profit organisation?
</strong></p>
7730 <p>Assuming that the Xiph foundation is the organisation its web pages
7731 claim it to be, this point is fulfilled. If Xiph foundation is
7732 controlled by a single vendor, it isn't, but I have not found any
7733 documentation indicating this.
</p>
7736 <a href=
"http://media.hiof.no/diverse/fad/rapport_4.pdf">a report
</a>
7737 prepared by Audun Vaaler og Børre Ludvigsen for the Norwegian
7738 government, the Xiph foundation is a non-commercial organisation and
7739 the development process is open, transparent and non-Discrimatory.
7740 Until proven otherwise, I believe it make most sense to believe the
7741 report is correct.
</p>
7743 <p><strong>Specification freely available?
</strong></p>
7745 <p>The specification for the
<a href=
"http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/">Ogg
7746 container format
</a> and both the
7747 <a href=
"http://www.xiph.org/vorbis/doc/">Vorbis
</a> and
7748 <a href=
"http://theora.org/doc/">Theora
</a> codeces are available on
7749 the web. This are the terms in the Vorbis and Theora specification:
7753 Anyone may freely use and distribute the Ogg and [Vorbis/Theora]
7754 specifications, whether in private, public, or corporate
7755 capacity. However, the Xiph.Org Foundation and the Ogg project reserve
7756 the right to set the Ogg [Vorbis/Theora] specification and certify
7757 specification compliance.
7761 <p>The Ogg container format is specified in IETF
7762 <a href=
"http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/rfc3533.txt">RFC
3533</a>, and
7763 this is the term:
<p>
7767 <p>This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
7768 others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it
7769 or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published and
7770 distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any kind,
7771 provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are
7772 included on all such copies and derivative works. However, this
7773 document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing
7774 the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other
7775 Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of developing
7776 Internet standards in which case the procedures for copyrights defined
7777 in the Internet Standards process must be followed, or as required to
7778 translate it into languages other than English.
</p>
7780 <p>The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be
7781 revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns.
</p>
7784 <p>All these terms seem to allow unlimited distribution and use, an
7785 this term seem to be fulfilled. There might be a problem with the
7786 missing permission to distribute modified versions of the text, and
7787 thus reuse it in other specifications. Not quite sure if that is a
7788 requirement for the Digistan definition.
</p>
7790 <p><strong>Royalty-free?
</strong></p>
7792 <p>There are no known patent claims requiring royalties for the Ogg
7794 <a href=
"http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=65782">MPEG-LA
</a>
7796 <a href=
"http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/04/30/237238/Steve-Jobs-Hints-At-Theora-Lawsuit">Steve
7797 Jobs
</a> in Apple claim to know about some patent claims (submarine
7798 patents) against the Theora format, but no-one else seem to believe
7799 them. Both Opera Software and the Mozilla Foundation have looked into
7800 this and decided to implement Ogg Theora support in their browsers
7801 without paying any royalties. For now the claims from MPEG-LA and
7802 Steve Jobs seem more like FUD to scare people to use the H
.264 codec
7803 than any real problem with Ogg Theora.
</p>
7805 <p><strong>No constraints on re-use?
</strong></p>
7807 <p>I am not aware of any constraints on re-use.
</p>
7809 <p><strong>Conclusion
</strong></p>
7811 <p>3 of
5 requirements seem obviously fulfilled, and the remaining
2
7812 depend on the governing structure of the Xiph foundation. Given the
7813 background report used by the Norwegian government, I believe it is
7814 safe to assume the last two requirements are fulfilled too, but it
7815 would be nice if the Xiph foundation web site made it easier to verify
7818 <p>It would be nice to see other analysis of other specifications to
7819 see if they are free and open standards.
</p>
7825 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan
</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>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video
</a>.
7830 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7834 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_reply_from_Edgar_Villanueva_to_Microsoft_in_Peru.html">The reply from Edgar Villanueva to Microsoft in Peru
</a>
7841 <a href=
"http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article189879.ece">an
7842 article
</a> in the Norwegian Computerworld magazine about how version
7844 <a href=
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Interoperability_Framework">European
7845 Interoperability Framework
</a> has been successfully lobbied by the
7846 proprietary software industry to remove the focus on free software.
7847 Nothing very surprising there, given
7848 <a href=
"http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/03/29/2115235/Open-Source-Open-Standards-Under-Attack-In-Europe">earlier
7849 reports
</a> on how Microsoft and others have stacked the committees in
7850 this work. But I find this very sad. The definition of
7851 <a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/dokumenter/standard-presse-def-200506.txt">an
7852 open standard from version
1</a> was very good, and something I
7853 believe should be used also in the future, alongside
7854 <a href=
"http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">the
7855 definition from Digistan
</A>. Version
2 have removed the open
7856 standard definition from its content.
</p>
7858 <p>Anyway, the news reminded me of the great reply sent by Dr. Edgar
7859 Villanueva, congressman in Peru at the time, to Microsoft as a reply
7860 to Microsofts attack on his proposal regarding the use of free software
7861 in the public sector in Peru. As the text was not available from a
7862 few of the URLs where it used to be available, I copy it here from
7863 <a href=
"http://gnuwin.epfl.ch/articles/en/reponseperou/villanueva_to_ms.html">my
7864 source
</a> to ensure it is available also in the future. Some
7865 background information about that story is available in
7866 <a href=
"http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6099">an article
</a> from
7867 Linux Journal in
2002.
</p>
7870 <p>Lima,
8th of April,
2002<br>
7871 To: Señor JUAN ALBERTO GONZÁLEZ
<br>
7872 General Manager of Microsoft Perú
</p>
7876 <p>First of all, I thank you for your letter of March
25,
2002 in which you state the official position of Microsoft relative to Bill Number
1609, Free Software in Public Administration, which is indubitably inspired by the desire for Peru to find a suitable place in the global technological context. In the same spirit, and convinced that we will find the best solutions through an exchange of clear and open ideas, I will take this opportunity to reply to the commentaries included in your letter.
</p>
7878 <p>While acknowledging that opinions such as yours constitute a significant contribution, it would have been even more worthwhile for me if, rather than formulating objections of a general nature (which we will analyze in detail later) you had gathered solid arguments for the advantages that proprietary software could bring to the Peruvian State, and to its citizens in general, since this would have allowed a more enlightening exchange in respect of each of our positions.
</p>
7880 <p>With the aim of creating an orderly debate, we will assume that what you call "open source software" is what the Bill defines as "free software", since there exists software for which the source code is distributed together with the program, but which does not fall within the definition established by the Bill; and that what you call "commercial software" is what the Bill defines as "proprietary" or "unfree", given that there exists free software which is sold in the market for a price like any other good or service.
</p>
7882 <p>It is also necessary to make it clear that the aim of the Bill we are discussing is not directly related to the amount of direct savings that can by made by using free software in state institutions. That is in any case a marginal aggregate value, but in no way is it the chief focus of the Bill. The basic principles which inspire the Bill are linked to the basic guarantees of a state of law, such as:
</p>
7886 <li>Free access to public information by the citizen.
</li>
7887 <li>Permanence of public data.
</li>
7888 <li>Security of the State and citizens.
</li>
7892 <p>To guarantee the free access of citizens to public information, it is indispensable that the encoding of data is not tied to a single provider. The use of standard and open formats gives a guarantee of this free access, if necessary through the creation of compatible free software.
</p>
7894 <p>To guarantee the permanence of public data, it is necessary that the usability and maintenance of the software does not depend on the goodwill of the suppliers, or on the monopoly conditions imposed by them. For this reason the State needs systems the development of which can be guaranteed due to the availability of the source code.
</p>
7896 <p>To guarantee national security or the security of the State, it is indispensable to be able to rely on systems without elements which allow control from a distance or the undesired transmission of information to third parties. Systems with source code freely accessible to the public are required to allow their inspection by the State itself, by the citizens, and by a large number of independent experts throughout the world. Our proposal brings further security, since the knowledge of the source code will eliminate the growing number of programs with *spy code*.
</p>
7898 <p>In the same way, our proposal strengthens the security of the citizens, both in their role as legitimate owners of information managed by the state, and in their role as consumers. In this second case, by allowing the growth of a widespread availability of free software not containing *spy code* able to put at risk privacy and individual freedoms.
</p>
7900 <p>In this sense, the Bill is limited to establishing the conditions under which the state bodies will obtain software in the future, that is, in a way compatible with these basic principles.
</p>
7903 <p>From reading the Bill it will be clear that once passed:
<br>
7904 <li>the law does not forbid the production of proprietary software
</li>
7905 <li>the law does not forbid the sale of proprietary software
</li>
7906 <li>the law does not specify which concrete software to use
</li>
7907 <li>the law does not dictate the supplier from whom software will be bought
</li>
7908 <li>the law does not limit the terms under which a software product can be licensed.
</li>
7912 <p>What the Bill does express clearly, is that, for software to be acceptable for the state it is not enough that it is technically capable of fulfilling a task, but that further the contractual conditions must satisfy a series of requirements regarding the license, without which the State cannot guarantee the citizen adequate processing of his data, watching over its integrity, confidentiality, and accessibility throughout time, as these are very critical aspects for its normal functioning.
</p>
7914 <p>We agree, Mr. Gonzalez, that information and communication technology have a significant impact on the quality of life of the citizens (whether it be positive or negative). We surely also agree that the basic values I have pointed out above are fundamental in a democratic state like Peru. So we are very interested to know of any other way of guaranteeing these principles, other than through the use of free software in the terms defined by the Bill.
</p>
7916 <p>As for the observations you have made, we will now go on to analyze them in detail:
</p>
7918 <p>Firstly, you point out that: "
1. The bill makes it compulsory for all public bodies to use only free software, that is to say open source software, which breaches the principles of equality before the law, that of non-discrimination and the right of free private enterprise, freedom of industry and of contract, protected by the constitution."
</p>
7920 <p>This understanding is in error. The Bill in no way affects the rights you list; it limits itself entirely to establishing conditions for the use of software on the part of state institutions, without in any way meddling in private sector transactions. It is a well established principle that the State does not enjoy the wide spectrum of contractual freedom of the private sector, as it is limited in its actions precisely by the requirement for transparency of public acts; and in this sense, the preservation of the greater common interest must prevail when legislating on the matter.
</p>
7922 <p>The Bill protects equality under the law, since no natural or legal person is excluded from the right of offering these goods to the State under the conditions defined in the Bill and without more limitations than those established by the Law of State Contracts and Purchasing (T.U.O. by Supreme Decree No.
012-
2001-PCM).
</p>
7924 <p>The Bill does not introduce any discrimination whatever, since it only establishes *how* the goods have to be provided (which is a state power) and not *who* has to provide them (which would effectively be discriminatory, if restrictions based on national origin, race religion, ideology, sexual preference etc. were imposed). On the contrary, the Bill is decidedly antidiscriminatory. This is so because by defining with no room for doubt the conditions for the provision of software, it prevents state bodies from using software which has a license including discriminatory conditions.
</p>
7926 <p>It should be obvious from the preceding two paragraphs that the Bill does not harm free private enterprise, since the latter can always choose under what conditions it will produce software; some of these will be acceptable to the State, and others will not be since they contradict the guarantee of the basic principles listed above. This free initiative is of course compatible with the freedom of industry and freedom of contract (in the limited form in which the State can exercise the latter). Any private subject can produce software under the conditions which the State requires, or can refrain from doing so. Nobody is forced to adopt a model of production, but if they wish to provide software to the State, they must provide the mechanisms which guarantee the basic principles, and which are those described in the Bill.
</p>
7928 <p>By way of an example: nothing in the text of the Bill would prevent your company offering the State bodies an office "suite", under the conditions defined in the Bill and setting the price that you consider satisfactory. If you did not, it would not be due to restrictions imposed by the law, but to business decisions relative to the method of commercializing your products, decisions with which the State is not involved.
</p>
7930 <p>To continue; you note that:"
2. The bill, by making the use of open source software compulsory, would establish discriminatory and non competitive practices in the contracting and purchasing by public bodies..."
</p>
7932 <p>This statement is just a reiteration of the previous one, and so the response can be found above. However, let us concern ourselves for a moment with your comment regarding "non-competitive ... practices."
</p>
7934 <p>Of course, in defining any kind of purchase, the buyer sets conditions which relate to the proposed use of the good or service. From the start, this excludes certain manufacturers from the possibility of competing, but does not exclude them "a priori", but rather based on a series of principles determined by the autonomous will of the purchaser, and so the process takes place in conformance with the law. And in the Bill it is established that *no one* is excluded from competing as far as he guarantees the fulfillment of the basic principles.
</p>
7936 <p>Furthermore, the Bill *stimulates* competition, since it tends to generate a supply of software with better conditions of usability, and to better existing work, in a model of continuous improvement.
</p>
7938 <p>On the other hand, the central aspect of competivity is the chance to provide better choices to the consumer. Now, it is impossible to ignore the fact that marketing does not play a neutral role when the product is offered on the market (since accepting the opposite would lead one to suppose that firms' expenses in marketing lack any sense), and that therefore a significant expense under this heading can influence the decisions of the purchaser. This influence of marketing is in large measure reduced by the bill that we are backing, since the choice within the framework proposed is based on the *technical merits* of the product and not on the effort put into commercialization by the producer; in this sense, competitiveness is increased, since the smallest software producer can compete on equal terms with the most powerful corporations.
</p>
7940 <p>It is necessary to stress that there is no position more anti-competitive than that of the big software producers, which frequently abuse their dominant position, since in innumerable cases they propose as a solution to problems raised by users: "update your software to the new version" (at the user's expense, naturally); furthermore, it is common to find arbitrary cessation of technical help for products, which, in the provider's judgment alone, are "old"; and so, to receive any kind of technical assistance, the user finds himself forced to migrate to new versions (with non-trivial costs, especially as changes in hardware platform are often involved). And as the whole infrastructure is based on proprietary data formats, the user stays "trapped" in the need to continue using products from the same supplier, or to make the huge effort to change to another environment (probably also proprietary).
</p>
7942 <p>You add: "
3. So, by compelling the State to favor a business model based entirely on open source, the bill would only discourage the local and international manufacturing companies, which are the ones which really undertake important expenditures, create a significant number of direct and indirect jobs, as well as contributing to the GNP, as opposed to a model of open source software which tends to have an ever weaker economic impact, since it mainly creates jobs in the service sector."
</p>
7944 <p>I do not agree with your statement. Partly because of what you yourself point out in paragraph
6 of your letter, regarding the relative weight of services in the context of software use. This contradiction alone would invalidate your position. The service model, adopted by a large number of companies in the software industry, is much larger in economic terms, and with a tendency to increase, than the licensing of programs.
</p>
7946 <p>On the other hand, the private sector of the economy has the widest possible freedom to choose the economic model which best suits its interests, even if this freedom of choice is often obscured subliminally by the disproportionate expenditure on marketing by the producers of proprietary software.
</p>
7948 <p>In addition, a reading of your opinion would lead to the conclusion that the State market is crucial and essential for the proprietary software industry, to such a point that the choice made by the State in this bill would completely eliminate the market for these firms. If that is true, we can deduce that the State must be subsidizing the proprietary software industry. In the unlikely event that this were true, the State would have the right to apply the subsidies in the area it considered of greatest social value; it is undeniable, in this improbable hypothesis, that if the State decided to subsidize software, it would have to do so choosing the free over the proprietary, considering its social effect and the rational use of taxpayers money.
</p>
7950 <p>In respect of the jobs generated by proprietary software in countries like ours, these mainly concern technical tasks of little aggregate value; at the local level, the technicians who provide support for proprietary software produced by transnational companies do not have the possibility of fixing bugs, not necessarily for lack of technical capability or of talent, but because they do not have access to the source code to fix it. With free software one creates more technically qualified employment and a framework of free competence where success is only tied to the ability to offer good technical support and quality of service, one stimulates the market, and one increases the shared fund of knowledge, opening up alternatives to generate services of greater total value and a higher quality level, to the benefit of all involved: producers, service organizations, and consumers.
</p>
7952 <p>It is a common phenomenon in developing countries that local software industries obtain the majority of their takings in the service sector, or in the creation of "ad hoc" software. Therefore, any negative impact that the application of the Bill might have in this sector will be more than compensated by a growth in demand for services (as long as these are carried out to high quality standards). If the transnational software companies decide not to compete under these new rules of the game, it is likely that they will undergo some decrease in takings in terms of payment for licenses; however, considering that these firms continue to allege that much of the software used by the State has been illegally copied, one can see that the impact will not be very serious. Certainly, in any case their fortune will be determined by market laws, changes in which cannot be avoided; many firms traditionally associated with proprietary software have already set out on the road (supported by copious expense) of providing services associated with free software, which shows that the models are not mutually exclusive.
</p>
7954 <p>With this bill the State is deciding that it needs to preserve certain fundamental values. And it is deciding this based on its sovereign power, without affecting any of the constitutional guarantees. If these values could be guaranteed without having to choose a particular economic model, the effects of the law would be even more beneficial. In any case, it should be clear that the State does not choose an economic model; if it happens that there only exists one economic model capable of providing software which provides the basic guarantee of these principles, this is because of historical circumstances, not because of an arbitrary choice of a given model.
</p>
7956 <p>Your letter continues: "
4. The bill imposes the use of open source software without considering the dangers that this can bring from the point of view of security, guarantee, and possible violation of the intellectual property rights of third parties."
</p>
7958 <p>Alluding in an abstract way to "the dangers this can bring", without specifically mentioning a single one of these supposed dangers, shows at the least some lack of knowledge of the topic. So, allow me to enlighten you on these points.
</p>
7962 <p>National security has already been mentioned in general terms in the initial discussion of the basic principles of the bill. In more specific terms, relative to the security of the software itself, it is well known that all software (whether proprietary or free) contains errors or "bugs" (in programmers' slang). But it is also well known that the bugs in free software are fewer, and are fixed much more quickly, than in proprietary software. It is not in vain that numerous public bodies responsible for the IT security of state systems in developed countries require the use of free software for the same conditions of security and efficiency.
</p>
7964 <p>What is impossible to prove is that proprietary software is more secure than free, without the public and open inspection of the scientific community and users in general. This demonstration is impossible because the model of proprietary software itself prevents this analysis, so that any guarantee of security is based only on promises of good intentions (biased, by any reckoning) made by the producer itself, or its contractors.
</p>
7966 <p>It should be remembered that in many cases, the licensing conditions include Non-Disclosure clauses which prevent the user from publicly revealing security flaws found in the licensed proprietary product.
</p>
7968 <p>In respect of the guarantee:
</p>
7970 <p>As you know perfectly well, or could find out by reading the "End User License Agreement" of the products you license, in the great majority of cases the guarantees are limited to replacement of the storage medium in case of defects, but in no case is compensation given for direct or indirect damages, loss of profits, etc... If as a result of a security bug in one of your products, not fixed in time by yourselves, an attacker managed to compromise crucial State systems, what guarantees, reparations and compensation would your company make in accordance with your licensing conditions? The guarantees of proprietary software, inasmuch as programs are delivered ``AS IS'', that is, in the state in which they are, with no additional responsibility of the provider in respect of function, in no way differ from those normal with free software.
</p>
7972 <p>On Intellectual Property:
</p>
7974 <p>Questions of intellectual property fall outside the scope of this bill, since they are covered by specific other laws. The model of free software in no way implies ignorance of these laws, and in fact the great majority of free software is covered by copyright. In reality, the inclusion of this question in your observations shows your confusion in respect of the legal framework in which free software is developed. The inclusion of the intellectual property of others in works claimed as one's own is not a practice that has been noted in the free software community; whereas, unfortunately, it has been in the area of proprietary software. As an example, the condemnation by the Commercial Court of Nanterre, France, on
27th September
2001 of Microsoft Corp. to a penalty of
3 million francs in damages and interest, for violation of intellectual property (piracy, to use the unfortunate term that your firm commonly uses in its publicity).
</p>
7976 <p>You go on to say that: "The bill uses the concept of open source software incorrectly, since it does not necessarily imply that the software is free or of zero cost, and so arrives at mistaken conclusions regarding State savings, with no cost-benefit analysis to validate its position."
</p>
7978 <p>This observation is wrong; in principle, freedom and lack of cost are orthogonal concepts: there is software which is proprietary and charged for (for example, MS Office), software which is proprietary and free of charge (MS Internet Explorer), software which is free and charged for (Red Hat, SuSE etc GNU/Linux distributions), software which is free and not charged for (Apache, Open Office, Mozilla), and even software which can be licensed in a range of combinations (MySQL).
</p>
7980 <p>Certainly free software is not necessarily free of charge. And the text of the bill does not state that it has to be so, as you will have noted after reading it. The definitions included in the Bill state clearly *what* should be considered free software, at no point referring to freedom from charges. Although the possibility of savings in payments for proprietary software licenses are mentioned, the foundations of the bill clearly refer to the fundamental guarantees to be preserved and to the stimulus to local technological development. Given that a democratic State must support these principles, it has no other choice than to use software with publicly available source code, and to exchange information only in standard formats.
</p>
7982 <p>If the State does not use software with these characteristics, it will be weakening basic republican principles. Luckily, free software also implies lower total costs; however, even given the hypothesis (easily disproved) that it was more expensive than proprietary software, the simple existence of an effective free software tool for a particular IT function would oblige the State to use it; not by command of this Bill, but because of the basic principles we enumerated at the start, and which arise from the very essence of the lawful democratic State.
</p>
7984 <p>You continue: "
6. It is wrong to think that Open Source Software is free of charge. Research by the Gartner Group (an important investigator of the technological market recognized at world level) has shown that the cost of purchase of software (operating system and applications) is only
8% of the total cost which firms and institutions take on for a rational and truly beneficial use of the technology. The other
92% consists of: installation costs, enabling, support, maintenance, administration, and down-time."
</p>
7986 <p>This argument repeats that already given in paragraph
5 and partly contradicts paragraph
3. For the sake of brevity we refer to the comments on those paragraphs. However, allow me to point out that your conclusion is logically false: even if according to Gartner Group the cost of software is on average only
8% of the total cost of use, this does not in any way deny the existence of software which is free of charge, that is, with a licensing cost of zero.
</p>
7988 <p>In addition, in this paragraph you correctly point out that the service components and losses due to down-time make up the largest part of the total cost of software use, which, as you will note, contradicts your statement regarding the small value of services suggested in paragraph
3. Now the use of free software contributes significantly to reduce the remaining life-cycle costs. This reduction in the costs of installation, support etc. can be noted in several areas: in the first place, the competitive service model of free software, support and maintenance for which can be freely contracted out to a range of suppliers competing on the grounds of quality and low cost. This is true for installation, enabling, and support, and in large part for maintenance. In the second place, due to the reproductive characteristics of the model, maintenance carried out for an application is easily replicable, without incurring large costs (that is, without paying more than once for the same thing) since modifications, if one wishes, can be incorporated in the common fund of knowledge. Thirdly, the huge costs caused by non-functioning software ("blue screens of death", malicious code such as virus, worms, and trojans, exceptions, general protection faults and other well-known problems) are reduced considerably by using more stable software; and it is well known that one of the most notable virtues of free software is its stability.
</p>
7990 <p>You further state that: "
7. One of the arguments behind the bill is the supposed freedom from costs of open-source software, compared with the costs of commercial software, without taking into account the fact that there exist types of volume licensing which can be highly advantageous for the State, as has happened in other countries."
</p>
7992 <p>I have already pointed out that what is in question is not the cost of the software but the principles of freedom of information, accessibility, and security. These arguments have been covered extensively in the preceding paragraphs to which I would refer you.
</p>
7994 <p>On the other hand, there certainly exist types of volume licensing (although unfortunately proprietary software does not satisfy the basic principles). But as you correctly pointed out in the immediately preceding paragraph of your letter, they only manage to reduce the impact of a component which makes up no more than
8% of the total.
</p>
7996 <p>You continue: "
8. In addition, the alternative adopted by the bill (I) is clearly more expensive, due to the high costs of software migration, and (II) puts at risk compatibility and interoperability of the IT platforms within the State, and between the State and the private sector, given the hundreds of versions of open source software on the market."
</p>
7998 <p>Let us analyze your statement in two parts. Your first argument, that migration implies high costs, is in reality an argument in favor of the Bill. Because the more time goes by, the more difficult migration to another technology will become; and at the same time, the security risks associated with proprietary software will continue to increase. In this way, the use of proprietary systems and formats will make the State ever more dependent on specific suppliers. Once a policy of using free software has been established (which certainly, does imply some cost) then on the contrary migration from one system to another becomes very simple, since all data is stored in open formats. On the other hand, migration to an open software context implies no more costs than migration between two different proprietary software contexts, which invalidates your argument completely.
</p>
8000 <p>The second argument refers to "problems in interoperability of the IT platforms within the State, and between the State and the private sector" This statement implies a certain lack of knowledge of the way in which free software is built, which does not maximize the dependence of the user on a particular platform, as normally happens in the realm of proprietary software. Even when there are multiple free software distributions, and numerous programs which can be used for the same function, interoperability is guaranteed as much by the use of standard formats, as required by the bill, as by the possibility of creating interoperable software given the availability of the source code.
</p>
8002 <p>You then say that: "
9. The majority of open source code does not offer adequate levels of service nor the guarantee from recognized manufacturers of high productivity on the part of the users, which has led various public organizations to retract their decision to go with an open source software solution and to use commercial software in its place."
</p>
8004 <p>This observation is without foundation. In respect of the guarantee, your argument was rebutted in the response to paragraph
4. In respect of support services, it is possible to use free software without them (just as also happens with proprietary software), but anyone who does need them can obtain support separately, whether from local firms or from international corporations, again just as in the case of proprietary software.
</p>
8006 <p>On the other hand, it would contribute greatly to our analysis if you could inform us about free software projects *established* in public bodies which have already been abandoned in favor of proprietary software. We know of a good number of cases where the opposite has taken place, but not know of any where what you describe has taken place.
</p>
8008 <p>You continue by observing that: "
10. The bill discourages the creativity of the Peruvian software industry, which invoices
40 million US$/year, exports
4 million US$ (
10th in ranking among non-traditional exports, more than handicrafts) and is a source of highly qualified employment. With a law that encourages the use of open source, software programmers lose their intellectual property rights and their main source of payment."
</p>
8010 <p>It is clear enough that nobody is forced to commercialize their code as free software. The only thing to take into account is that if it is not free software, it cannot be sold to the public sector. This is not in any case the main market for the national software industry. We covered some questions referring to the influence of the Bill on the generation of employment which would be both highly technically qualified and in better conditions for competition above, so it seems unnecessary to insist on this point.
</p>
8012 <p>What follows in your statement is incorrect. On the one hand, no author of free software loses his intellectual property rights, unless he expressly wishes to place his work in the public domain. The free software movement has always been very respectful of intellectual property, and has generated widespread public recognition of its authors. Names like those of Richard Stallman, Linus Torvalds, Guido van Rossum, Larry Wall, Miguel de Icaza, Andrew Tridgell, Theo de Raadt, Andrea Arcangeli, Bruce Perens, Darren Reed, Alan Cox, Eric Raymond, and many others, are recognized world-wide for their contributions to the development of software that is used today by millions of people throughout the world. On the other hand, to say that the rewards for authors rights make up the main source of payment of Peruvian programmers is in any case a guess, in particular since there is no proof to this effect, nor a demonstration of how the use of free software by the State would influence these payments.
</p>
8014 <p>You go on to say that: "
11. Open source software, since it can be distributed without charge, does not allow the generation of income for its developers through exports. In this way, the multiplier effect of the sale of software to other countries is weakened, and so in turn is the growth of the industry, while Government rules ought on the contrary to stimulate local industry."
</p>
8016 <p>This statement shows once again complete ignorance of the mechanisms of and market for free software. It tries to claim that the market of sale of non- exclusive rights for use (sale of licenses) is the only possible one for the software industry, when you yourself pointed out several paragraphs above that it is not even the most important one. The incentives that the bill offers for the growth of a supply of better qualified professionals, together with the increase in experience that working on a large scale with free software within the State will bring for Peruvian technicians, will place them in a highly competitive position to offer their services abroad.
</p>
8018 <p>You then state that: "
12. In the Forum, the use of open source software in education was discussed, without mentioning the complete collapse of this initiative in a country like Mexico, where precisely the State employees who founded the project now state that open source software did not make it possible to offer a learning experience to pupils in the schools, did not take into account the capability at a national level to give adequate support to the platform, and that the software did not and does not allow for the levels of platform integration that now exist in schools."
</p>
8020 <p>In fact Mexico has gone into reverse with the Red Escolar (Schools Network) project. This is due precisely to the fact that the driving forces behind the Mexican project used license costs as their main argument, instead of the other reasons specified in our project, which are far more essential. Because of this conceptual mistake, and as a result of the lack of effective support from the SEP (Secretary of State for Public Education), the assumption was made that to implant free software in schools it would be enough to drop their software budget and send them a CD ROM with Gnu/Linux instead. Of course this failed, and it couldn't have been otherwise, just as school laboratories fail when they use proprietary software and have no budget for implementation and maintenance. That's exactly why our bill is not limited to making the use of free software mandatory, but recognizes the need to create a viable migration plan, in which the State undertakes the technical transition in an orderly way in order to then enjoy the advantages of free software.
</p>
8022 <p>You end with a rhetorical question: "
13. If open source software satisfies all the requirements of State bodies, why do you need a law to adopt it? Shouldn't it be the market which decides freely which products give most benefits or value?"
</p>
8024 <p>We agree that in the private sector of the economy, it must be the market that decides which products to use, and no state interference is permissible there. However, in the case of the public sector, the reasoning is not the same: as we have already established, the state archives, handles, and transmits information which does not belong to it, but which is entrusted to it by citizens, who have no alternative under the rule of law. As a counterpart to this legal requirement, the State must take extreme measures to safeguard the integrity, confidentiality, and accessibility of this information. The use of proprietary software raises serious doubts as to whether these requirements can be fulfilled, lacks conclusive evidence in this respect, and so is not suitable for use in the public sector.
</p>
8026 <p>The need for a law is based, firstly, on the realization of the fundamental principles listed above in the specific area of software; secondly, on the fact that the State is not an ideal homogeneous entity, but made up of multiple bodies with varying degrees of autonomy in decision making. Given that it is inappropriate to use proprietary software, the fact of establishing these rules in law will prevent the personal discretion of any state employee from putting at risk the information which belongs to citizens. And above all, because it constitutes an up-to-date reaffirmation in relation to the means of management and communication of information used today, it is based on the republican principle of openness to the public.
</p>
8028 <p>In conformance with this universally accepted principle, the citizen has the right to know all information held by the State and not covered by well- founded declarations of secrecy based on law. Now, software deals with information and is itself information. Information in a special form, capable of being interpreted by a machine in order to execute actions, but crucial information all the same because the citizen has a legitimate right to know, for example, how his vote is computed or his taxes calculated. And for that he must have free access to the source code and be able to prove to his satisfaction the programs used for electoral computations or calculation of his taxes.
</p>
8030 <p>I wish you the greatest respect, and would like to repeat that my office will always be open for you to expound your point of view to whatever level of detail you consider suitable.
</p>
8033 DR. EDGAR DAVID VILLANUEVA NUÑEZ
<br>
8034 Congressman of the Republic of Perú.
</p>
8041 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan
</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>.
8046 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8050 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_still_going_strong.html">Officeshots still going strong
</a>
8056 <p>Half a year ago I
8057 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html">wrote
8058 a bit
</a> about
<a href=
"http://www.officeshots.org/">OfficeShots
</a>,
8059 a web service to allow anyone to test how ODF documents are handled by
8060 the different programs reading and writing the ODF format.
</p>
8062 <p>I just had a look at the service, and it seem to be going strong.
8063 Very interesting to see the results reported in the gallery, how
8064 different Office implementations handle different ODF features. Sad
8065 to see that KOffice was not doing it very well, and happy to see that
8066 LibreOffice has been tested already (but sadly not listed as a option
8067 for OfficeShots users yet). I am glad to see that the ODF community
8068 got such a great test tool available.
</p>
8074 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard
</a>.
8079 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8083 <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>
8089 <p>The last few days I have spent at work here at the
<a
8090 href=
"http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo
</a> testing if the new
8091 batch of computers will work with Linux. Every year for the last few
8092 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
8093 computers, and this year HP won the bid. Two different desktops and
8094 five different laptops are on the list this year. We in the UNIX
8095 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
8096 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
8099 <p>My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
8100 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well. To test, I PXE
8101 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
8102 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware. When
8103 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
8104 on. If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
8105 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
8106 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.
</p>
8108 <p>Anyway, to get to the point of this post. Here is the simple tests
8109 I perform on a new model.
</p>
8113 <li>Is PXE installation working? I'm testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
8114 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment. If I feel like it, I also test with
8115 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.
</li>
8117 <li>Is X.org working? If the graphical login screen show up after
8118 installation, X.org is working.
</li>
8120 <li>Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working? Running glxgears (in
8121 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
8122 reported by the program.
</li>
8124 <li>Is sound working? With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
8125 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful. If there
8126 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
8127 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound. I
8128 normally test this by playing
8129 <a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ ">a HTML5
8130 video
</a> in Firefox/Iceweasel.
</li>
8132 <li>Is the USB subsystem working? I test this by plugging in a USB
8133 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.
</li>
8135 <li>Is the CD/DVD player working? I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
8136 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.
</li>
8138 <li>Is any built in camera working? Test using cheese, and see if a
8139 picture from the v4l device show up.
</li>
8141 <li>Is bluetooth working? Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
8142 any bluetooth devices are discovered. In my office, I normally see a
8145 <li>For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working. I have
8146 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
8149 <li>For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working? I'm testing if the
8150 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
8153 <li>For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
8154 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
8155 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc? The set of buttons differ from
8156 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
8159 <li>Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
8160 acceleration sensors etc. I rarely test these, as I do not know how
8161 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
8166 <p>By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
8167 for the HP machines I am testing. I'm not done yet, so I will report
8168 the test results later. For now I can report that HP
8100 Elite work
8169 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook
8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
8170 and audio fail on RHEL6. Ubuntu Maverik worked with
8440p. As you
8171 can see, I have most machines left to test. One interesting
8172 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
8173 RHEL6 with glxgears. No idea why.
</p>
8179 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>.
8184 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8188 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html">Some thoughts on BitCoins
</a>
8194 <p>As I continue to explore
8195 <a href=
"http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin
</a>, I've starting to wonder
8196 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
8197 and regulations here in Norway. Here are some random notes.
</p>
8199 <p>One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
8200 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
8201 is known to everyone. This means that if a BitCoin address has been
8202 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
8203 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
8204 that address. There is even a web service to look at the details for
8205 all transactions. There I can see that my address
8206 <a href=
"http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a>
8207 have received
16.06 Bitcoin, the
8208 <a href=
"http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3">1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv
8MHqvwst
3</a>
8209 address of Simon Phipps have received
181.97 BitCoin and the address
8210 <a href=
"http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt">1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt
</A>
8211 of EFF have received
2447.38 BitCoins so far. Thank you to each and
8212 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
8213 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
8214 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
8215 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction. I'm told
8216 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
8217 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
8218 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.
</p>
8220 <p>In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
8221 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
8222 without declaring it. There are money laundering, tax and accounting
8223 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
8224 If the Skolelinux foundation
8225 (
<a href=
"http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">SLX
8226 Debian Labs
</a>) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
8227 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
8228 Given that it is impossible to know if money can cross the border or
8229 not, should everything or nothing be declared? What exchange rate
8230 should be used when calculating taxes? Would receivers have to pay
8231 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
8232 BitCoin? I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.
</p>
8234 <p>For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
8235 accepted by a lot of users. It must be possible to get easy access to
8236 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
8237 easy to spend it. At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
8238 access to, but there are very few places to spend it. I am not really
8239 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
8240 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins. I
8241 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
8242 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
8243 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
8244 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular. I'm sure they
8245 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
8246 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
8247 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
8250 <p>The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
8251 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
8252 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
8253 to see which one get the next lump of cash). The "winner" get
50
8254 BitCoin when this happen. Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
8255 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
8256 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
8257 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the
50
8259 <a href=
"http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/">BitCoin Pool
</a>
8260 if this sounds interesting. I have not had time to try to set up a
8261 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
8262 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
8265 <p>Update
2010-
12-
15: Found an
<a
8266 href=
"http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi">interesting
8267 criticism
</a> of bitcoin. Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
8268 it was interesting to read. The arguments presented seem to be
8269 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.
</p>
8275 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>.
8280 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8284 <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>
8290 <p>With this weeks lawless
8291 <a href=
"http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html">governmental
8292 attacks
</a> on Wikileak and
8293 <a href=
"http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech">free
8294 speech
</a>, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
8295 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
8297 <a href=
"http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/">Simon
8298 Phipps on bitcoin
</a> reminded me about a project that a friend of
8299 mine mentioned earlier. I decided to follow Simon's example, and get
8300 involved with
<a href=
"http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin
</a>. I got
8301 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
8302 some bitcoins to get started. I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
8303 for helping me remember BitCoin.
</p>
8305 <p>So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder? It is a digital
8306 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
8307 networks. It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
8308 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
8309 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions. The
8310 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets
2.9
8311 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
8312 line client builds just fine. Hopefully Jonas
8313 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/578157">will get the package into
8314 Debian
</a> soon.
</p>
8316 <p>Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
8317 There are
<a href=
"http://www.bitcoin.org/trade">companies accepting
8318 bitcoins
</a> when selling services and goods, and there are even
8319 currency "stock" markets where the exchange rate is decided. There
8320 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising. If you
8321 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
8323 <a href=
"https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/">some for free
</a> (
0.05
8324 bitcoin at the time of writing). Use
8325 <a href=
"http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/">BitcoinWatch
</a> to keep an eye
8326 on the current exchange rates.
</p>
8328 <p>As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
8329 machines. If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
8330 donations to the address
8331 <b>15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</b>. Thank you!
</p>
8337 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>.
8342 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8346 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Student_group_continue_the_work_on_my_Reprap_3D_printer.html">Student group continue the work on my Reprap
3D printer
</a>
8352 <p>A few days ago, I was introduces to some students in the robot
8353 student assosiation
<a href=
"http://www.robotica.no/">Robotica
8354 Osloensis
</a> at the University of Oslo where I work, who planned to
8355 get their own
3D printer. They wanted to learn from me based on my
8356 work in the area. After having a short lunch meeting with them, I
8357 offered them to borrow my reprap kit, as I never had time to complete
8358 the build and this seem unlike to change any time soon. I look
8359 forward to see how this goes. This monday their volunteer driver
8360 picked up my kit and drove it to their lab, and tomorrow I am told the
8361 last exam is over so they can start work on getting the
3D printer
8364 <p>The robotic group have already build several robots on their own,
8365 and seem capable of getting the reprap operational. I really look
8366 forward to being able to print all the cool
3D designs published on
8367 <a href=
"http://www.thingiverse.com/">Thingiverse
</a>. I even got
8368 some
3D scans I got made during Dagen@IFI when one of the groups at
8369 the computer science department at the university demonstrated their
8370 very cool
3D scanner.
</p>
8376 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap
</a>.
8381 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8385 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_development_gathering_and_General_Assembly_for_FRiSK.html">Debian Edu development gathering and General Assembly for FRiSK
</a>
8391 <p>On friday, the first Debian Edu / Skolelinux
8392 <a href=
"http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2010-12-03-05-Oslo">development
8393 gathering
</a> in a long time take place here in Oslo, Norway. I
8394 really look forward to seeing all the good people working on the
8395 Squeeze release. The gathering is open for everyone interested in
8396 learning more about Debian Edu / Skolelinux.
</p>
8398 <p>On Saturday, the Norwegian member organization taking care of
8399 organizing these development gatherings, Fri Programvare i Skolen,
8401 <a href=
"http://friprogramvareiskolen.no/Genfors/2010">General Assembly
8402 for
2010</a>. Membership is open for all, and currently there are
388
8403 people registered as members. Last year
32 members cast their vote in
8404 the memberdb based election system. I hope more people find time to
8411 Tags:
<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>.
8416 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8420 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html">Why isn't Debian Edu using VLC?
</a>
8426 <p>In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
8427 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
8428 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
8429 to play a video file or stream. Only if VLC fail will I drag out
8430 gmplayer to see if it can do better. The reason is mostly the failure
8431 model and trust. When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
8432 reporting the problem. When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
8433 just hangs. The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.
<p>
8435 <p>But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
8436 mplayer in
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
8437 Edu/Skolelinux
</a>. The reason is simple. We need a good browser
8438 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
8439 not very good. For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
8440 is no way for the user to pause the video. Also, when I
8441 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">last
8442 tested the browser plugins
</a> available in Debian, the VLC plugin
8443 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked. If
8444 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
8445 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.
</P>
8447 <p>While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
8448 annoying. The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
8449 keyboard shortcuts. When the player is in full screen mode, its
8450 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
8451 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode. I
8452 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
8453 window mode. Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
8454 the current video. It is very nice when playing short videos from the
8455 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
8456 what is going on.
</p>
8462 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>.
8467 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8471 <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>
8477 <p>Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
8478 upgrade testing of the
8479 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
8480 Gnome and KDE Desktop
</a> to do
<tt>apt-get autoremove
</tt> when using apt-get.
8481 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
8482 can now present the updated result from today:
</p>
8484 <p>This is for Gnome:
</p>
8486 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude
</p>
8493 browser-plugin-gnash
8500 freedesktop-sound-theme
8502 gconf-defaults-service
8517 gnome-desktop-environment
8521 gnome-session-canberra
8526 gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
8532 libapache2-mod-dnssd
8535 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
8538 libboost-date-time1.42
.0
8539 libboost-python1.42
.0
8540 libboost-thread1.42
.0
8542 libchamplain-gtk-
0.4-
0
8544 libclutter-gtk-
0.10-
0
8551 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
8566 libgnomepanel2.24-cil
8571 libgtksourceview2.0-common
8572 libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
8573 libmono-addins0.2-cil
8574 libmono-cairo2.0-cil
8575 libmono-corlib2.0-cil
8576 libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
8577 libmono-posix2.0-cil
8578 libmono-security2.0-cil
8579 libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
8580 libmono-system2.0-cil
8583 libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
8584 libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
8594 libtelepathy-farsight0
8603 nautilus-sendto-empathy
8607 python-aptdaemon-gtk
8609 python-beautifulsoup
8624 python-gtksourceview2
8635 python-pkg-resources
8642 python-twisted-conch
8648 python-zope.interface
8653 rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
8660 system-config-printer-udev
8662 telepathy-mission-control-
5
8675 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
</p>
8683 fast-user-switch-applet
8702 libgtksourceview2.0-
0
8704 libsdl1.2debian-alsa
8710 system-config-printer
8717 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get
</p>
8720 gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
8723 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get
</p>
8729 <p>This is for KDE:
</p>
8731 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude
</p>
8737 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
</p>
8744 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get
</p>
8760 kdeartwork-emoticons
8762 kdeartwork-theme-icon
8766 kdebase-workspace-bin
8767 kdebase-workspace-data
8781 kscreensaver-xsavers
8796 plasma-dataengines-workspace
8798 plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
8799 plasma-runners-addons
8800 plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
8801 plasma-scriptengine-python
8802 plasma-scriptengine-qedje
8803 plasma-scriptengine-ruby
8804 plasma-scriptengine-webkit
8805 plasma-scriptengines
8806 plasma-wallpapers-addons
8807 plasma-widget-folderview
8808 plasma-widget-networkmanagement
8812 xscreensaver-data-extra
8814 xscreensaver-gl-extra
8815 xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
8818 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get
</p>
8822 google-gadgets-common
8840 libggadget-qt-
1.0-
0b
8845 libkonqsidebarplugin4a
8854 libplasma-geolocation-interface4
8856 libplasmagenericshell4
8870 libsmokeknewstuff2-
3
8871 libsmokeknewstuff3-
3
8873 libsmokektexteditor3
8881 libsmokeqtnetwork4-
3
8887 libsmokeqtuitools4-
3
8899 plasma-dataengines-addons
8900 plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
8901 plasma-widget-lancelot
8902 plasma-widgets-addons
8903 plasma-widgets-workspace
8907 update-notifier-common
8910 <p>Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
8911 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
8912 differences. I have no idea what packages should be installed after
8913 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.
</p>
8919 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>.
8924 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8928 <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>
8934 <p>Most of the computers in use by the
8935 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux project
</a>
8936 are virtual machines. And they have been Xen machines running on a
8937 fairly old IBM eserver xseries
345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
8938 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge
2950 host machine. This was a
8939 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
8940 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
8941 know is not supported by KVM. So to migrate, we had to convert
8942 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.
</p>
8945 <a href=
"http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM">a
8946 nice recipe
</a> to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
8947 migration. It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
8948 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
8949 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data. I NFS mounted the
8950 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.
</p>
8956 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/
35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
8961 if [ -z "$
1" ] ; then
8962 echo "Usage: $
0 <hostname
>"
8968 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
8969 echo "error: unable to find LVM volume for $host"
8973 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs. not sure why.
8974 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk '{sum = sum + $
4} END { print int(sum *
1.05) }')
8975 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk '{sum = sum + $
4} END { print int(sum *
1.05) }')
8976 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
8979 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=
1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
8980 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
8982 parted $img mklabel msdos
8983 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap
0 $disksize
8984 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
8985 parted $img set
1 boot on
8988 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
8989 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
8991 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=
1M
8992 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
8993 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
8995 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
8996 losetup -d /dev/loop0
8999 <p>The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
9000 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.
</p>
9002 <p>After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
9003 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-
686 and
9004 set up grub to boot from the disk image. After this, the KVM machines
9005 seem to work just fine.
</p>
9011 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>.
9016 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9020 <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>
9026 <p>I'm still running upgrade testing of the
9027 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
9028 Gnome and KDE Desktop
</a>, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
9029 status. Here is a short update based on a test I ran
20101118.
</p>
9031 <p>I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
9032 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
9033 can see if anything should be changed.
</p>
9035 <p>This is for Gnome:
</p>
9037 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude
</p>
9040 apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
9041 browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-
4.3 cups-pk-helper
9042 dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
9043 freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
9044 gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
9045 geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
9046 gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
9047 gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
9048 gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
9049 gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
9050 gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
9051 gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
9052 gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
9053 libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
9054 libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-
0 libboost-date-time1.42
.0
9055 libboost-python1.42
.0 libboost-thread1.42
.0 libchamplain-
0.4-
0
9056 libchamplain-gtk-
0.4-
0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-
0.10-
0
9057 libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-
1.0-
2
9058 libepc-common libepc-ui-
1.0-
2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
9059 libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
9060 libgdl-
1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-
0 libgif4
9061 libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
9062 libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
9063 libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
9064 libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
9065 libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
9066 libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
9067 libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
9068 libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
9069 libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-
6
9070 libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6
.8
9071 libpolkit-gtk-
1-
0 libpt-
1.10.10-plugins-alsa
9072 libpt-
1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6
.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
9073 libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-
4
9074 libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-
0.99-
0
9075 libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
9076 mono-
2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
9077 nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
9078 openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-
4suite-xml
9079 python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
9080 python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
9081 python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
9082 python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
9083 python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
9084 python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
9085 python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
9086 python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
9087 python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
9088 python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
9089 python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
9090 python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
9091 python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
9092 remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
9093 rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
9094 software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
9095 telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-
5 telepathy-salut tomboy
9096 totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
9097 transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
9101 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
9104 arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
9105 epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
9106 fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
9107 gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
9108 gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
9109 gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
9110 guile-
1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
9111 libavahi-ui0 libbind9-
50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-
11 libcdio7
9112 libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-
1.0-
0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
9113 libedata-cal1.2-
6 libedataserver1.2-
9 libeel2-
2.20 libepc-
1.0-
1
9114 libepc-ui-
1.0-
1 libexchange-storage1.2-
3 libfaad0 libgadu3
9115 libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-
3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
9116 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-
0 libgksuui1.0-
1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-
2
9117 libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-
1 libgnomeprint2.2-
0
9118 libgnomeprintui2.2-
0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-
1.0-
0
9119 libgtkhtml2-
0 libgtksourceview1.0-
0 libgtksourceview2.0-
0
9120 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
9121 libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
9122 libmagick++
10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
9123 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
9124 libnm-util0 libopal-
2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-
10 libpisock9
9125 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-
1.10.10 libraw1394-
8
9126 libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-
8
9127 libspeexdsp1 libssh2-
1 libsuitesparse-
3.1.0 libsvga1
9128 libswfdec-
0.6-
90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
9129 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
9130 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
9131 sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
9132 totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
9135 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get
</p>
9138 gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
9141 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get
</p>
9147 <p>This is for KDE:
</p>
9149 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude
</p>
9152 autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-
4.3 dcoprss
9153 edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
9154 ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
9155 gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
9156 kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
9157 kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
9158 kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
9159 kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
9160 kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
9161 kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
9162 kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
9163 kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
9164 killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
9165 kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
9166 ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42
.0
9167 libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
9168 libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
9169 libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
9170 libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
9171 libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
9172 libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
9173 libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
9174 libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
9175 libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
9176 lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
9177 openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
9178 parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
9179 pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
9180 speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
9184 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
</p>
9187 amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
9188 dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
9189 kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
9190 kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
9191 keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
9192 kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
9193 kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
9194 klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
9195 kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
9196 kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
9197 kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
9198 ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
9199 ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
9200 kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
9201 kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
9202 libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
9203 libavahi-core5 libavc1394-
0 libbind9-
50 libbluetooth2
9204 libboost-python1.34
.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
9205 libdirectfb-
1.0-
0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
9206 libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-
0 libicu38
9207 libiec61883-
0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
9208 libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
9209 libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
9210 libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
9211 libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
9212 libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
9213 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
9214 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-
8 librss1 libsensors3
9215 libsmbios2 libssh2-
1 libsuitesparse-
3.1.0 libswfdec-
0.6-
90
9216 libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
9217 mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
9218 texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
9219 ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
9222 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get
</p>
9225 dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
9226 kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
9227 kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
9228 kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
9229 netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
9230 xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
9231 xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
9234 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get
</p>
9237 kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
9244 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>.
9249 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9253 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html">Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd
</a>
9260 <a href=
"http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html">the
9261 call from the Gnash project
</a> for
9262 <a href=
"http://www.gnashdev.org:8010">buildbot
</a> slaves to test the
9263 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
9264 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
9265 Debian/Squeeze. I hope this can help the developers in getting new
9266 releases out more often.
</p>
9268 <p>As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
9269 I have considered setting up a
<a
9270 href=
"http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/">Debian/kfreebsd
</a>
9271 machine as well. I have also considered using the kfreebsd
9272 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the
5
9273 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video. Because of this, I
9274 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
9275 kfreebsd. Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
9276 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
9277 screen at random locations). Have not gotten very far with the
9278 testing. Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
9279 fatal problem. Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
9280 useful as a file server for NUUG. Will try to find time to set up a
9281 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.
</p>
9287 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>.
9292 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9296 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html">Debian in
3D
</a>
9302 <p><img src=
"http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg"></p>
9304 <p>3D printing is just great. I just came across this Debian logo in
9306 <a href=
"http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/">the
9307 thingiverse blog
</a>.
</p>
9313 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>.
9318 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9322 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Making_room_on_the_Debian_Edu_Sqeeze_DVD.html">Making room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
</a>
9328 <p>Prioritising packages for the Debian Edu /
9329 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
</a> DVD, which is
9330 supposed provide a school with all the services and user applications
9331 needed on the pupils computer network has always been hard. Even
9332 schools without Internet connections should be able to get Debian Edu
9333 working using this DVD.
</p>
9335 <p>The job became a lot harder when apt and aptitude started
9336 installing recommended packages by default. We want the same set of
9337 packages to be installed when using the DVD and the netinst CD, and
9338 that means all recommended packages need to be on the DVD. I created
9339 a patch for debian-cd in
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/601203">BTS
9340 report #
601203</a> to do this, and since this change was applied to
9341 the Debian Edu DVD build, we have been seriously short on space.
</p>
9343 <p>A few days ago we decided to drop blender, wxmaxima and kicad from
9344 the default installation to save space on the DVD, believing that
9345 those needing these applications are few and can get them from the
9348 <p>Yesterday, I had a look what source packages to see which packages
9349 were using most space. A few large packages are well know;
9350 openoffice.org, openclipart and fluid-soundfont. But I also
9351 discovered that lilypond used
106 MiB and fglrx-driver used
53 MiB.
9352 The lilypond package is pulled in as a dependency for rosegarden, and
9353 when looking a bit closer I discovered that
99 MiB of the
106 MiB were
9354 the documentation package, which is recommended by the binary package.
9355 I decided to drop this documentation package from our DVD, as most of
9356 our users will use the GUI front-ends and do not need the lilypond
9357 documentation. Similarly, I dropped the non-free fglrx-driver package
9358 which might be installed by d-i when its hardware is detected, as the
9359 free X driver should work.
</p>
9361 <p>With this change, we finally got space for the LXDE and Gnome
9362 desktop packages as well as the language specific packages making the
9363 DVD more useful again.
</p>
9369 Tags:
<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>.
9374 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9378 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html">Software updates
2010-
10-
24</a>
9384 <p>Some updates.
</p>
9386 <p>My
<a href=
"http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">gnash pledge
</a> to
9387 raise money for the project is going well. The lower limit of
10
9388 signers was reached in
24 hours, and so far
13 people have signed it.
9389 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
9390 how far we can get before the time limit of December
24 is reached.
9393 <p>On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
9394 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
9395 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
9397 <a href=
"http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html">kcov
</a>,
9398 and can be used using
<tt>kcov
<directory
> <binary
></tt>.
9399 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
9400 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
9401 libglib2.0-dev. Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
9402 solvable. I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.
</p>
9404 <p>Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for
<a
9405 href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html">a
9406 new alpha release of Debian Edu
</a>, and just published the second
9407 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
9408 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
</a>
9409 release. Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
9410 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
9411 client servers and diskless workstations. A nice touch added
9412 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
9413 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.
</p>
9419 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>.
9424 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9428 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Pledge_for_funding_to_the_Gnash_project_to_get_AVM2_support.html">Pledge for funding to the Gnash project to get AVM2 support
</a>
9434 <p><a href=
"http://www.getgnash.org/">The Gnash project
</a> is the
9435 most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation. It
9436 has done great so far, but there is still far to go, and recently its
9437 funding has dried up. I believe AVM2 support in Gnash is vital to the
9438 continued progress of the project, as more and more sites show up with
9439 AVM2 flash files.
</p>
9441 <p>To try to get funding for developing such support, I have started
9442 <a href=
"http://www.pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">a pledge
</a> with the
9447 <p>"I will pay 100$ to the Gnash project to develop AVM2 support but
9448 only if 10 other people will do the same."</p>
9450 <p>- Petter Reinholdtsen, free software developer
</p>
9452 <p>Deadline to sign up by:
24th December
2010</p>
9454 <p>The Gnash project need to get support for the new Flash file
9455 format AVM2 to work with a lot of sites using Flash on the
9456 web. Gnash already work with a lot of Flash sites using the old AVM1
9457 format, but more and more sites are using the AVM2 format these
9458 days. The project web page is available from
9459 http://www.getgnash.org/ . Gnash is a free software implementation
9460 of Adobe Flash, allowing those of us that do not accept the terms of
9461 the Adobe Flash license to get access to Flash sites.
</p>
9463 <p>The project need funding to get developers to put aside enough
9464 time to develop the AVM2 support, and this pledge is my way to try
9465 to get this to happen.
</p>
9467 <p>The project accept donations via the OpenMediaNow foundation,
9468 <a href=
"http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32">http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/
32</a> .
</p>
9472 <p>I hope you will support this effort too. I hope more than
10
9473 people will participate to make this happen. The more money the
9474 project gets, the more features it can develop using these funds.
9481 Tags:
<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/nuug">nuug
</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>.
9486 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9490 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_version_of_a_Perl_library_to_control_the_Spykee_robot.html">First version of a Perl library to control the Spykee robot
</a>
9496 <p>This summer I got the chance to buy cheap Spykee robots, and since
9497 then I have worked on getting Linux software in place to control them.
9498 The firmware for the robot is available from the producer, and using
9499 that source it was trivial to figure out the protocol specification.
9500 I've started on a perl library to control it, and made some demo
9501 programs using this perl library to allow one to control the
9504 <p>The library is quite functional already, and capable of controlling
9505 the driving, fetching video, uploading MP3s and play them. There are
9506 a few less important features too.
</p>
9508 <p>Since a few weeks ago, I ran out of time to spend on this project,
9509 but I never got around to releasing the current source. I decided
9510 today that it was time to do something about it, and uploaded the
9511 source to my Debian package store at people.skolelinux.org.
</p>
9513 <p>Because it was simpler for me, I made a Debian package and
9514 published the source and deb. If you got a spykee robot, grab the
9515 source or binary package:
</p>
9518 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian/packages/lenny/libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.tar.gz">libspykee-perl_0.0
.20101009-
1.tar.gz
</a></li>
9519 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian/packages/lenny/libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.dsc">libspykee-perl_0.0
.20101009-
1.dsc
</a></li>
9520 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian/packages/lenny/libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1_all.deb">libspykee-perl_0.0
.20101009-
1_all.deb
</a></li>
9523 <p>If you are interested in helping out with developing this library,
9524 please let me know.
</p>
9530 Tags:
<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/robot">robot
</a>.
9535 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9539 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Links_for_2010_10_03.html">Links for
2010-
10-
03</a>
9547 <li><a href=
"http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2010/09/there-is-no-plan-b-why-the-ipv4-to-ipv6-transition-will-be-ugly.ars">There
9548 is no Plan B: why the IPv4-to-IPv6 transition will be ugly
</a></li>
9550 <li>Scanner looking under clothes
9551 <a href=
"http://www.dagbladet.no/2010/10/03/nyheter/utenriks/reise/overvakingskamera/flyplasser/13667192/">has
9552 already been misused at Heathrow
</a>.
</li>
9554 <li><a href=
"http://wiki.softwarelivre.org/Landell">Landell
9555 Webcasting
</a> - interesting alternative for
9556 <ahref=
"http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/wiki/">DVSwitch
</a> with
9565 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
9570 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9574 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Terms_of_use_for_video_produced_by_a_Canon_IXUS_130_digital_camera.html">Terms of use for video produced by a Canon IXUS
130 digital camera
</a>
9580 <p>A few days ago I had the mixed pleasure of bying a new digital
9581 camera, a Canon IXUS
130. It was instructive and very disturbing to
9582 be able to verify that also this camera producer have the nerve to
9583 specify how I can or can not use the videos produced with the camera.
9584 Even thought I was aware of the issue, the options with new cameras
9585 are limited and I ended up bying the camera anyway. What is the
9586 problem, you might ask? It is software patents, MPEG-
4, H
.264 and the
9587 MPEG-LA that is the problem, and our right to record our experiences
9588 without asking for permissions that is at risk.
9590 <p>On page
27 of the Danish instruction manual, this section is
9594 <p>This product is licensed under AT&T patents for the MPEG-
4 standard
9595 and may be used for encoding MPEG-
4 compliant video and/or decoding
9596 MPEG-
4 compliant video that was encoded only (
1) for a personal and
9597 non-commercial purpose or (
2) by a video provider licensed under the
9598 AT&T patents to provide MPEG-
4 compliant video.
</p>
9600 <p>No license is granted or implied for any other use for MPEG-
4
9604 <p>In short, the camera producer have chosen to use technology
9605 (MPEG-
4/H
.264) that is only provided if I used it for personal and
9606 non-commercial purposes, or ask for permission from the organisations
9607 holding the knowledge monopoly (patent) for technology used.
</p>
9609 <p>This issue has been brewing for a while, and I recommend you to
9611 "
<a href=
"http://www.osnews.com/story/23236/Why_Our_Civilization_s_Video_Art_and_Culture_is_Threatened_by_the_MPEG-LA">Why
9612 Our Civilization's Video Art and Culture is Threatened by the
9613 MPEG-LA
</a>" by Eugenia Loli-Queru and
9614 "<a href=
"http://webmink.com/2010/09/03/h-264-and-foss/">H
.264 Is Not
9615 The Sort Of Free That Matters
</a>" by Simon Phipps to learn more about
9616 the issue. The solution is to support the
9617 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition
">free and
9618 open standards</a> for video, like <a href="http://www.theora.org/
">Ogg
9619 Theora</a>, and avoid MPEG-4 and H.264 if you can.</p>
9625 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan
">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling
">fildeling</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia
">multimedia</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>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard
">standard</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>.
9630 <div class="padding
"></div>
9634 <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>
9640 <p>In the <a href="http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote
">Debian
9641 popularity-contest numbers</a>, the adobe-flashplugin package the
9642 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian. The sixth
9643 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla. This is a clear indication that
9644 working flash is important for Debian users. Around 10 percent of the
9645 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
9648 <p>In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
9649 («<a href="http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf
">Skolelinux
9650 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
9651 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs</a>»), one of the most important problems
9652 schools experienced with <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/
">Debian
9653 Edu/Skolelinux</a> was the lack of working Flash. A lot of educational
9654 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
9655 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
9656 good reason to stay with Windows.</p>
9658 <p>I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
9659 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
9660 everything you told him but could work fairly well. This was a
9661 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
9662 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
9663 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
9664 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
9665 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
9666 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
9667 pages they want to visit.</p>
9669 <p>This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
9670 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
9671 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
9672 Video to working out of the box. For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
9673 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
9674 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
9675 unstable. The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
9676 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
9677 release team have not had time to reply to it yet. I hope they agree
9678 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
9679 accept the new package into Squeeze.</p>
9685 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>.
9690 <div class="padding
"></div>
9694 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/My_first_perl_GUI_application___controlling_a_Spykee_robot.html
">My first perl GUI application - controlling a Spykee robot</a>
9700 <p>This evening I made my first Perl GUI application. The last few
9701 days I have worked on a Perl module for controlling my recently
9702 aquired Spykee robots, and the module is now getting complete enought
9703 that it is possible to use it to control the robot driving at least.
9704 It was now time to figure out how to use it to create some GUI to
9705 allow me to drive the robot around. I picked PerlQt as I have had
9706 positive experiences with the Qt API before, and spent a few minutes
9707 browsing the web for examples. Using Qt Designer seemed like a short
9708 cut, so I ended up writing the perl GUI using Qt Designer and
9709 compiling it into a perl program using the puic program from
9710 libqt-perl. Nothing fancy yet, but it got buttons to connect and
9713 <p>The perl module I have written provide a object oriented API for
9714 controlling the robot. Here is an small example on how to use it:</p>
9718 Spykee::discover(sub {$robot{$_[0]} = $_[1]});
9719 my $host = (keys %robot)[0];
9720 my $spykee = Spykee->new();
9721 $spykee->contact($host, "admin", "admin");
9733 <p>Thanks to the release of the source of the robot firmware, I could
9734 peek into the implementation at the other end to figure out how to
9735 implement the protocol used by the robot. I've implemented several of
9736 the commands the robot understand, but is still missing the camera
9737 support to make it possible to control the robot from remote. First I
9738 want to implement support for uploading new firmware and configuring
9739 the wireless network, to make it possible to bootstrap a Spykee robot
9740 without the producers Windows and MacOSX software (I only have Linux,
9741 so I had to ask a friend to come over to get the robot testing
9744 <p>Will release the source to the public soon, but need to figure out
9745 where to make it available first. I will add a link to
9746 <a href=
"http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/robot/">the NUUG wiki
</a> for
9747 those that want to check back later to find it.
</p>
9753 Tags:
<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/robot">robot
</a>.
9758 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9762 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_hard_link_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken hard link handling with sshfs
</a>
9768 <p>Just got an email from Tobias Gruetzmacher as a followup on my
9769 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">previous
9770 post about sshfs
</a>. He reported another problem with sshfs. It
9771 fail to handle hard links properly. A simple way to spot this is to
9772 look at the . and .. entries in the directory tree. These should have
9773 a link count
>1, but on sshfs the count is
1. I just tested to see
9774 what happen when trying to hardlink, and this fail as well:
</p>
9778 ln: creating hard link `bar' =
> `foo': Function not implemented
9782 <p>I have not yet found time to implement a test for this in my file
9783 system test code, but believe having working hard links is useful to
9784 avoid surprised unix programs. Not as useful as working file locking
9785 and symlinks, which are required to get a working desktop, but useful
9786 nevertheless. :)
</p>
9788 <p>The latest version of the file system test code is available via
9790 <a href=
"http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test
</a></p>
9796 Tags:
<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>.
9801 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9805 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken umask handling with sshfs
</a>
9811 <p>My file system sematics program
9812 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">presented
9813 a few days ago
</a> is very useful to verify that a file system can
9814 work as a unix home directory,and today I had to extend it a bit. I'm
9815 looking into alternatives for home directory access here at the
9816 University of Oslo, and one of the options is sshfs. My friend
9817 Finn-Arne mentioned a while back that they had used sshfs with Debian
9818 Edu, but stopped because of problems. I asked today what the problems
9819 where, and he mentioned that sshfs failed to handle umask properly.
9820 Trying to detect the problem I wrote this addition to my fs testing
9824 mode_t touch_get_mode(const char *name, mode_t mode) {
9826 int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, mode);
9829 struct stat statbuf;
9830 if (-
1 != fstat(fd, &statbuf)) {
9831 retval = statbuf.st_mode &
0x1ff;
9838 /* Try to detect problem discovered using sshfs */
9839 int test_umask(void) {
9840 printf("info: testing umask effect on file creation\n");
9842 mode_t orig_umask = umask(
000);
9844 if (
0666 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar",
0666))) {
9845 printf(" error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode
666 and umask
000\n",
9849 if (
0660 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar",
0666))) {
9850 printf(" error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode
666 and umask
007\n",
9858 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
9865 <p>Sure enough. On NFS to a netapp, I get this result:
</p>
9868 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
9869 info: testing symlink creation
9870 info: testing subdirectory creation
9871 info: testing fcntl locking
9872 Read-locking
1 byte from
1073741824
9873 Read-locking
510 byte from
1073741826
9874 Unlocking
1 byte from
1073741824
9875 Write-locking
1 byte from
1073741824
9876 Write-locking
510 byte from
1073741826
9877 Unlocking
2 byte from
1073741824
9878 info: testing umask effect on file creation
9881 <p>When mounting the same directory using sshfs, I get this
9885 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
9886 info: testing symlink creation
9887 info: testing subdirectory creation
9888 info: testing fcntl locking
9889 Read-locking
1 byte from
1073741824
9890 Read-locking
510 byte from
1073741826
9891 Unlocking
1 byte from
1073741824
9892 Write-locking
1 byte from
1073741824
9893 Write-locking
510 byte from
1073741826
9894 Unlocking
2 byte from
1073741824
9895 info: testing umask effect on file creation
9896 error: Wrong file mode
644 when creating using mode
666 and umask
000
9897 error: Wrong file mode
640 when creating using mode
666 and umask
007
9900 <p>So, I can conclude that sshfs is better than smb to a Netapp or a
9901 Windows server, but not good enough to be used as a home
9904 <p>Update
2010-
08-
26: Reported the issue in
9905 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/594498">BTS report #
594498</a></p>
9907 <p>Update
2010-
08-
27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
9908 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
9909 <a href=
"http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test
</a>.
</p>
9915 Tags:
<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>.
9920 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9924 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Rob_Weir__How_to_Crush_Dissent.html">Rob Weir: How to Crush Dissent
</a>
9930 <p>I found the notes from Rob Weir on
9931 <a href=
"http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/VGb23-kta8c/how-to-crush-dissent.html">how
9932 to crush dissent
</a> matching my own thoughts on the matter quite
9933 well. Highly recommended for those wondering which road our society
9934 should go down. In my view we have been heading the wrong way for a
9941 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker
</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/sikkerhet">sikkerhet
</a>.
9946 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9950 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/No_hardcoded_config_on_Debian_Edu_clients.html">No hardcoded config on Debian Edu clients
</a>
9956 <p>As reported earlier, the last few days I have looked at how Debian
9957 Edu clients are configured, and tried to get rid of all hardcoded
9958 configuration settings on the clients. I believe the work to be
9959 mostly done, and the clients seem to work just fine with dynamically
9960 generated configuration.
</p>
9962 <p>What is the point, you might ask? The point is to allow a Debian
9963 Edu desktop to integrate into an existing network infrastructure
9964 without any manual configuration.
</p>
9966 <p>This is what happens when installing a Debian Edu client here at
9967 the University of Oslo using PXE. With the PXE installation, I am
9968 asked for language (Norwegian Bokmål), locality (Norway) and keyboard
9969 layout (no-latin1), Debian Edu profile (Roaming Workstation), if I
9970 accept to reformat the hard drive (yes), if I want to submit info to
9971 popcon.debian.org (no) and root password (secret). After answering
9972 these questions, the installer goes ahead and does its thing, and
9973 after around
50 minutes it is done. I press enter to finish the
9974 installation, and the machine reboots into KDE. When the machine is
9975 ready and kdm asks for login information, I enter my university
9976 username and password, am told by kdm that a local home directory has
9977 been created and that I must log in again, and finally log in with the
9978 same username and password to the KDE
4.4 desktop. At no point during
9979 this process did it ask for university specific settings, and all the
9980 required configuration was dynamically detected using information
9981 fetched via DHCP and DNS. The roaming workstation is now ready for
9984 <p>How was this done, you might wonder? First of all, here is the
9985 list of things that need to be configured on the client to get it
9986 working properly out of the box:
</p>
9989 <li>IP address/netmask and DNS server.
</li>
9990 <li>Web proxy URL.
</li>
9991 <li>LDAP server for NSS directory information (user, group, etc).
</li>
9992 <li>Kerberos server for PAM password checking.
</li>
9993 <li>SMB mount point to access the network home directory. (*)
</li>
9994 <li>Central syslog server to send syslog messages to. (*)
</li>
9995 <li>Sitesummary collector URL to submit info to central server. (*)
</li>
9998 <p>(Hm, did I forget anything? Let me knew if I did.)
</p>
10000 <p>The points marked (*) are not required to be able to use the
10001 machine, but needed to provide central storage and allowing system
10002 administrators to track their machines. Since yesterday, everything
10003 but the sitesummary collector URL is dynamically discovered at boot
10004 and installation time in the svn version of Debian Edu.
</p>
10006 <p>The IP and DNS setup is fetched during boot using DHCP as usual.
10007 When a DHCP update arrives, the proxy setup is updated by looking for
10008 http://wpat/wpad.dat and using the content of this WPAD file to
10009 configure the http and ftp proxy in /etc/environment and
10010 /etc/apt/apt.conf. I decided to update the proxy setup using a DHCP
10011 hook to ensure that the client stops using the Debian Edu proxy when
10012 it is moved outside the Debian Edu network, and instead uses any local
10013 proxy present on the new network when it moves around.
</p>
10015 <p>The DNS names of the LDAP, Kerberos and syslog server and related
10016 configuration are generated using DNS information at boot. First the
10017 installer looks for a host named ldap in the current DNS domain. If
10018 not found, it looks for _ldap._tcp SRV records in DNS instead. If an
10019 LDAP server is found, its root DSE entry is requested and the
10020 attributes namingContexts and defaultNamingContext are used to
10021 determine which LDAP base to use for NSS. If there are several
10022 namingContexts attibutes and the defaultNamingContext is present, that
10023 LDAP subtree is used as the base. If defaultNamingContext is missing,
10024 the subtrees listed as namingContexts are searched in sequence for any
10025 object with class posixAccount or posixGroup, and the first one with
10026 such an object is used as the LDAP base. For Kerberos, a similar
10027 search is done by first looking for a host named kerberos, and then
10028 for the _kerberos._tcp SRV record. I've been unable to find a way to
10029 look up the Kerberos realm, so for this the upper case string of the
10030 current DNS domain is used.
</p>
10032 <p>For the syslog server, the hosts syslog and loghost are searched
10033 for, and the _syslog._udp SRV record is consulted if no such host is
10034 found. This algorithm works for both Debian Edu and the University of
10035 Oslo. A similar strategy would work for locating the sitesummary
10036 server, but have not been implemented yet. I decided to fetch and
10037 save these settings during installation, to make sure moving to a
10038 different network does not change the set of users being allowed to
10039 log in nor the passwords required to log in. Usernames and passwords
10040 will be cached by sssd when the user logs in on the Debian Edu
10041 network, and will not change as the laptop move around. For a
10042 non-roaming machine, there is no caching, but given that it is
10043 supposed to stay in place it should not matter much. Perhaps we
10044 should switch those to use sssd too?
</p>
10046 <p>The user's SMB mount point for the network home directory is
10047 located when the user logs in for the first time. The LDAP server is
10048 consulted to look for the user's LDAP object and the sambaHomePath
10049 attribute is used if found. If it isn't found, the home directory
10050 path fetched from NSS is used instead. Assuming the path is of the
10051 form /site/server/directory/username, the second part is looked up in
10052 DNS and used to generate a SMB URL of the form
10053 smb://server.domain/username. This algorithm works for both Debian
10054 edu and the University of Oslo. Perhaps there are better attributes
10055 to use or a better algorithm that works for more sites, but this will
10058 <p>This work should make it easier to integrate the Debian Edu clients
10059 into any LDAP/Kerberos infrastructure, and make the current setup even
10060 more flexible than before. I suspect it will also work for thin
10061 client servers, allowing one to easily set up LTSP and hook it into a
10062 existing network infrastructure, but I have not had time to test this
10065 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
10066 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
10068 <p>Update
2010-
08-
09: Simon Farnsworth gave me a heads-up on how to
10069 detect Kerberos realm from DNS, by looking for _kerberos TXT entries
10070 before falling back to the upper case DNS domain name. Will have to
10071 implement it for Debian Edu. :)
</p>
10077 Tags:
<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>.
10082 <div class=
"padding"></div>
10084 <div class=
"entry">
10085 <div class=
"title">
10086 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">Testing if a file system can be used for home directories...
</a>
10092 <p>A few years ago, I was involved in a project planning to use
10093 Windows file servers as home directory servers for Debian
10094 Edu/Skolelinux machines. This was thought to be no problem, as the
10095 access would be through the SMB network file system protocol, and we
10096 knew other sites used SMB with unix and samba as the file server to
10097 mount home directories without any problems. But, after months of
10098 struggling, we had to conclude that our goal was impossible.
</p>
10100 <p>The reason is simply that while SMB can be used for home
10101 directories when the file server is Samba running on Unix, this only
10102 work because of Samba have some extensions and the fact that the
10103 underlying file system is a unix file system. When using a Windows
10104 file server, the underlying file system do not have POSIX semantics,
10105 and several programs will fail if the users home directory where they
10106 want to store their configuration lack POSIX semantics.
</p>
10108 <p>As part of this work, I wrote a small C program I want to share
10109 with you all, to replicate a few of the problematic applications (like
10110 OpenOffice.org and GCompris) and see if the file system was working as
10111 it should. If you find yourself in spooky file system land, it might
10112 help you find your way out again. This is the fs-test.c source:
</p>
10116 * Some tests to check the file system sematics. Used to verify that
10117 * CIFS from a windows server do not work properly as a linux home
10119 * License: GPL v2 or later
10121 * needs libsqlite3-dev and build-essential installed
10122 * compile with: gcc -Wall -lsqlite3 -DTEST_SQLITE fs-test.c -o fs-test
10125 #define _FILE_OFFSET_BITS
64
10126 #define _LARGEFILE_SOURCE
1
10127 #define _LARGEFILE64_SOURCE
1
10129 #define _GNU_SOURCE /* for asprintf() */
10131 #include
<errno.h
>
10132 #include
<fcntl.h
>
10133 #include
<stdio.h
>
10134 #include
<string.h
>
10135 #include
<stdlib.h
>
10136 #include
<sys/file.h
>
10137 #include
<sys/stat.h
>
10138 #include
<sys/types.h
>
10139 #include
<unistd.h
>
10143 * Test sqlite open, as done by gcompris require the libsqlite3-dev
10144 * package and linking with -lsqlite3. A more low level test is
10146 * See also
<URL: http://www.sqlite.org./faq.html#q5
>.
10148 #include
<sqlite3.h
>
10149 #define CREATE_TABLE_USERS \
10150 "CREATE TABLE users (user_id INT UNIQUE, login TEXT, lastname TEXT, firstname TEXT, birthdate TEXT, class_id INT ); "
10151 int test_sqlite_open(void) {
10153 char *name = "testsqlite.db";
10156 int rc = sqlite3_open(name, &db);
10158 printf("error: sqlite open of %s failed: %s\n", name, sqlite3_errmsg(db));
10163 /* create tables */
10164 rc = sqlite3_exec(db,CREATE_TABLE_USERS, NULL,
0, &zErrMsg);
10165 if( rc != SQLITE_OK ){
10166 printf("error: sqlite table create failed: %s\n", zErrMsg);
10170 printf("info: sqlite worked\n");
10174 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
10177 * Demonstrate locking issue found in gcompris using sqlite3. This
10178 * work with ext3, but not with cifs server on Windows
2003. This is
10179 * done in the sqlite3 library.
10181 *
<URL:http://www.cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/
2001-
08/msg00854.html
> and the
10182 * POSIX specification
10183 *
<URL:http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/
009695399/functions/fcntl.html
>.
10185 int test_gcompris_locking(void) {
10187 char *name = "testsqlite.db";
10189 int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE,
0644);
10190 printf("info: testing fcntl locking\n");
10192 fl.l_whence = SEEK_SET;
10193 fl.l_pid = getpid();
10194 printf(" Read-locking
1 byte from
1073741824");
10195 fl.l_start =
1073741824;
10197 fl.l_type = F_RDLCK;
10198 if (
0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
10200 printf(" Read-locking
510 byte from
1073741826");
10201 fl.l_start =
1073741826;
10203 fl.l_type = F_RDLCK;
10204 if (
0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
10206 printf(" Unlocking
1 byte from
1073741824");
10207 fl.l_start =
1073741824;
10209 fl.l_type = F_UNLCK;
10210 if (
0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
10212 printf(" Write-locking
1 byte from
1073741824");
10213 fl.l_start =
1073741824;
10215 fl.l_type = F_WRLCK;
10216 if (
0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
10218 printf(" Write-locking
510 byte from
1073741826");
10219 fl.l_start =
1073741826;
10221 if (
0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
10223 printf(" Unlocking
2 byte from
1073741824");
10224 fl.l_start =
1073741824;
10226 fl.l_type = F_UNLCK;
10227 if (
0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
10234 * Test if permissions of freshly created directories allow entries
10235 * below them. This was a problem with OpenOffice.org and gcompris.
10236 * Mounting with option 'sync' seem to solve this problem while
10237 * slowing down file operations.
10239 int test_subdirectory_creation(void) {
10241 char *path = strdup("test");
10242 char *dirs[LEVELS];
10244 printf("info: testing subdirectory creation\n");
10245 for (level =
0; level
< LEVELS; level++) {
10246 char *newpath = NULL;
10247 if (-
1 == mkdir(path,
0777)) {
10248 printf(" error: Unable to create directory '%s': %s\n",
10249 path, strerror(errno));
10252 asprintf(&newpath, "%s/%s", path, "test");
10260 * Test if symlinks can be created. This was a problem detected with
10263 int test_symlinks(void) {
10264 printf("info: testing symlink creation\n");
10266 if (-
1 == symlink("file", "symlink"))
10267 printf(" error: Unable to create symlink\n");
10271 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
10272 printf("Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system\n");
10274 test_subdirectory_creation();
10276 test_sqlite_open();
10277 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
10278 test_gcompris_locking();
10283 <p>When everything is working, it should print something like
10287 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
10288 info: testing symlink creation
10289 info: testing subdirectory creation
10290 info: sqlite worked
10291 info: testing fcntl locking
10292 Read-locking
1 byte from
1073741824
10293 Read-locking
510 byte from
1073741826
10294 Unlocking
1 byte from
1073741824
10295 Write-locking
1 byte from
1073741824
10296 Write-locking
510 byte from
1073741826
10297 Unlocking
2 byte from
1073741824
10300 <p>I do not remember the exact details of the problems we saw, but one
10301 of them was with locking, where if I remember correctly, POSIX allow a
10302 read-only lock to be upgraded to a read-write lock without unlocking
10303 the read-only lock (while Windows do not). Another was a bug in the
10304 CIFS/SMB client implementation in the Linux kernel where directory
10305 meta information would be wrong for a fraction of a second, making
10306 OpenOffice.org fail to create its deep directory tree because it was
10307 not allowed to create files in its freshly created directory.
</p>
10309 <p>Anyway, here is a nice tool for your tool box, might you never need
10312 <p>Update
2010-
08-
27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
10313 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
10314 <a href=
"http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test
</a>.
</p>
10320 Tags:
<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>.
10325 <div class=
"padding"></div>
10327 <div class=
"entry">
10328 <div class=
"title">
10329 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Autodetecting_Client_setup_for_roaming_workstations_in_Debian_Edu.html">Autodetecting Client setup for roaming workstations in Debian Edu
</a>
10335 <p>A few days ago, I
10336 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_roaming_workstation___at_the_university_of_Oslo.html">tried
10337 to install
</a> a Roaming workation profile from Debian Edu/Squeeze
10338 while on the university network here at the University of Oslo, and
10339 noticed how much had to change to get it operational using the
10340 university infrastructure. It was fairly easy, but it occured to me
10341 that Debian Edu would improve a lot if I could get the client to
10342 connect without any changes at all, and thus let the client configure
10343 itself during installation and first boot to use the infrastructure
10344 around it. Now I am a huge step further along that road.
</p>
10346 <p>With our current squeeze-test packages, I can select the roaming
10347 workstation profile and get a working laptop connecting to the
10348 university LDAP server for user and group and our active directory
10349 servers for Kerberos authentication. All this without any
10350 configuration at all during installation. My users home directory got
10351 a bookmark in the KDE menu to mount it via SMB, with the correct URL.
10352 In short, openldap and sssd is correctly configured. In addition to
10353 this, the client look for http://wpad/wpad.dat to configure a web
10354 proxy, and when it fail to find it no proxy settings are stored in
10355 /etc/environment and /etc/apt/apt.conf. Iceweasel and KDE is
10356 configured to look for the same wpad configuration and also do not use
10357 a proxy when at the university network. If the machine is moved to a
10358 network with such wpad setup, it would automatically use it when DHCP
10359 gave it a IP address.
</p>
10361 <p>The LDAP server is located using DNS, by first looking for the DNS
10362 entry ldap.$domain. If this do not exist, it look for the
10363 _ldap._tcp.$domain SRV records and use the first one as the LDAP
10364 server. Next, it connects to the LDAP server and search all
10365 namingContexts entries for posixAccount or posixGroup objects, and
10366 pick the first one as the LDAP base. For Kerberos, a similar
10367 algorithm is used to locate the LDAP server, and the realm is the
10368 uppercase version of $domain.
</p>
10370 <p>So, what is not working, you might ask. SMB mounting my home
10371 directory do not work. No idea why, but suspected the incorrect
10372 Kerberos settings in /etc/krb5.conf and /etc/samba/smb.conf might be
10373 the cause. These are not properly configured during installation, and
10374 had to be hand-edited to get the correct Kerberos realm and server,
10375 but SMB mounting still do not work. :(
</p>
10377 <p>With this automatic configuration in place, I expect a Debian Edu
10378 roaming profile installation would be able to automatically detect and
10379 connect to any site using LDAP and Kerberos for NSS directory and PAM
10380 authentication. It should also work out of the box in a Active
10381 Directory environment providing posixAccount and posixGroup objects
10382 with UID and GID values.
</p>
10384 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
10385 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
10391 Tags:
<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>.
10396 <div class=
"padding"></div>
10398 <div class=
"entry">
10399 <div class=
"title">
10400 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_roaming_workstation___at_the_university_of_Oslo.html">Debian Edu roaming workstation - at the university of Oslo
</a>
10406 <p>The new roaming workstation profile in Debian Edu/Squeeze is fairly
10407 similar to the laptop setup am I working on using Ubuntu for the
10408 University of Oslo, and just for the heck of it, I tested today how
10409 hard it would be to integrate that profile into the university
10410 infrastructure. In this case, it is the university LDAP server,
10411 Active Directory Kerberos server and SMB mounting from the Netapp file
10414 <p>I was pleasantly surprised that the only three files needed to be
10415 changed (/etc/sssd/sssd.conf, /etc/ldap.conf and
10416 /etc/mklocaluser.d/
20-debian-edu-config) and one file had to be added
10417 (/usr/share/perl5/Debian/Edu_Local.pm), to get the client working.
10418 Most of the changes were to get the client to use the university LDAP
10419 for NSS and Kerberos server for PAM, but one was to change a hard
10420 coded DNS domain name in the mklocaluser hook from .intern to
10423 <p>This testing was so encouraging, that I went ahead and adjusted the
10424 Debian Edu scripts and setup in subversion to centralise the roaming
10425 workstation setup a bit more and avoid the hardcoded DNS domain name,
10426 so that when I test this tomorrow, I expect to get away with modifying
10427 only /etc/sssd/sssd.conf and /etc/ldap.conf to get it to use the
10428 university servers.
</p>
10430 <p>My goal is to get the clients to have no hardcoded settings and
10431 fetch all their initial setup during installation and first boot, to
10432 allow them to be inserted also into environments where the default
10433 setup in Debian Edu has been changed or as with the university, where
10434 the environment is different but provides the protocols Debian Edu
10441 Tags:
<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>.
10446 <div class=
"padding"></div>
10448 <div class=
"entry">
10449 <div class=
"title">
10450 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html">Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery
</a>
10456 <p>I discovered this while doing
10457 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">automated
10458 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze
</a>. A few packages
10459 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
10460 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
10461 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.
</p>
10463 <p>An example is from todays
10464 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt">upgrade
10465 of KDE using aptitude
</a>. In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
10466 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade. The cause is simple. If a
10467 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
10468 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
10469 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
10470 because its dependencies are unavailable.
</p>
10472 <p>In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:
</p>
10475 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
10476 perl-modules depends on perl (
>=
5.10.1-
1); however:
10477 Version of perl on system is
5.10.0-
19lenny
2.
10478 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
10479 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
10480 </pre></blockquote>
10482 <p>The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
10483 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/527917">reported as a bug
</a>, and will
10484 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
10485 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
10486 failures. Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
10487 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
10488 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
10489 of dependency loops.
</p>
10492 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html">the
10493 tireless effort by Bill Allombert
</a>, the number of circular
10495 <a href=
"http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html">left in Debian
10496 is dropping
</a>, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)
</p>
10498 <p>Todays testing also exposed a bug in
10499 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/590605">update-notifier
</a> and
10500 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/590604">different behaviour
</a> between
10501 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
10502 dependency. Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
10509 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>.
10514 <div class=
"padding"></div>
10516 <div class=
"entry">
10517 <div class=
"title">
10518 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Debian_Edu_test_release__alpha0__based_on_Squeeze_is_released.html">First Debian Edu test release (alpha0) based on Squeeze is released
</a>
10524 <p>I just posted this announcement culminating several months of work
10525 with the next Debian Edu release. Not nearly done, but one major step
10529 <p>This is the first test release based on Squeeze. The focus of this
10530 release is to test the user application selection. To have a look,
10531 install the standalone profile and let the developers know if the set
10532 of installed packages i.e. applications should be modified. If some
10533 user application is missing, or if there are some applications that no
10534 longer make sense to be included in Debian Edu, please let us know.
10535 Also, if a useful application is missing the translation for your
10536 language of choice, please let us know too.
</p>
10538 <p>In addition, feedback and help to polish the desktop (menus,
10539 artwork, starters, etc.) is appreciated. We would like to ship a nice
10540 and handy KDE4 desktop targeted for schools out of the box.
</p>
10542 <p>The other profiles should be installable, but there is a lot more
10543 work left to be done before they are ready, so do not expect to
10546 <p>Changes compared to the lenny based version
</p>
10549 <li>Everything from Debian Squeeze
10551 <li>Desktop environment KDE
4.4 =
> the new KDE desktop in
10552 combination with some new artwork
10553 <li>Web browser Iceweasel
3.5
10554 <li>OpenOffice.org
3.2
10555 <li>Educational toolbox GCompris
9.3
10556 <li>Music creator Rosegarden
10.04.2
10557 <li>Image editor Gimp
2.6.10
10558 <li>Virtual universe Celestia
1.6.0
10559 <li>Virtual stargazer Stellarium
0.10.4
10560 <li>3D modeler Blender
2.49.2 (new application)
10561 <li>Video editor Kdenlive
0.7.7 (new application)
10563 <li>Now using Kerberos for password checking (migration not finished).
10569 <li>SMTP (sender verification)
10572 <li>New experimental roaming workstation profile for laptops.
</li>
10573 <li>Show welcome page to users when they first log in. The URL is
10574 fetched from LDAP.
</li>
10575 <li>New LXDE desktop option, in addition to KDE (default) and Gnome.
</li>
10576 <li>General cleanup (not finished)
</li>
10578 <p>The following features are not working as they should
</p>
10581 <li>No web based administration tool for creating users and groups. The
10582 scripts ldap-createuser-krb and ldap-add-user-to-group can be used
10584 <li>DVD installs are missing debian-installer images for the PXE boot,
10585 and do not set up the PXE menu on eth0 because of this. LTSP
10586 clients should still boot from eth1 on thin client servers.
</li>
10587 <li>The restructured KDE menu is not implemented.
</li>
10588 <li>The LDAP server setup need to be reviewed for security.
</li>
10589 <li>The LDAP directory structure need to be reworked.
</li>
10590 <li>Different sets of packages are installed when using the DVD and the
10591 netinst CD. More packages are installed using the netinst CD.
</li>
10592 <li>The jackd package fail to install. This is believed to be caused by
10593 some ongoing transition, and hopefully should be solved soon. The
10594 jackd1 package can be installed manually for those that need it.
</li>
10595 <li>Some packages lack translations. See
10596 http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Squeeze for updated status,
10597 and help out with translations.
</li>
10600 <p>To download this multiarch netinstall release you can use
</p>
10603 <li><a href=
"ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-
6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso
</a></li>
10604 <li><a href=
"http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-
6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso
</a></li>
10605 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-
6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso
</li>
10607 <p>To download this multiarch dvd release you can use
</p>
10610 <li><a href=
"ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-
6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso
</a></li>
10611 <li><a href=
"http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-
6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso
</a></li>
10612 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-
6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso
</li>
10615 <p>There is no source DVD available yet. It will be prepared when we
10616 get closer to the final release.
</p>
10618 <p>The MD5SUM of these images are
</p>
10621 <li>3dbf45d59f42a53518b6e3c9ec3b5eb6 debian-edu-
6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso
</li>
10622 <li>22f2cbfce281d1c6e478be452638675d debian-edu-
6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso
</li>
10625 <p>The SHA1SUM of these images are
</p>
10627 <li>c53d1b69b40cf37cd27aefaf33f6f6a3821bedf0 debian-edu-
6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso
</li>
10628 <li>2ec29d7db676d59d32197b05c277ffe16348376c debian-edu-
6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso
</li>
10630 <p>How to report bugs:
10631 http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugsInBugzilla
</p>
10633 <p>Please direct replies to debian-edu@lists.debian.org
</p>
10640 Tags:
<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>.
10645 <div class=
"padding"></div>
10647 <div class=
"entry">
10648 <div class=
"title">
10649 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/One_step_closer_to_single_signon_in_Debian_Edu.html">One step closer to single signon in Debian Edu
</a>
10655 <p>The last few months me and the other Debian Edu developers have
10656 been working hard to get the Debian/Squeeze based version of Debian
10657 Edu/Skolelinux into shape. This future version will use Kerberos for
10658 authentication, and services are slowly migrated to single signon,
10659 getting rid of password questions one at the time.
</p>
10661 <p>It will also feature a roaming workstation profile with local home
10662 directory, for laptops that are only some times on the Skolelinux
10663 network, and for this profile a shortcut is created in Gnome and KDE
10664 to gain access to the users home directory on the file server. This
10665 shortcut uses SMB at the moment, and yesterday I had time to test if
10666 SMB mounting had started working in KDE after we added the cifs-utils
10667 package. I was pleasantly surprised how well it worked.
</p>
10669 <p>Thanks to the recent changes to our samba configuration to get it
10670 to use Kerberos for authentication, there were no question about user
10671 password when mounting the SMB volume. A simple click on the shortcut
10672 in the KDE menu, and a window with the home directory popped
10675 <p>One step closer to a single signon solution out of the box in
10676 Debian Edu. We already had PAM, LDAP, IMAP and SMTP in place, and now
10677 also Samba. Next step is Cups and hopefully also NFS.
</p>
10679 <p>We had planned a alpha0 release of Debian Edu for today, but thanks
10680 to the autobuilder administrators for some architectures being slow to
10681 sign packages, we are still missing the fixed LTSP package we need for
10682 the release. It was uploaded three days ago with urgency=high, and if
10683 it had entered testing yesterday we would have been able to test it in
10684 time for a alpha0 release today. As the binaries for ia64 and powerpc
10685 still not uploaded to the Debian archive, we need to delay the alpha
10686 release another day.
</p>
10688 <p>If you want to help out with implementing Kerberos for Debian Edu,
10689 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
10695 Tags:
<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>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet
</a>.
10700 <div class=
"padding"></div>
10702 <div class=
"entry">
10703 <div class=
"title">
10704 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/OpenStreetmap_one_step_closer_to_having_routing_on_its_front_page.html">OpenStreetmap one step closer to having routing on its front page
</a>
10711 <a href=
"http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Opengeodata/~3/wUTCzDZk3lc/project-of-the-week-which-way-home">todays
10712 opengeodata blog entry
</a>, I just discovered that the
10713 OpenStreetmap.org site have gotten
10714 <a href=
"http://nroets.dev.openstreetmap.org/demo/index.html?layers=B000FTFTT">support
10715 for calculating routes
</a>. The support is still experimental and
10716 only available from the development server, until more experience is
10717 gathered on the user interface and any scalability issues.
</p>
10719 <p>Earlier, the routing I knew about using the OpenStreetmap.org data
10720 was provided by
<a href=
"http://maps.cloudmade.com/">Cloudmade
</a>,
10721 but having it on the main page is required to make everyone aware of
10722 the issue. I've had people reject Openstreetmap.org as a viable
10723 alternative for them because the front page lacked routing support,
10724 and I hope their needs will be catered for when routing show up on the
10725 www.openstreetmap.org front page.
</p>
10731 Tags:
<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/web">web
</a>.
10736 <div class=
"padding"></div>
10738 <div class=
"entry">
10739 <div class=
"title">
10740 <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>
10747 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">followup
</a>
10749 <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
10751 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">merging
10752 all
</a> the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.
</p>
10754 <p>As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
10755 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
10756 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server. The two
10757 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.
</p>
10759 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
10760 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
10761 on a Debian Edu main-server. Here is a summary.
10763 <p><strong>powerdns
</strong></p>
10765 <a href=
"http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend">Clues
10766 on how to
</a> set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
10769 <p>PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
10770 One "strict" mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
10771 using the same LDAP objects, and a "tree" mode where the forward and
10772 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
10773 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
10774 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.
</p>
10776 <p>In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
10777 base, and uses a "base" scoped search for the DNS name by adding
10778 "dc=tjener,dc=intern," to the base with a filter for
10779 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" for the forward entry and
10780 "dc=
2,dc=
2,dc=
0,dc=
10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa," with a filter for
10781 "(associateddomain=
2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)" for the reverse entry. For
10782 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
10783 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
10784 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
10785 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
10786 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
10787 spfrecord and modifytimestamp. For reverse entries it is looking for
10788 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
10789 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
10790 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp. The equivalent
10791 ldapsearch commands could look like this:
</p>
10794 ldapsearch -h ldap \
10795 -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
10796 -s base -x '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
10797 cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
10798 rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
10799 nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
10800 rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
10802 ldapsearch -h ldap \
10803 -b dc=
2,dc=
2,dc=
0,dc=
10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
10804 -s base -x '(associateddomain=
2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)'
10805 dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
10806 hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
10807 srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
10808 </pre></blockquote>
10810 <p>In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
10811 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
10812 example LDAP objects used there. In addition to these objects, the
10813 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10817 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10819 objectclass: dnsdomain
10820 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
10823 associateddomain: tjener.intern
10825 dn: dc=
2,dc=
2,dc=
0,dc=
10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10827 objectclass: dnsdomain2
10828 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
10830 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
10831 associateddomain:
2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
10832 </pre></blockquote>
10834 <p>In strict mode, the server behaves differently. When looking for
10835 forward DNS entries, it is doing a "subtree" scoped search with the
10836 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
10837 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" and requests the attributes dnsttl,
10838 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
10839 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
10840 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp. For reverse entires it also do a
10841 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is "(arecord=
10.0.2.2)"
10842 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
10843 modifytimestamp. In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
10844 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
10847 <p>The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
10851 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
10852 '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
10853 cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
10854 rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
10855 nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
10856 rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
10858 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
10859 '(arecord=
10.0.2.2)' associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
10860 </pre></blockquote>
10862 <p>In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
10863 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
10864 reverse lookups.
</p>
10866 <p>A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
10867 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
10868 need to generate a DNS reply. This make it able to work with any
10869 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.
</p>
10871 <p>The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC
1274) and
10872 dnsdomain2 schemas. The latter is used for reverse entries like
10873 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.
</p>
10875 <p>In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
10876 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
10877 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain). The use
10878 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
10879 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.
</p>
10881 <p>There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
10882 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
10883 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
10884 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
10885 (zonename and relativedomainname).
</p>
10887 <p>My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
10888 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
10889 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
10890 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
10891 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
10892 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):
</p>
10895 objectclass ( some-oid NAME 'dnsDomainAux'
10898 MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
10899 DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
10900 TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
10901 NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
10902 A6Record $ DNAMERecord
10904 </pre></blockquote>
10906 <p>This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
10907 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
10908 all the attributes PowerDNS wants. I've sent an email to the PowerDNS
10909 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
10910 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
10911 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.
</p>
10913 <p><strong>ISC dhcp
</strong></p>
10915 <p>The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
10916 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want. This
10917 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
10918 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
10919 what is needed without having to read the source code.
</p>
10921 <p>In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
10922 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
10923 stored. These are the relevant entries from
10924 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:
</p>
10927 ldap-base-dn "dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no";
10928 ldap-dhcp-server-cn "dhcp";
10929 </pre></blockquote>
10931 <p>The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
10932 configuration it need. The cn "dhcp" is located using the given LDAP
10933 base and the filter "(&(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))". The
10934 search result is this entry:
</p>
10937 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10940 objectClass: dhcpServer
10941 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10942 </pre></blockquote>
10944 <p>The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
10945 subtree with DHCP configuration. The DHCP configuration subtree base
10946 is located using a base scope search with base "cn=DHCP
10947 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" and filter
10948 "(&(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))".
10949 The search result is this entry:
</p>
10952 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10955 objectClass: dhcpService
10956 objectClass: dhcpOptions
10957 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10958 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
10959 dhcpStatements: authoritative
10960 dhcpOption: smtp-server code
69 = array of ip-address
10961 dhcpOption: www-server code
72 = array of ip-address
10962 dhcpOption: wpad-url code
252 = text
10963 </pre></blockquote>
10965 <p>Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time. When
10966 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
10967 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
10968 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
10969 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost. These provide options
10970 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc. Leaving out the
10971 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
10972 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
10973 related computer objects.
</p>
10975 <p>When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
10976 of the client (
00:
00:
00:
00:
00:
00 in this example), using a subtree
10977 scoped search with "cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" as
10978 the base and "(&(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
10979 00:
00:
00:
00:
00:
00))" as the filter. This is what a host object look
10983 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10986 objectClass: dhcpHost
10987 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet
00:
00:
00:
00:
00:
00
10988 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
10989 </pre></blockquote>
10991 <p>There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
10992 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
10993 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure. On the
10994 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
10995 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries. The latter should make
10996 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
10997 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
10998 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
10999 structural object class.
11001 <p><strong>Conclusion
</strong></p>
11003 <p>The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
11004 to which LDAP schemas to use. While its "tree" mode is rigid when it
11005 come to the the LDAP structure, the "strict" mode is very flexible,
11006 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
11007 in the configuration.
</p>
11009 <p>The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
11010 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
11011 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
11012 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
11013 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
11016 <p>Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
11017 this might work for Debian Edu:
</p>
11021 cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
11022 cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
11023 cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
11024 cn=
10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
11025 cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
11026 cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
11027 cn=
192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
11028 cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
11029 ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
11030 cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
11031 </pre></blockquote>
11033 <P>This is not tested yet. If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
11034 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
11035 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
11036 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.
</p>
11038 <p>The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
11042 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
11045 objectClass: dhcpHost
11046 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
11047 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
11048 associateddomain: hostname.intern
11049 arecord:
10.11.12.13
11050 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet
00:
00:
00:
00:
00:
00
11051 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
11052 </pre></blockquote>
11054 </p>One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
11055 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
11056 auxiliary object class.
</p>
11062 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>.
11067 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11069 <div class=
"entry">
11070 <div class=
"title">
11071 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects
</a>
11077 <p>For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
11078 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
11079 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
11080 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
11081 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.
</p>
11083 <p>I've looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
11084 information finally found a solution that seem to work.
</p>
11086 <p>The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
11087 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry. If
11088 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
11089 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
11090 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
11091 to a slave DNS server.
</p>
11093 <p>If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
11094 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
11095 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
11096 I've written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
11097 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup. It
11100 <p>With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
11101 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
11102 an earlier email. The combined LDAP object will look something like
11106 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
11108 objectClass: dhcphost
11109 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
11110 objectclass: dnsdomainaux
11111 associateddomain: hostname.intern
11112 arecord:
10.11.12.13
11113 dhcphwaddress: ethernet
00:
00:
00:
00:
00:
00
11114 dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
11116 </pre></blockquote>
11118 <p>The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
11119 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
11120 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress. LTSP will use
11121 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.
</p>
11123 <p>I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
11124 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
11125 outside the "DHCP Config" subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
11126 that. If I can't figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
11127 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
11128 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
11129 content. I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
11130 might be a good place to put it.
</p>
11132 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
11133 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
11139 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>.
11144 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11146 <div class=
"entry">
11147 <div class=
"title">
11148 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html">Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP
</a>
11154 <p>Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
11155 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
11156 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
11157 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.
</p>
11159 <p>Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
11160 to get configuration from LDAP. The idea is to look up the MAC
11161 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
11162 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
11165 <p>The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
11166 in a "computer" LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
11167 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.
</p>
11169 <p>This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
11170 this approach. A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
11171 need to be written. Comments, suggestions, etc?
</p>
11174 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
11176 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
11178 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
11179 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
11180 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
11182 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
11183 # existence of attribute names.
11185 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
11186 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
11187 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
11189 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
11190 # configuration settings. Something like this should work:
11192 # objectclass (
1.1.2.2 NAME 'ltspClientAux'
11195 # MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
11197 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
11198 if [ "$LDAPSERVER" ] ; then
11199 LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
11200 for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk '{print $
5}'|sort -u) ; do
11201 filter="(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))"
11202 ldapsearch -h "$LDAPSERVER" -b "$LDAPBASE" -v -x "$filter" | \
11203 grep '^ltspConfig' | while read attr value ; do
11204 # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
11205 attr=$(echo $attr | sed 's/^ltspConfig//i' | tr a-z A-Z)
11206 # bass value on to clients
11207 eval "$attr=$value; export $attr"
11211 </pre></blockquote>
11213 <p>I'm not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
11214 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
11215 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
11216 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
11217 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)
</p>
11219 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
11220 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
11222 <p>Update
2010-
07-
17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
11223 configuration in LDAP that was created around year
2000 by
11224 <a href=
"http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html">PC
11225 Xperience, Inc.,
2000</a>. I found its
11226 <a href=
"http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/">files
</a> on a
11227 personal home page over at redhat.com.
</p>
11233 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>.
11238 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11240 <div class=
"entry">
11241 <div class=
"title">
11242 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI
</a>
11249 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">my
11250 last post
</a> about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
11251 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma. The java application
11252 <a href=
"http://jxplorer.org/">jXplorer
</a> is claimed to be capable of
11253 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
11254 authenticate using Kerberos. I have only tested the Kerberos
11255 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
11256 LDAP with my test user yet. It is
11257 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html">available in
11258 Debian
</a> testing and unstable at the moment. The only problem I
11259 have with it is how it handle errors. If something go wrong, its
11260 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
11261 and remove the failing query. Nothing big, but very annoying.
</p>
11267 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>.
11272 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11274 <div class=
"entry">
11275 <div class=
"title">
11276 <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>
11282 <p>Here is a short update on my
<a
11283 href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">my
11284 Debian Lenny-
>Squeeze upgrade testing
</a>. Here is a summary of the
11285 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude. I'm
11286 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
11287 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
11288 (
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#
584861</a> and
11289 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/585716">#
585716</a>).
</p>
11291 <p>At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
11292 complete list of the installed packages. Based on this I see these
11293 differences when I did a test run today. As usual, I do not really
11294 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
11295 publish the difference.
</p>
11297 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude
</p>
11300 at-spi cpp-
4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
11301 libatspi1.0-
0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-
1-common
11302 libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
11303 libgtksourceview-common libpt-
1.10.10-plugins-alsa
11304 libpt-
1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
11305 libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
11306 python-
4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
11307 python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
11310 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
</p>
11313 bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
11314 gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
11315 libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-
50
11316 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-
11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
11317 libdirectfb-
1.0-
0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-
6 libedataserver1.2-
9
11318 libeel2-
2.20 libepc-
1.0-
1 libepc-ui-
1.0-
1 libexchange-storage1.2-
3
11319 libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-
3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
11320 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-
0 libgksuui1.0-
1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-
2
11321 libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-
1 libgnomeprint2.2-
0
11322 libgnomeprintui2.2-
0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-
0
11323 libgtksourceview1.0-
0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
11324 libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++
10
11325 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
11326 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-
2.2 libosp5
11327 libparted1.8-
10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
11328 libpt-
1.10.10 libraw1394-
8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-
8
11329 libssh2-
1 libsuitesparse-
3.1.0 libswfdec-
0.6-
90 libtalloc1
11330 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
11331 libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
11332 mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
11335 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get
</p>
11338 gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
11339 python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
11340 xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
11341 xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
11342 xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
11343 xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
11344 xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
11345 xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
11346 xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
11347 xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
11348 xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
11349 xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
11350 xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
11351 xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
11352 xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
11353 xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
11354 xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
11355 xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
11356 xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
11357 xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
11358 xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
11361 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get
</p>
11364 deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
11365 xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
11366 xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
11369 <p>I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
11370 <a href=
"http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120">changed
11371 in git
</a> today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
11372 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
11373 the difference somewhat.
11379 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>.
11384 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11386 <div class=
"entry">
11387 <div class=
"title">
11388 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Caching_password__user_and_group_on_a_roaming_Debian_laptop.html">Caching password, user and group on a roaming Debian laptop
</a>
11394 <p>For a laptop, centralized user directories and password checking is
11395 a bit troubling. Laptops are typically used also when not connected
11396 to the network, and it is vital for a user to be able to log in or
11397 unlock the screen saver also when a central server is unavailable.
11398 This is possible by caching passwords and directory information (user
11399 and group attributes) locally, and the packages to do so are available
11400 in Debian. Here follow two recipes to set this up in Debian/Squeeze.
11401 It is also possible to set up in Debian/Lenny, but require more manual
11402 setup there because pam-auth-update is missing in Lenny.
</p>
11404 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nscd + libpam-ccreds + libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir
</h2>
11406 This is the traditional method with a twist. The password caching is
11407 provided by libpam-ccreds (version
10-
4 or later is needed on
11408 Squeeze), and the directory caching is done by nscd. The directory
11409 lookup and password checking is done using LDAP. If one want to use
11410 Kerberos for password checking the libpam-ldapd package can be
11411 replaced with libpam-krb5 or libpam-heimdal. If one is happy having a
11412 local home directory with the path listed in LDAP, one can use the
11413 pam_mkhomedir module from pam-modules to make this happen instead of
11414 using libpam-mklocaluser. A setup for pam-auth-update to enable
11415 pam_mkhomedir will have to be written until a fix for
11416 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/568577">bug #
568577</a> is in the
11417 archive. Because I believe it is a bad idea to have local home
11418 directories using misleading paths like /site/server/partition/, I
11419 prefer to create a local user with the home directory in /home/. This
11420 is done using the libpam-mklocaluser package.
</p>
11422 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured
</p>
11425 libnss-ldapd libpam-ldapd nscd libpam-ccreds libpam-mklocaluser
11426 </pre></blockquote>
11428 <p>The ldapd packages will ask for LDAP connection information, and
11429 one have to fill in the values that fits ones own site. Make sure the
11430 PAM part uses encrypted connections, to make sure the password is not
11431 sent in clear text to the LDAP server. I've been unable to get TLS
11432 certificate checking for a self signed certificate working, which make
11433 LDAP authentication unsafe for Debian Edu (nslcd is not checking if it
11434 is talking to the correct LDAP server), and very much welcome feedback
11435 on how to get this working.
</p>
11437 <p>Because nscd do not have a default configuration fit for offline
11438 caching until
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/485282">bug #
485282</a>
11439 is fixed, this configuration should be used instead of the one
11440 currently in /etc/nscd.conf. The changes are in the fields
11441 reload-count and positive-time-to-live, and is based on the
11442 instructions I found in the
11443 <a href=
"http://www.flyn.org/laptopldap/">LDAP for Mobile Laptops
</a>
11444 instructions by Flyn Computing.
</p>
11448 reload-count unlimited
11451 enable-cache passwd yes
11452 positive-time-to-live passwd
2592000
11453 negative-time-to-live passwd
20
11454 suggested-size passwd
211
11455 check-files passwd yes
11456 persistent passwd yes
11458 max-db-size passwd
33554432
11459 auto-propagate passwd yes
11461 enable-cache group yes
11462 positive-time-to-live group
2592000
11463 negative-time-to-live group
20
11464 suggested-size group
211
11465 check-files group yes
11466 persistent group yes
11468 max-db-size group
33554432
11469 auto-propagate group yes
11471 enable-cache hosts no
11472 positive-time-to-live hosts
2592000
11473 negative-time-to-live hosts
20
11474 suggested-size hosts
211
11475 check-files hosts yes
11476 persistent hosts yes
11478 max-db-size hosts
33554432
11480 enable-cache services yes
11481 positive-time-to-live services
2592000
11482 negative-time-to-live services
20
11483 suggested-size services
211
11484 check-files services yes
11485 persistent services yes
11486 shared services yes
11487 max-db-size services
33554432
11488 </pre></blockquote>
11490 <p>While we wait for a mechanism to update /etc/nsswitch.conf
11491 automatically like the one provided in
11492 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/496915">bug #
496915</a>, the file
11493 content need to be manually replaced to ensure LDAP is used as the
11494 directory service on the machine. /etc/nsswitch.conf should normally
11495 look like this:
</p>
11501 hosts: files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns mdns4
11507 netgroup: files ldap
11508 </pre></blockquote>
11510 <p>The important parts are that ldap is listed last for passwd, group,
11511 shadow and netgroup.
</p>
11513 <p>With these changes in place, any user in LDAP will be able to log
11514 in locally on the machine using for example kdm, get a local home
11515 directory created and have the password as well as user and group
11518 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nss-updatedb + libpam-ccreds +
11519 libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir
</h2>
11521 <p>Because nscd have had its share of problems, and seem to have
11522 problems doing proper caching, I've seen suggestions and recipes to
11523 use nss-updatedb to copy parts of the LDAP database locally when the
11524 LDAP database is available. I have not tested such setup, because I
11525 discovered sssd.
</p>
11527 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + sssd + libpam-mklocaluser
</h2>
11529 <p>A more flexible and robust setup than the nscd combination
11530 mentioned earlier that has shown up recently, is the
11531 <a href=
"https://fedorahosted.org/sssd/">sssd
</a> package from Redhat.
11532 It is part of the
<a href=
"http://www.freeipa.org/">FreeIPA
</A> project
11533 to provide a Active Directory like directory service for Linux
11534 machines. The sssd system combines the caching of passwords and user
11535 information into one package, and remove the need for nscd and
11536 libpam-ccreds. It support LDAP and Kerberos, but not NIS. Version
11537 1.2 do not support netgroups, but it is said that it will support this
11538 in version
1.5 expected to show up later in
2010. Because the
11539 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd package
</a>
11540 was missing in Debian, I ended up co-maintaining it with Werner, and
11541 version
1.2 is now in testing.
11543 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured to get the
11544 roaming setup I want
</p>
11547 libpam-sss libnss-sss libpam-mklocaluser
11548 </pre></blockquote>
11550 The complete setup of sssd is done by editing/creating
11551 <tt>/etc/sssd/sssd.conf
</tt>.
11555 config_file_version =
2
11556 reconnection_retries =
3
11558 services = nss, pam
11562 filter_groups = root
11563 filter_users = root
11564 reconnection_retries =
3
11567 reconnection_retries =
3
11571 cache_credentials = true
11574 auth_provider = ldap
11575 chpass_provider = ldap
11577 ldap_uri = ldap://ldap
11578 ldap_search_base = dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
11579 ldap_tls_reqcert = never
11580 ldap_tls_cacert = /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
11581 </pre></blockquote>
11583 <p>I got the same problem here with certificate checking. Had to set
11584 "ldap_tls_reqcert = never" to get it working.
</p>
11586 <p>With the libnss-sss package in testing at the moment, the
11587 nsswitch.conf file is update automatically, so there is no need to
11588 modify it manually.
</p>
11590 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
11591 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
11597 Tags:
<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>.
11602 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11604 <div class=
"entry">
11605 <div class=
"title">
11606 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI
</a>
11612 <p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
11613 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
11614 tool to browse the LDAP tree. The only one I was able to find in
11615 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
11616 <a href=
"http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA
</a>, which has proved to
11617 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
11618 populated by default in Skolelinux. Thanks to it, I have been able to
11619 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
11620 objects. It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze. If you
11621 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)
</p>
11623 <p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
11624 the BTS yet. There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
11625 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
11626 Debian submenu in KDE. I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
11629 <p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet. I would
11630 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
11631 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet. So in the mean time, I use
11632 <a href=
"http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi
</a> for that.
</p>
11634 <p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
11635 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
11637 <p>Update
2010-
06-
29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
11638 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq
</a> package as a
11639 useful GUI alternative. It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
11640 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze. Unless that
11641 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.
</p>
11647 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>.
11652 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11654 <div class=
"entry">
11655 <div class=
"title">
11656 <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>
11663 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
11664 about the fact
</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
11665 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
11666 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.
</p>
11668 <p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
11669 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
11670 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
11671 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.
</p>
11673 <p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
11674 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
11675 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
11678 <p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
11680 <a href=
"http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
11681 schema
</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
11682 available today from IETF.
</p>
11685 --- dhcp.schema (revision
65192)
11686 +++ dhcp.schema (working copy)
11687 @@ -
376,
7 +
376,
7 @@
11688 objectclass (
2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
11690 DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
11692 + SUP top AUXILIARY
11694 MAY (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
11695 X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
11698 <p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
11699 Edu/Squeeze. We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
11700 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.
</p>
11702 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
11703 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
11709 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>.
11714 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11716 <div class=
"entry">
11717 <div class=
"title">
11718 <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>
11724 <p>A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
11725 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run. Until now,
11726 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
11727 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
11728 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
11732 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
11733 tasksel --new-install
11734 </pre></blockquote>
11736 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
11737 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
11738 any output what so ever.
11740 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
11741 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
11742 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
11743 happen. Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
11744 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
11745 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run. I ended up using
11749 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
11750 cmd="$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed 's/debconf-apt-progress -- //')"
11752 </pre></blockquote>
11754 <p>The content of $cmd is typically something like "
<tt>aptitude -q
11755 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
11756 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
11757 ~pimportant
</tt>", which will install the gnome desktop task, the
11758 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
11759 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
11762 <p>A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
11763 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
11770 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>.
11775 <div class="padding
"></div>
11777 <div class="entry
">
11778 <div class="title
">
11779 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html
">Officeshots taking shape</a>
11785 <p>For those of us caring about document exchange and
11786 interoperability, <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/
">OfficeShots</a>
11787 is a great service. It is to ODF documents what
11788 <a href="http://browsershots.org/
">BrowserShots</a> is for web
11791 <p>A while back, I was contacted by Knut Yrvin at the part of Nokia
11792 that used to be Trolltech, who wanted to help the OfficeShots project
11793 and wondered if the University of Oslo where I work would be
11794 interested in supporting the project. I helped him to navigate his
11795 request to the right people at work, and his request was answered with
11796 a spot in the machine room with power and network connected, and Knut
11797 arranged funding for a machine to fill the spot. The machine is
11798 administrated by the OfficeShots people, so I do not have daily
11799 contact with its progress, and thus from time to time check back to
11800 see how the project is doing.</p>
11802 <p>Today I had a look, and was happy to see that the Dell box in our
11803 machine room now is the host for several virtual machines running as
11804 OfficeShots factories, and the project is able to render ODF documents
11805 in 17 different document processing implementation on Linux and
11806 Windows. This is great.</p>
11812 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard
">standard</a>.
11817 <div class="padding
"></div>
11819 <div class="entry
">
11820 <div class="title
">
11821 <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>
11828 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html
">testing
11829 of Debian upgrades</a> from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I've
11830 finally made the upgrade logs available from
11831 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/
">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/</a>.
11832 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
11833 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting. This time
11834 I will only focus on their removal plans.</p>
11836 <p>After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
11837 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze. The
11838 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
11839 xserver-xorg-video* drivers. Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
11840 sure why. When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
11841 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
11842 longer needed. Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
11843 I do not know. Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?</p>
11845 <p>For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
11846 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
11847 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
11848 too surprising.</p>
11850 <p>I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
11851 and avoided, and perhaps others as well. Here are the complete list
11852 of planned removals. The complete logs is available from the URL
11853 above. Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
11854 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
11855 conffile questions. No idea why. I worked around it by using
11856 '<tt>echo >> /proc/<em>pidofdpkg</em>/fd/0</tt>' to tell dpkg to
11859 <p><b>apt-get gnome 72</b>
11860 <br>bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
11861 gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
11862 iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
11863 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
11864 nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
11865 serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
11866 xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
11867 xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
11868 xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
11869 xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
11870 xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
11871 xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
11872 xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
11873 xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
11874 xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
11875 xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
11876 xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
11877 xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
11878 xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
11879 xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
11880 xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
11881 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
11882 xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
11883 xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
11884 xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
11885 xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
11886 xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
11887 xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
11888 xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support</p>
11890 <p><b>aptitude gnome 129</b>
11892 <br>bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
11893 djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
11894 gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
11895 gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
11896 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
11897 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
11898 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
11899 libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
11900 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
11901 libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
11902 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
11903 libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
11904 libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
11905 libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
11906 libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
11907 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
11908 libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
11909 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
11910 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
11911 libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
11912 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
11913 libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
11914 libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
11915 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
11916 openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
11917 python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
11918 python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
11919 python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
11920 swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
11921 xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
11922 xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
11925 <p><b>apt-get kde 82</b>
11927 <br>cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
11928 kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
11929 kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
11930 kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
11931 kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
11932 libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
11933 xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
11934 xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
11935 xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
11936 xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
11937 xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
11938 xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
11939 xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
11940 xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
11941 xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
11942 xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
11943 xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
11944 xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
11945 xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
11946 xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
11947 xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
11948 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
11949 xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
11950 xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
11951 xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
11952 xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
11953 xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
11954 xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9</p>
11956 <p><b>aptitude kde 192</b>
11957 <br>bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
11958 djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
11959 ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
11960 kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
11961 kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
11962 kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
11963 kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
11964 kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
11965 kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
11966 kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
11967 kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
11968 klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
11969 kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
11970 krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
11971 ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
11972 kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
11973 kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
11974 libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
11975 libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
11976 libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
11977 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
11978 libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
11979 libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
11980 libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
11981 libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
11982 libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
11983 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
11984 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
11985 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
11986 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
11987 libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
11988 openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
11989 superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
11990 texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
11991 xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
11992 xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
12000 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>.
12005 <div class="padding
"></div>
12007 <div class="entry
">
12008 <div class="title
">
12009 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html
">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</a>
12015 <p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
12016 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly. A few bugs
12017 have been discovered and reported in the process
12018 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/
585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
12019 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/
584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
12020 enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/
584861">#584861</a> in
12021 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
12022 am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
12024 <p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
12025 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
12026 it. To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
12027 script is inserted. To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
12028 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
12029 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
12031 <p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
12032 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
12033 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
12034 is created. The bug report
12035 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/
566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
12036 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
12037 to make sure the upgrade go well. Testing on virtual and real
12038 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
12039 do the trick in such settings anyway. This is a
12040 <a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-
26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-
804130/
">known
12041 issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
12042 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
12043 working with old kernels or something like that. I really wish the
12044 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
12045 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
12046 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
12047 Debian Squeeze.</p>
12049 <p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades. This test
12050 script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
12066 exec
< /dev/null
12068 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
12069 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
12071 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
12072 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
12073 cat
> $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
<<EOF
12077 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
12079 umount $tmpdir/proc
12081 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
12082 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
12083 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
12085 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
12087 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger. It need the test scripts
12088 # to return the correct answers.
12089 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
12090 chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
12092 # Include the desktop and laptop task
12093 for test in desktop laptop ; do
12094 echo
> $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
<<EOF
12098 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
12101 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
12102 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
12103 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
12104 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
12106 echo deb $mirror $to main
> $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
12107 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
12108 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
12109 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
12111 </pre></blockquote>
12113 <p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
12114 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
12115 differently so far. I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
12116 regularly and post the result on the web. The Gnome upgrade currently
12117 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
12118 kdebase-workspace-data
</p>
12120 <p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
12121 (KDE
167 KiB, Gnome
516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
12122 post, so I will refrain from trying. I can report that for Gnome,
12123 aptitude report
760 packages upgraded,
448 newly installed,
129 to
12124 remove and
1 not upgraded and
1024MB need to be downloaded while for
12125 KDE the same numbers are
702 packages upgraded,
507 newly installed,
12126 193 to remove and
0 not upgraded and
1117MB need to be downloaded
</p>
12128 <p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
12129 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
12130 booting without a hitch. Was unsure if there were still bugs with
12131 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
12132 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
12139 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>.
12144 <div class=
"padding"></div>
12146 <div class=
"entry">
12147 <div class=
"title">
12148 <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>
12154 <p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
12155 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
12156 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd. The packages with such
12157 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
12158 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart. Because of
12159 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
12160 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.
</p>
12162 <p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
12163 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
12172 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
12174 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
12175 </pre></blockquote>
12177 <p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
12181 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-
2.88
12186 </pre></blockquote>
12188 <p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
12189 sysvinit are not set by upstart. Not sure if it is intentional or not
12190 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.
</p>
12192 <p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
12193 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
12200 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>.
12205 <div class=
"padding"></div>
12207 <div class=
"entry">
12208 <div class=
"title">
12209 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...
</a>
12216 <a href=
"http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
12217 of Rob Weir
</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
12218 <a href=
"http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
12219 Standards Wars
</a> (PDF
25 pages). I recommend it for everyone
12220 following the standards wars of today.
</p>
12226 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>.
12231 <div class=
"padding"></div>
12233 <div class=
"entry">
12234 <div class=
"title">
12235 <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>
12241 <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
12242 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
12243 information extracted from each machine. The script to do so is
12244 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
12245 the Skolelinux build servers:
</p>
12248 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
12250 Dell Computer Corporation
1
12253 eserver xSeries
345 -[
8670M1X]-
1
12257 </pre></blockquote>
12259 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
12260 provided in each machine. Here there are Intel machines without model
12261 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
12262 machines listed as [no-dmi-info]. One can add -l as a command line
12263 option to list the individual machines.
</p>
12265 <p>A larger list is
12266 <a href=
"http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
12267 city of Narvik
</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
12268 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly. In their report there
12269 are ~
1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
12270 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
12271 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
12278 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>.
12283 <div class=
"padding"></div>
12285 <div class=
"entry">
12286 <div class=
"title">
12287 <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>
12293 <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
12294 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled. The
12295 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
12296 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
12299 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
12300 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#
583312</a> initially filed
12301 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
12302 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
12303 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#
524751</a> initially filed against
12304 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.
</p>
12306 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
12307 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
12308 distribution work out of the box for these users. The nvidia driver
12309 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
12310 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
12311 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
12312 distribution that work for them. I have no idea what the solution is,
12313 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.
</p>
12315 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.
</p>
12321 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>.
12326 <div class=
"padding"></div>
12328 <div class=
"entry">
12329 <div class=
"title">
12330 <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>
12336 <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
12337 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
12338 issues are known and should be solved:
12342 <li>The wicd package seen to
12343 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting
</a> and
12344 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup
</a> when
12345 parallel booting is enabled. No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
12346 seem to be on the case.
</li>
12348 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
12349 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition
</a>
12350 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect. The
12351 maintainer is on the case.
</li>
12353 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
12354 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
12355 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back
</a> to
12356 sysv-rc. One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
12357 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
12358 sysv-rc more robust. Will investigate some more and probably upload a
12359 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
12360 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.
</li>
12364 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
12365 solvable before Squeeze is released. In addition to these there are
12366 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
12367 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.
</p>
12369 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
12370 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
12371 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
12372 list of usertagged bugs related to this
</a>.
</p>
12374 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.
</p>
12380 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>.
12385 <div class=
"padding"></div>
12387 <div class=
"entry">
12388 <div class=
"title">
12389 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer
</a>
12395 <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
12396 found time today to return to the project. Having to spend less time
12397 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
12398 definitely helped freeing some time.
</p>
12400 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu. We
12401 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
12402 get disk and network controllers working. Without having these
12403 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
12404 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
12405 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
12406 an external medium is a support pain. Initially, I expected it to be
12407 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
12408 debian-installer to find and use them. This proved to be wrong.
12409 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
12410 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
12411 /cdrom/firmware/). This also proved to not work, and at this point I
12412 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
12415 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
12416 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
12417 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
12418 packages. It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
12419 "external" media devices. Today I changed it to also look in the
12420 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
12421 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu. I also changed it to
12422 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
12423 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
12424 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
12427 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
12428 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
12429 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
12430 run these before activating the firmware during installation. The
12431 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
12432 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.
</p>
12434 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
12435 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.
</p>
12441 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>.
12446 <div class=
"padding"></div>
12448 <div class=
"entry">
12449 <div class=
"title">
12450 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Pieces_of_the_roaming_laptop_puzzle_in_Debian.html">Pieces of the roaming laptop puzzle in Debian
</a>
12456 <p>Today, the last piece of the puzzle for roaming laptops in Debian
12457 Edu finally entered the Debian archive. Today, the new
12458 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-mklocaluser.html">libpam-mklocaluser
</a>
12459 package was accepted. Two days ago, two other pieces was accepted
12461 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/pam-python.html">pam-python
</a>
12462 package needed by libpam-mklocaluser, and the
12463 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd
</a> package
12464 passed NEW on Monday. In addition, the
12465 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds
</a>
12466 package we need is in experimental (version
10-
4) since Saturday, and
12467 hopefully will be moved to unstable soon.
</p>
12469 <p>This collection of packages allow for two different setups for
12470 roaming laptops. The traditional setup would be using libpam-ccreds,
12471 nscd and libpam-mklocaluser with LDAP or Kerberos authentication,
12472 which should work out of the box if the configuration changes proposed
12473 for nscd in
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/485282">BTS report
12474 #
485282</a> is implemented. The alternative setup is to use sssd with
12475 libpam-mklocaluser to connect to LDAP or Kerberos and let sssd take
12476 care of the caching of passwords and group information.
</p>
12478 <p>I have so far been unable to get sssd to work with the LDAP server
12479 at the University, but suspect the issue is some SSL/GnuTLS related
12480 problem with the server certificate. I plan to update the Debian
12481 package to version
1.2, which is scheduled for next week, and hope to
12482 find time to make sure the next release will include both the
12483 Debian/Ubuntu specific patches. Upstream is friendly and responsive,
12484 and I am sure we will find a good solution.
</p>
12486 <p>The idea is to set up the roaming laptops to authenticate using
12487 LDAP or Kerberos and create a local user with home directory in /home/
12488 when a usre in LDAP logs in via KDM or GDM for the first time, and
12489 cache the password for offline checking, as well as caching group
12490 memberhips and other relevant LDAP information. The
12491 libpam-mklocaluser package was created to make sure the local home
12492 directory is in /home/, instead of /site/server/directory/ which would
12493 be the home directory if pam_mkhomedir was used. To avoid confusion
12494 with support requests and configuration, we do not want local laptops
12495 to have users in a path that is used for the same users home directory
12496 on the home directory servers.
</p>
12498 <p>One annoying problem with gdm is that it do not show the PAM
12499 message passed to the user from libpam-mklocaluser when the local user
12500 is created. Instead gdm simply reject the login with some generic
12501 message. The message is shown in kdm, ssh and login, so I guess it is
12502 a bug in gdm. Have not investigated if there is some other message
12503 type that can be used instead to get gdm to also show the message.
</p>
12505 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
12506 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
12512 Tags:
<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>.
12517 <div class=
"padding"></div>
12519 <div class=
"entry">
12520 <div class=
"title">
12521 <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>
12527 <p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
12528 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
12529 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
12530 expected, if I am to believe the
12531 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
12532 on debian-devel@
</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
12533 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
12534 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen. If serious problems are
12535 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
12536 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
12539 More information about
12540 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
12541 based boot sequencing
</a> is available from the Debian wiki. It is
12542 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
12543 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:
</p>
12547 </pre></blockquote>
12549 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
12550 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
12551 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
12552 list of usertagged bugs related to this
</a>.
</p>
12558 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>.
12563 <div class=
"padding"></div>
12565 <div class=
"entry">
12566 <div class=
"title">
12567 <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>
12573 <p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
12574 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
12575 system
</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
12576 network. Each machine will automatically report its status to the
12577 central server after boot and once per night. The network setup is
12578 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
12579 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines. This is useful
12580 to update the DHCP configuration.
</p>
12582 <p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
12583 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary. Run
12584 this on the collector host:
</p>
12587 perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
12588 </pre></blockquote>
12590 <p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
12591 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.
</p>
12593 <p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
12594 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
12595 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
12596 tables in LDAP using this information. Such tool is unfortunately not
12603 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>.
12608 <div class=
"padding"></div>
12610 <div class=
"entry">
12611 <div class=
"title">
12612 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html">systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart
</a>
12618 <p>The last few days a new boot system called
12619 <a href=
"http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd
</a>
12621 <a href=
"http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">introduced
</a>
12623 to the free software world. I have not yet had time to play around
12624 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
12625 <a href=
"http://upstart.ubuntu.com/">upstart
</a>, and might prove to be
12626 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
12627 based boot system. Tollef is
12628 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/580814">in the process
</a> of getting
12629 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work. I
12630 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
12631 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
12632 at the moment do not.
</p>
12634 <p>Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
12635 platform support. It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
12636 some new kernel features enabled to function properly. This means
12637 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
12638 system. Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
12641 <p>In the mean time, based on the
12642 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
12643 on debian-devel@
</a> regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
12644 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
12645 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
12646 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies. A
12647 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
12648 already in experimental. If all go well, Squeeze will be released
12649 with parallel booting enabled by default.
</p>
12655 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>.
12660 <div class=
"padding"></div>
12662 <div class=
"entry">
12663 <div class=
"title">
12664 <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>
12670 <p>These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
12671 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
12672 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies. If you want
12673 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
12674 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
12675 based boot sequencing
</a> is enabled, and add this line to
12676 /etc/default/rcS:
</p>
12679 CONCURRENCY=makefile
12680 </pre></blockquote>
12682 <p>That is it. It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
12683 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
12684 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
12685 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts. Startpar is configured
12686 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
12687 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
12688 make this happen.
</p>
12690 <p>Give it a try, and see if you like the result. If some services
12691 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
12692 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
12693 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies). Report bugs and get
12694 the package maintainers to fix it. :)
</p>
12696 <p>Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
12697 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct. I
12698 expect we will get there in Squeeze+
1, if we get manage to test and
12699 fix the remaining issues.
</p>
12701 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
12702 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
12703 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
12704 list of usertagged bugs related to this
</a>.
</p>
12710 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>.
12715 <div class=
"padding"></div>
12717 <div class=
"entry">
12718 <div class=
"title">
12719 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Forcing_new_users_to_change_their_password_on_first_login.html">Forcing new users to change their password on first login
</a>
12725 <p>One interesting feature in Active Directory, is the ability to
12726 create a new user with an expired password, and thus force the user to
12727 change the password on the first login attempt.
</p>
12729 <p>I'm not quite sure how to do that with the LDAP setup in Debian
12730 Edu, but did some initial testing with a local account. The account
12731 and password aging information is available in /etc/shadow, but
12732 unfortunately, it is not possible to specify an expiration time for
12733 passwords, only a maximum age for passwords.
</p>
12735 <p>A freshly created account (using adduser test) will have these
12736 settings in /etc/shadow:
</p>
12739 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
12740 Last password change : May
02,
2010
12741 Password expires : never
12742 Password inactive : never
12743 Account expires : never
12744 Minimum number of days between password change :
0
12745 Maximum number of days between password change :
99999
12746 Number of days of warning before password expires :
7
12748 </pre></blockquote>
12750 <p>The only way I could come up with to create a user with an expired
12751 account, is to change the date of the last password change to the
12752 lowest value possible (January
1th
1970), and the maximum password age
12753 to the difference in days between that date and today. To make it
12754 simple, I went for
30 years (
30 *
365 =
10950) and January
2th (to
12755 avoid testing if
0 is a valid value).
</p>
12757 <p>After using these commands to set it up, it seem to work as
12761 root@tjener:~# chage -d
1 test; chage -M
10950 test
12762 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
12763 Last password change : Jan
02,
1970
12764 Password expires : never
12765 Password inactive : never
12766 Account expires : never
12767 Minimum number of days between password change :
0
12768 Maximum number of days between password change :
10950
12769 Number of days of warning before password expires :
7
12771 </pre></blockquote>
12773 <p>So far I have tested this with ssh and console, and kdm (in
12774 Squeeze) login, and all ask for a new password before login in the
12775 user (with ssh, I was thrown out and had to log in again).
</p>
12777 <p>Perhaps we should set up something similar for Debian Edu, to make
12778 sure only the user itself have the account password?
</p>
12780 <p>If you want to comment on or help out with implementing this for
12781 Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
12783 <p>Update
2010-
05-
02 17:
20: Paul Tötterman tells me on IRC that the
12784 shadow(
8) page in Debian/testing now state that setting the date of
12785 last password change to zero (
0) will force the password to be changed
12786 on the first login. This was not mentioned in the manual in Lenny, so
12787 I did not notice this in my initial testing. I have tested it on
12788 Squeeze, and '
<tt>chage -d
0 username
</tt>' do work there. I have not
12789 tested it on Lenny yet.
</p>
12791 <p>Update
2010-
05-
02-
19:
05: Jim Paris tells me via email that an
12792 equivalent command to expire a password is '
<tt>passwd -e
12793 username
</tt>', which insert zero into the date of the last password
12800 Tags:
<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>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet
</a>.
12805 <div class=
"padding"></div>
12807 <div class=
"entry">
12808 <div class=
"title">
12809 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thoughts_on_roaming_laptop_setup_for_Debian_Edu.html">Thoughts on roaming laptop setup for Debian Edu
</a>
12815 <p>For some years now, I have wondered how we should handle laptops in
12816 Debian Edu. The Debian Edu infrastructure is mostly designed to
12817 handle stationary computers, and less suited for computers that come
12820 <p>Now I finally believe I have an sensible idea on how to adjust
12821 Debian Edu for laptops, by introducing a new profile for them, for
12822 example called Roaming Workstations. Here are my thought on this.
12823 The setup would consist of the following:
</p>
12827 <li>During installation, the user name of the owner / primary user of
12828 the laptop is requested and a local home directory is set up for
12829 the user, with uid and gid information fetched from the LDAP
12830 server. This allow the user to work also when offline. The
12831 central home directory can be available in a subdirectory on
12832 request, for example mounted via CIFS. It could be mounted
12833 automatically when a user log in while on the Debian Edu network,
12834 and unmounted when the machine is taken away (network down,
12835 hibernate, etc), it can be set up to do automatic mounting on
12836 request (using autofs), or perhaps some GUI button on the desktop
12837 can be used to access it when needed. Perhaps it is enough to use
12838 the fish protocol in KDE?
</li>
12840 <li>Password checking is set up to use LDAP or Kerberos
12841 authentication when the machine is on the Debian Edu network, and
12842 to cache the password for offline checking when the machine unable
12843 to reach the LDAP or Kerberos server. This can be done using
12844 <a href=
"http://www.padl.com/OSS/pam_ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds
</a>
12845 or the Fedora developed
12846 <a href=
"https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/SSSD">System
12847 Security Services Daemon
</a> packages.
</li>
12849 <li>File synchronisation with the central home directory is set up
12850 using a shared directory in both the local and the central home
12851 directory, using unison.
</li>
12853 <li>Printing should be set up to print to all printers broadcasting
12854 their existence on the local network, and should then work out of
12855 the box with CUPS. For sites needing accurate printer quotas, some
12856 system with Kerberos authentication or printing via ssh could be
12859 <li>For users that should have local root access to their laptop,
12860 sudo should be used to allow this to the local user.
</li>
12862 <li>It would be nice if user and group information from LDAP is
12863 cached on the client, but given that there are entries for the
12864 local user and primary group in /etc/, it should not be needed.
</li>
12868 <p>I believe all the pieces to implement this are in Debian/testing at
12869 the moment. If we work quickly, we should be able to get this ready
12870 in time for the Squeeze release to freeze. Some of the pieces need
12871 tweaking, like libpam-ccreds should get support for pam-auth-update
12872 (
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/566718">#
566718</a>) and nslcd (or
12873 perhaps debian-edu-config) should get some integration code to stop
12874 its daemon when the LDAP server is unavailable to avoid long timeouts
12875 when disconnected from the net. If we get Kerberos enabled, we need
12876 to make sure we avoid long timeouts there too.
</p>
12878 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
12879 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
12885 Tags:
<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>.
12890 <div class=
"padding"></div>
12892 <div class=
"entry">
12893 <div class=
"title">
12894 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Great_book___Content__Selected_Essays_on_Technology__Creativity__Copyright__and_the_Future_of_the_Future_.html">Great book: "Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity, Copyright, and the Future of the Future"
</a>
12900 <p>The last few weeks i have had the pleasure of reading a
12901 thought-provoking collection of essays by Cory Doctorow, on topics
12902 touching copyright, virtual worlds, the future of man when the
12903 conscience mind can be duplicated into a computer and many more. The
12904 book titled "Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity,
12905 Copyright, and the Future of the Future" is available with few
12906 restrictions on the web, for example from
12907 <a href=
"http://craphound.com/content/">his own site
</a>. I read the
12909 <a href=
"http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2883">feedbooks
</a> using
12910 <a href=
"http://www.fbreader.org/">fbreader
</a> and my N810. I
12911 strongly recommend this book.
</p>
12917 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling
</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>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web
</a>.
12922 <div class=
"padding"></div>
12924 <div class=
"entry">
12925 <div class=
"title">
12926 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kerberos_for_Debian_Edu_Squeeze_.html">Kerberos for Debian Edu/Squeeze?
</a>
12932 <p><a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20100413-kerberos/">Yesterdays
12933 NUUG presentation
</a> about Kerberos was inspiring, and reminded me
12934 about the need to start using Kerberos in Skolelinux. Setting up a
12935 Kerberos server seem to be straight forward, and if we get this in
12936 place a long time before the Squeeze version of Debian freezes, we
12937 have a chance to migrate Skolelinux away from NFSv3 for the home
12938 directories, and over to an architecture where the infrastructure do
12939 not have to trust IP addresses and machines, and instead can trust
12940 users and cryptographic keys instead.
</p>
12942 <p>A challenge will be integration and administration. Is there a
12943 Kerberos implementation for Debian where one can control the
12944 administration access in Kerberos using LDAP groups? With it, the
12945 school administration will have to maintain access control using flat
12946 files on the main server, which give a huge potential for errors.
</p>
12948 <p>A related question I would like to know is how well Kerberos and
12949 pam-ccreds (offline password check) work together. Anyone know?
</p>
12951 <p>Next step will be to use Kerberos for access control in Lwat and
12952 Nagios. I have no idea how much work that will be to implement. We
12953 would also need to document how to integrate with Windows AD, as such
12954 shared network will require two Kerberos realms that need to cooperate
12955 to work properly.
</p>
12957 <p>I believe a good start would be to start using Kerberos on the
12958 skolelinux.no machines, and this way get ourselves experience with
12959 configuration and integration. A natural starting point would be
12960 setting up ldap.skolelinux.no as the Kerberos server, and migrate the
12961 rest of the machines from PAM via LDAP to PAM via Kerberos one at the
12964 <p>If you would like to contribute to get this working in Skolelinux,
12965 I recommend you to see the video recording from yesterdays NUUG
12966 presentation, and start using Kerberos at home. The video show show
12967 up in a few days.
</p>
12973 Tags:
<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>.
12978 <div class=
"padding"></div>
12980 <div class=
"entry">
12981 <div class=
"title">
12982 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/After_6_years_of_waiting__the_Xreset_d_feature_is_implemented.html">After
6 years of waiting, the Xreset.d feature is implemented
</a>
12988 <p>6 years ago, as part of the Debian Edu development I am involved
12989 in, I asked for a hook in the kdm and gdm setup to run scripts as root
12990 when the user log out. A bug was submitted against the xfree86-common
12991 package in
2004 (
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/230422">#
230422</a>),
12992 and revisited every time Debian Edu was working on a new release.
12993 Today, this finally paid off.
</p>
12995 <p>The framework for this feature was today commited to the git
12996 repositry for the xorg package, and the git repository for xdm has
12997 been updated to use this framework. Next on my agenda is to make sure
12998 kdm and gdm also add code to use this framework.
</p>
13000 <p>In Debian Edu, we want to ability to run commands as root when the
13001 user log out, to get rid of runaway processes and do general cleanup
13002 after a user. With this framework in place, we finally can do that in
13003 a generic way that work with all display managers using this
13004 framework. My goal is to get all display managers in Debian use it,
13005 similar to how they use the Xsession.d framework today.
<p>
13011 Tags:
<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>.
13016 <div class=
"padding"></div>
13018 <div class=
"entry">
13019 <div class=
"title">
13020 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Lenny_released__work_continues.html">Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Lenny released, work continues
</a>
13026 <p>On Tuesday, the Debian/Lenny based version of
13027 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
</a> was finally
13028 shipped. This was a major leap forward for the project, and I am very
13029 pleased that we finally got the release wrapped up. Work on the first
13030 point release starts imediately, as we plan to get that one out a
13031 month after the major release, to include all fixes for bugs we found
13032 and fixed too late in the release process to include last Tuesday.
</p>
13034 <p>Perhaps it even is time for some partying?
</p>
13036 <p>After this first point release, my plan is to focus again on the
13037 next major release, based on Squeeze. We will try to get as many of
13038 the fixes we need into the official Debian packages before the freeze,
13039 and have just a few weeks or months to make it happen.
</p>
13045 Tags:
<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>.
13050 <div class=
"padding"></div>
13052 <div class=
"entry">
13053 <div class=
"title">
13054 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_Munin_and_Nagios_configuration.html">Automatic Munin and Nagios configuration
</a>
13060 <p>One of the new features in the next Debian/Lenny based release of
13061 Debian Edu/Skolelinux, which is scheduled for release in the next few
13062 days, is automatic configuration of the service monitoring system
13063 Nagios. The previous release had automatic configuration of trend
13064 analysis using Munin, and this Lenny based release take that a step
13067 <p>When installing a Debian Edu Main-server, it is automatically
13068 configured as a Munin and Nagios server. In addition, it is
13069 configured to be a server for the
13070 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">SiteSummary
13071 system
</a> I have written for use in Debian Edu. The SiteSummary
13072 system is inspired by a system used by the University of Oslo where I
13073 work. In short, the system provide a centralised collector of
13074 information about the computers on the network, and a client on each
13075 computer submitting information to this collector. This allow for
13076 automatic information on which packages are installed on each machine,
13077 which kernel the machines are using, what kind of configuration the
13078 packages got etc. This also allow us to automatically generate Munin
13079 and Nagios configuration.
</p>
13081 <p>All computers reporting to the sitesummary collector with the
13082 munin-node package installed is automatically enabled as a Munin
13083 client and graphs from the statistics collected from that machine show
13084 up automatically on http://www/munin/ on the Main-server.
</p>
13086 <p>All non-laptop computers reporting to the sitesummary collector are
13087 automatically monitored for network presence (ping and any network
13088 services detected). In addition, all computers (also laptops) with
13089 the nagios-nrpe-server package installed and configured the way
13090 sitesummary would configure it, are monitored for full disks, software
13091 raid status, swap free and other checks that need to run locally on
13094 <p>The result is that the administrator on a school using Debian Edu
13095 based on Lenny will be able to check the health of his installation
13096 with one look at the Nagios settings, without having to spend any time
13097 keeping the Nagios configuration up-to-date.
</p>
13099 <p>The only configuration one need to do to get Nagios up and running
13100 is to set the password used to get access via HTTP. The system
13101 administrator need to run "
<tt>htpasswd /etc/nagios3/htpasswd.users
13102 nagiosadmin
</tt>" to create a nagiosadmin user and set a password for
13103 it to be able to log into the Nagios web pages. After that,
13104 everything is taken care of.</p>
13110 Tags: <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>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary
">sitesummary</a>.
13115 <div class="padding
"></div>
13117 <div class="entry
">
13118 <div class="title
">
13119 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Relative_popularity_of_document_formats__MS_Office_vs__ODF_.html
">Relative popularity of document formats (MS Office vs. ODF)</a>
13125 <p>Just for fun, I did a search right now on Google for a few file ODF
13126 and MS Office based formats (not to be mistaken for ISO or ECMA
13127 OOXML), to get an idea of their relative usage. I searched using
13128 'filetype:odt' and equvalent terms, and got these results:</P>
13131 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
13132 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:282000</td> <td>docx:308000</td></tr>
13133 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:75600</td> <td>pptx:183000</td></tr>
13134 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:26500 </td> <td>xlsx:145000</td></tr>
13137 <p>Next, I added a 'site:no' limit to get the numbers for Norway, and
13138 got these numbers:</p>
13141 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
13142 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:2480 </td> <td>docx:4460</td></tr>
13143 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:299 </td> <td>pptx:741</td></tr>
13144 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:187 </td> <td>xlsx:372</td></tr>
13147 <p>I wonder how these numbers change over time.</p>
13149 <p>I am aware of Google returning different results and numbers based
13150 on where the search is done, so I guess these numbers will differ if
13151 they are conduced in another country. Because of this, I did the same
13152 search from a machine in California, USA, a few minutes after the
13153 search done from a machine here in Norway.</p>
13157 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
13158 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:129000</td> <td>docx:308000</td></tr>
13159 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:44200</td> <td>pptx:93900</td></tr>
13160 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:26500 </td> <td>xlsx:82400</td></tr>
13163 <p>And with 'site:no':
13166 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
13167 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:2480</td> <td>docx:3410</td></tr>
13168 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:175</td> <td>pptx:604</td></tr>
13169 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:186 </td> <td>xlsx:296</td></tr>
13172 <p>Interesting difference, not sure what to conclude from these
13179 Tags: <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>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web
">web</a>.
13184 <div class="padding
"></div>
13186 <div class="entry
">
13187 <div class="title
">
13188 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ISO_still_hope_to_fix_OOXML.html
">ISO still hope to fix OOXML</a>
13195 href="http://twerner.blogspot.com/
2009/
08/defects-of-office-open-xml.html
">a
13196 blog post from Torsten Werner</a>, the current defect report for ISO
13197 29500 (ISO OOXML) is 809 pages. His interesting point is that the
13198 defect report is 71 pages more than the full ODF 1.1 specification.
13199 Personally I find it more interesting that ISO still believe ISO OOXML
13200 can be fixed in ISO. Personally, I believe it is broken beyon repair,
13201 and I completely lack any trust in ISO for being able to get anywhere
13202 close to solving the problems. I was part of the Norwegian committee
13203 involved in the OOXML fast track process, and was not impressed with
13204 Standard Norway and ISO in how they handled it.</p>
13206 <p>These days I focus on ODF instead, which seem like a specification
13207 with the future ahead of it. We are working in NUUG to organise a ODF
13208 seminar this autumn.</p>
13214 Tags: <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>.
13219 <div class="padding
"></div>
13221 <div class="entry
">
13222 <div class="title
">
13223 <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>
13229 <p>Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
13230 and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
13231 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing. This
13232 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
13233 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
13234 installation. Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
13235 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.</p>
13237 <p>The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
13238 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
13239 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.</p>
13245 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>.
13250 <div class="padding
"></div>
13252 <div class="entry
">
13253 <div class="title
">
13254 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html
">Taking over sysvinit development</a>
13260 <p>After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
13261 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
13262 take over the package and become the new upstream. The number of
13263 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
13264 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
13265 the package up to date.</p>
13267 <p>On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
13268 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman. About 10 days ago, I made
13269 a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
13270 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
13271 distributions. We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
13272 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge. Since the
13273 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
13274 upstream project at <a href="http://savannah.nongnu.org/
">Savannah</a>, and continue
13275 development there. The project is registered and currently waiting
13276 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
13277 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
13278 working on the future release.</p>
13280 <p>It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
13281 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.</p>
13287 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>.
13292 <div class="padding
"></div>
13294 <div class="entry
">
13295 <div class="title
">
13296 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html
">Debian boots quicker and quicker</a>
13302 <p>I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
13303 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
13304 could find more ways to speed up the boot system. This was an Ubuntu
13306 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint
">developer
13307 gathering</a>. It was quite productive. We also discussed the future
13308 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
13309 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
13310 asynchronous and event base. The Ubuntu approach using udev and
13311 upstart might be a good way forward. Time will show.</p>
13313 <p>Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
13314 process in Debian. All of these should be applied to get a quick
13319 <li>Use dash as /bin/sh.</li>
13321 <li>Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
13322 clock is in UTC.</li>
13324 <li>Install and activate the insserv package to enable
13325 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot
">dependency
13326 based boot sequencing</a>, and enable concurrent booting.</li>
13330 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
13331 <a href="http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/
">Carlos
13334 <p>Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
13335 unstable yesterday. When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
13336 from the boot sequence. It depend on very correct dependency
13337 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
13338 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
13341 <p>On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
13342 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
13343 startup speed as well. Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
13344 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
13345 possible to run a of them in the same process. A quick way to test
13346 this would be to enable insserv and run 'mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
13347 insserv'. Will need to test if that work. :)</p>
13353 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>.
13358 <div class="padding
"></div>
13360 <div class="entry
">
13361 <div class="title
">
13362 <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>
13368 <p>There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
13369 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
13370 do not yet know them.</p>
13372 <p>The first one is <a href="http://valgrind.org/
">valgrind</a>, a
13373 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
13374 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run 'valgrind program',
13375 and it will report any problems on stdout. It is even better if the
13376 program include debug information. With debug information, it is able
13377 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
13378 occurs. It can report things like 'reading past memory block in file
13379 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M', and
13380 'using uninitialised value in control logic'. This tool has made it
13381 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
13382 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
13384 <p>The second one is
13385 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity
">Coverity</a> which is
13386 a source code checker. It is able to process the source of a program
13387 and find problems in the logic without running the program. It
13388 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
13389 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel. It is now a commercial tool
13390 and the company behind it is running
13391 <a href="http://www.scan.coverity.com/
">a community service</a> for the
13392 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
13393 their source checked for free. Several thousand defects have been
13394 found and fixed so far. It can find errors like 'lock L taken in file
13395 X line N is never released if exiting in line M', or 'the code in file
13396 Y lines O to P can never be executed'. The projects included in the
13397 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
13398 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.</p>
13400 <p>I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
13401 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
13402 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
13403 surrounded by today.</p>
13409 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>.
13414 <div class="padding
"></div>
13416 <div class="entry
">
13417 <div class="title
">
13418 <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>
13425 <a href="http://blog.technologeek.org/
2009/
04/
12/
214">claim that no
13426 patch is better than a useless patch</a>. I completely disagree, as a
13427 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
13428 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
13429 time on fixing it. No patch do not provide any of these positive
13436 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>.
13441 <div class="padding
"></div>
13443 <div class="entry
">
13444 <div class="title
">
13445 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Recording_video_from_cron_using_VLC.html
">Recording video from cron using VLC</a>
13451 <p>One think I have wanted to figure out for a along time is how to
13452 run vlc from cron to do recording of video streams on the net. The
13453 task is trivial with mplayer, but I do not really trust the security
13454 of mplayer (it crashes too often on strange input), and thus prefer
13455 vlc. I finally found a way to do it today. I spent an hour or so
13456 searching the web for recipes and reading the documentation. The
13457 hardest part was to get rid of the GUI window, but after finding the
13458 dummy interface, the command line finally presented itself:</p>
13460 <blockquote><pre>URL=http://www.ping.uio.no/video/rms-oslo_2009.ogg
13462 DISPLAY= vlc -q $URL \
13463 --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
13464 --intf=dummy
</pre></blockquote>
13466 <p>The command stream the URL and store it in the SAVEFILE by
13467 duplicating the output stream to "nodisplay" and the file, using the
13468 dummy interface. The dummy interface and the nodisplay output make
13469 sure no X interface is needed.
</p>
13471 <p>The cron job then need to start this job with the appropriate URL
13472 and file name to save, sleep for the duration wanted, and then kill
13473 the vlc process with SIGTERM. Here is a complete script
13474 <tt>vlc-record
</tt> to use from
<tt>at
</tt> or
<tt>cron
</tt>:
</p>
13476 <blockquote><pre>#!/bin/sh
13481 DISPLAY= vlc -q "$URL" \
13482 --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
13483 --intf=dummy < /dev/null
> /dev/null
2>&
1 &
13487 wait $pid
</pre></blockquote>
13493 Tags:
<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/video">video
</a>.
13498 <div class=
"padding"></div>
13500 <div class=
"entry">
13501 <div class=
"title">
13502 <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>
13508 <p>Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
13509 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure. It is the
13510 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
13511 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
13512 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
13513 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
13514 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
13517 <p>This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
13518 independently of the server applications. One can even allow users to
13519 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
13520 protocol and format. In the normal case, only one client application
13521 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
13522 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
13523 blocked from doing so.
</p>
13525 <p>It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
13526 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
13527 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
13528 requirements change.
</p>
13530 <p>I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
13531 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
13532 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.
</p>
13538 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>.
13543 <div class=
"padding"></div>
13545 <div class=
"entry">
13546 <div class=
"title">
13547 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html">Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering
</a>
13553 <p>I'm sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
13554 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering. I got a bit done tuning the
13555 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
13556 implementation avahi. It look like it could be useful for us. Almost
13557 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
13558 get to know the Skolelinux system. Walter Bender, involved in the
13559 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
13560 also helped me improve my OLPC installation. He also showed me that
13561 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
13562 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian. As a
13563 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu. We also
13564 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
13565 proved to be too hard for us. The application seem to need more work
13566 before it is ready for me. I look forward to getting home and relax
13573 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>.
13578 <div class=
"padding"></div>
13580 <div class=
"entry">
13581 <div class=
"title">
13582 <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>
13588 <p>The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
13589 optimal. There is RFC
2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
13590 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC
2307bis, with
13591 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory. The RFC
13592 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
13593 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.
</p>
13595 <p>In
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux
</a>,
13596 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
13597 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
13598 and LTSP configuration in LDAP. These objects have a lot in common,
13599 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
13600 object per entity. For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
13601 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
13602 DNS information and another with DHCP information. The schemas
13603 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
13604 object. In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
13605 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
13606 It just do not scale. I believe it is time for a few RFC
13607 specifications to cleam up this mess.
</p>
13609 <p>I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
13610 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
13611 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
13612 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.
</p>
13614 <p>I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
13615 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.
</p>
13617 <p>Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
13618 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up. Time to start a
13619 new IETF work group?
</p>
13625 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>.
13630 <div class=
"padding"></div>
13632 <div class=
"entry">
13633 <div class=
"title">
13634 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">Checking server hardware support status for Dell, HP and IBM servers
</a>
13640 <p>At work, we have a few hundred Linux servers, and with that amount
13641 of hardware it is important to keep track of when the hardware support
13642 contract expire for each server. We have a machine (and service)
13643 register, which until recently did not contain much useful besides the
13644 machine room location and contact information for the system owner for
13645 each machine. To make it easier for us to track support contract
13646 status, I've recently spent time on extending the machine register to
13647 include information about when the support contract expire, and to tag
13648 machines with expired contracts to make it easy to get a list of such
13649 machines. I extended a perl script already being used to import
13650 information about machines into the register, to also do some screen
13651 scraping off the sites of Dell, HP and IBM (our majority of machines
13652 are from these vendors), and automatically check the support status
13653 for the relevant machines. This make the support status information
13654 easily available and I hope it will make it easier for the computer
13655 owner to know when to get new hardware or renew the support contract.
13656 The result of this work documented that
27% of the machines in the
13657 registry is without a support contract, and made it very easy to find
13658 them.
27% might seem like a lot, but I see it more as the case of us
13659 using machines a bit longer than the
3 years a normal support contract
13660 last, to have test machines and a platform for less important
13661 services. After all, the machines without a contract are working fine
13662 at the moment and the lack of contract is only a problem if any of
13663 them break down. When that happen, we can either fix it using spare
13664 parts from other machines or move the service to another old
13667 <p>I believe the code for screen scraping the Dell site was originally
13668 written by Trond Hasle Amundsen, and later adjusted by me and Morten
13669 Werner Forsbring. The HP scraping was written by me after reading a
13670 nice article in ;login: about how to use WWW::Mechanize, and the IBM
13671 scraping was written by me based on the Dell code. I know the HTML
13672 parsing could be done using nice libraries, but did not want to
13673 introduce more dependencies. This is the current incarnation:
</p>
13678 use WWW::Mechanize;
13681 sub get_support_info {
13682 my ($machine, $model, $serial, $productnumber) = @_;
13685 if ( $model =~ m/^Dell / ) {
13686 # fetch website from Dell support
13687 my $url = "http://support.euro.dell.com/support/topics/topic.aspx/emea/shared/support/my_systems_info/no/details?c=no
&cs=nodhs1
&l=no
&s=dhs
&ServiceTag=$serial";
13688 my $webpage = get($url);
13689 return undef unless ($webpage);
13692 my @lines = split(/\n/, $webpage);
13693 foreach my $line (@lines) {
13694 next unless ($line =~ m/Beskrivelse/);
13695 $line =~ s/
<[^
>]+
?>/;/gm;
13696 $line =~ s/^.+?;(Beskrivelse;)/$
1/;
13698 my @f = split(/\;/, $line);
13699 @f = @f[
13 .. $#f];
13701 while ($f[
3] eq "DELL") {
13702 my ($type, $startstr, $endstr, $days) = @f[
0,
5,
7,
10];
13704 my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
13705 localtime(str2time($startstr)));
13706 my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
13707 localtime(str2time($endstr)));
13708 $str .= "$type $start -
> $end ";
13709 @f = @f[
14 .. $#f];
13710 $lastend = $end if ($end gt $lastend);
13712 my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
13713 tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
13714 if ($lastend lt $today);
13716 } elsif ( $model =~ m/^HP / ) {
13717 my $mech = WWW::Mechanize-
>new();
13719 'http://www1.itrc.hp.com/service/ewarranty/warrantyInput.do';
13722 'BODServiceID' =
> 'NA',
13723 'RegisteredPurchaseDate' =
> '',
13725 'productNumber' =
> $productnumber,
13726 'serialNumber1' =
> $serial,
13728 $mech-
>submit_form( form_number =
> 2,
13729 fields =
> $fields );
13730 # Next step is screen scraping
13731 my $content = $mech-
>content();
13733 $content =~ s/
<[^
>]+
?>/;/gm;
13734 $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
13735 $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
13736 $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
13738 my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
13740 while ($content =~ m/;Warranty Type;/) {
13741 my ($type, $status, $startstr, $stopstr) = $content =~
13742 m/;Warranty Type;([^;]+);.+?;Status;(\w+);Start Date;([^;]+);End Date;([^;]+);/;
13743 $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty Type;//;
13744 my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
13745 localtime(str2time($startstr)));
13746 my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
13747 localtime(str2time($stopstr)));
13749 $str .= "$type ($status) $start -
> $end ";
13751 tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
13752 if ($end lt $today);
13754 } elsif ( $model =~ m/^IBM / ) {
13755 # This code ignore extended support contracts.
13756 my ($producttype) = $model =~ m/.*-\[(.{
4}).+\]-/;
13757 if ($producttype
&& $serial) {
13759 get("http://www-
947.ibm.com/systems/support/supportsite.wss/warranty?action=warranty
&brandind=
5000008&Submit=Submit
&type=$producttype
&serial=$serial");
13761 $content =~ s/
<[^
>]+
?>/;/gm;
13762 $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
13763 $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
13764 $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
13766 $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty status;//;
13767 my ($status, $end) = $content =~ m/;Warranty status;([^;]+)\s*;Expiration date;(\S+) ;/;
13769 $str .= "($status) -
> $end ";
13771 my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
13772 tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
13773 if ($end lt $today);
13781 <p>Here are some examples on how to use the function, using fake
13782 serial numbers. The information passed in as arguments are fetched
13783 from dmidecode.
</p>
13786 print get_support_info("hp.host", "HP ProLiant BL460c G1", "
1234567890"
13788 print get_support_info("dell.host", "Dell Inc. PowerEdge
2950", "
1234567");
13789 print get_support_info("ibm.host", "IBM eserver xSeries
345 -[
867061X]-",
13793 <p>I would recommend this approach for tracking support contracts for
13794 everyone with more than a few computers to administer. :)
</p>
13796 <p>Update
2009-
03-
06: The IBM page do not include extended support
13797 contracts, so it is useless in that case. The original Dell code do
13798 not handle extended support contracts either, but has been updated to
13805 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
13810 <div class=
"padding"></div>
13812 <div class=
"entry">
13813 <div class=
"title">
13814 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_bar_codes_at_a_computing_center.html">Using bar codes at a computing center
</a>
13820 <p>At work with the University of Oslo, we have several hundred computers
13821 in our computing center. This give us a challenge in tracking the
13822 location and cabling of the computers, when they are added, moved and
13823 removed. Some times the location register is not updated when a
13824 computer is inserted or moved and we then have to search the room for
13825 the "missing" computer.
</p>
13827 <p>In the last issue of Linux Journal, I came across a project
13828 <a href=
"http://www.libdmtx.org/">libdmtx
</a> to write and read bar
13829 code blocks as defined in the
13830 <a href=
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Matrix">The Data Matrix
13831 Standard
</a>. This is bar codes that can be read with a normal
13832 digital camera, for example that on a cell phone, and several such bar
13833 codes can be read by libdmtx from one picture. The bar code standard
13834 allow up to
2 KiB to be written in the tag. There is another project
13835 with
<a href=
"http://www.terryburton.co.uk/barcodewriter/">a bar code
13836 writer written in postscript
</a> capable of creating such bar codes,
13837 but this was the first time I found a tool to read these bar
13840 <p>It occurred to me that this could be used to tag and track the
13841 machines in our computing center. If both racks and computers are
13842 tagged this way, we can use a picture of the rack and all its
13843 computers to detect the rack location of any computer in that rack.
13844 If we do this regularly for the entire room, we will find all
13845 locations, and can detect movements and removals.
</p>
13847 <p>I decided to test if this would work in practice, and picked a
13848 random rack and tagged all the machines with their names. Next, I
13849 took pictures with my digital camera, and gave the dmtxread program
13850 these JPEG pictures to see how many tags it could read. This worked
13851 fairly well. If the pictures was well focused and not taken from the
13852 side, all tags in the image could be read. Because of limited space
13853 between the racks, I was unable to get a good picture of the entire
13854 rack, but could without problem read all tags from a picture covering
13855 about half the rack. I had to limit the search time used by dmtxread
13856 to
60000 ms to make sure it terminated in a reasonable time frame.
</p>
13858 <p>My conclusion is that this could work, and we should probably look
13859 at adjusting our computer tagging procedures to use bar codes for
13860 easier automatic tracking of computers.
</p>
13866 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
13871 <div class=
"padding"></div>
13873 <div class=
"entry">
13874 <div class=
"title">
13875 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/When_web_browser_developers_make_a_video_player___.html">When web browser developers make a video player...
</a>
13881 <p>As part of the work we do in
<a href=
"http://www.nuug.no">NUUG
</a>
13882 to publish video recordings of our monthly presentations, we provide a
13883 page with embedded video for easy access to the recording. Putting a
13884 good set of HTML tags together to get working embedded video in all
13885 browsers and across all operating systems is not easy. I hope this
13886 will become easier when the
<video
> tag is implemented in all
13887 browsers, but I am not sure. We provide the recordings in several
13888 formats, MPEG1, Ogg Theora, H
.264 and Quicktime, and want the
13889 browser/media plugin to pick one it support and use it to play the
13890 recording, using whatever embed mechanism the browser understand.
13891 There is at least four different tags to use for this, the new HTML5
13892 <video
> tag, the
<object
> tag, the
<embed
> tag and
13893 the
<applet
> tag. All of these take a lot of options, and
13894 finding the best options is a major challenge.
</p>
13896 <p>I just tested the experimental Opera browser available from
<a
13897 href=
"http://labs.opera.com">labs.opera.com
</a>, to see how it handled
13898 a
<video
> tag with a few video sources and no extra attributes.
13899 I was not very impressed. The browser start by fetching a picture
13900 from the video stream. Not sure if it is the first frame, but it is
13901 definitely very early in the recording. So far, so good. Next,
13902 instead of streaming the
76 MiB video file, it start to download all
13903 of it, but do not start to play the video. This mean I have to wait
13904 for several minutes for the downloading to finish. When the download
13905 is done, the playing of the video do not start! Waiting for the
13906 download, but I do not get to see the video? Some testing later, I
13907 discover that I have to add the
controls="true" attribute to be able
13908 to get a play button to pres to start the video. Adding
13909 autoplay="true" did not help. I sure hope this is a misfeature of the
13910 test version of Opera, and that future implementations of the
13911 <video
> tag will stream recordings by default, or at least start
13912 playing when the download is done.
</p>
13914 <p>The test page I used (since changed to add more attributes) is
13915 <a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20090113-foredrag-om-foredrag/">available
13916 from the nuug site
</a>. Will have to test it with the new Firefox
13919 <p>In the test process, I discovered a missing feature. I was unable
13920 to find a way to get the URL of the playing video out of Opera, so I
13921 am not quite sure it picked the Ogg Theora version of the video. I
13922 sure hope it was using the announced Ogg Theora support. :)
</p>
13928 Tags:
<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/nuug">nuug
</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>.
13933 <div class=
"padding"></div>
13935 <div class=
"entry">
13936 <div class=
"title">
13937 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_video_mixer_on_a_USB_stick.html">Software video mixer on a USB stick
</a>
13943 <p>The
<a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group
</a> is
13944 recording our montly presentation on video, and recently we have
13945 worked on improving the quality of the recordings by mixing the slides
13946 directly with the video stream. For this, we use the
13947 <a href=
"http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/">dvswitch
</a> package from
13948 the Debian video team. As this require quite one computer per video
13949 source, and NUUG do not have enough laptops available, we need to
13950 borrow laptops. And to avoid having to install extra software on
13951 these borrwed laptops, I have wrapped up all the programs needed on a
13952 bootable USB stick. The software required is dvswitch with assosiated
13953 source, sink and mixer applications and
13954 <a href=
"http://www.kinodv.org/">dvgrab
</a>. To allow this setup to
13955 work without any configuration, I've patched dvswitch to use
13956 <a href=
"http://www.avahi.org/">avahi
</a> to connect the various parts
13957 together. And to allow us to use laptops without firewire plugs, I
13958 upgraded dvgrab to the one from Debian/unstable to get one that work
13959 with USB sources. We have not yet tested this setup in a production
13960 setup, but I hope it will work properly, and allow us to set up a
13961 video mixer in a very short time frame. We will need it for
13962 <a href=
"http://www.goopen.no/">Go Open
2009</a>.
</p>
13964 <p><a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/pub/video/bin/usbstick-dvswitch.img.gz">The
13965 USB image
</a> is for a
1 GB memory stick, but can be used on any
13966 larger stick as well.
</p>
13972 Tags:
<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/video">video
</a>.
13977 <div class=
"padding"></div>
13979 <div class=
"entry">
13980 <div class=
"title">
13981 <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>
13987 <p>This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
13988 Oslo. Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
13989 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
13990 LTSP installation. LTSP now work out of the box on the
10-network.
13991 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
13992 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box. Was working on getting the
13993 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
13994 finish it before the weekend was up.
</p>
13996 <p>Did not find time to look at the
4 VGA cards in one box we got from
13997 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
13998 development gathering. Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
13999 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
14000 of these cards.
</p>
14006 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>.
14011 <div class=
"padding"></div>
14013 <div class=
"entry">
14014 <div class=
"title">
14015 <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>
14021 <p>Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
14022 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
14023 default in Debian Edu. We need an embedded video playing plugin with
14024 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
14025 all the multimedia content available on the web. The test results and
14026 notes are available on
14027 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">the
14028 Debian wiki
</a>. I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
14029 fill this need. My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
14030 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages. A lot of the MIME
14031 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
14032 video/ogg), just do not work. And simple formats like the
14033 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn't supported by the
14034 totem and vlc plugins. I hope the situation will improve soon. No
14035 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.
</p>
14037 <p>For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin. It seem to
14038 be the only one fitting our needs. :/
</p>
14044 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>.
14049 <div class=
"padding"></div>
14051 <p style=
"text-align: right;"><a href=
"english.rss"><img src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/xml.gif" alt=
"RSS Feed" width=
"36" height=
"14" /></a></p>
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"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/01/">January (
11)
</a></li>
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"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/02/">February (
9)
</a></li>
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"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/03/">March (
5)
</a></li>
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</a></li>
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</a></li>
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</a></li>
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</a></li>
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</a></li>
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</a></li>
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</a></li>
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</a></li>
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</a></li>
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</a></li>
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</a></li>
14145 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/08/">August (
13)
</a></li>
14147 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/09/">September (
7)
</a></li>
14149 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/10/">October (
9)
</a></li>
14151 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/11/">November (
13)
</a></li>
14153 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/12/">December (
12)
</a></li>
14160 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (
8)
</a></li>
14162 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (
8)
</a></li>
14164 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (
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</a></li>
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"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (
10)
</a></li>
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</a></li>
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</a></li>
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"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (
1)
</a></li>
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2)
</a></li>
14180 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (
3)
</a></li>
14182 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (
3)
</a></li>
14189 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (
5)
</a></li>
14191 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (
7)
</a></li>
14202 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (
13)
</a></li>
14204 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (
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</a></li>
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1)
</a></li>
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"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bankid">bankid (
4)
</a></li>
14210 <li><a href=
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6)
</a></li>
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"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (
12)
</a></li>
14214 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa (
2)
</a></li>
14216 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (
70)
</a></li>
14218 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (
121)
</a></li>
14220 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan (
9)
</a></li>
14222 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook (
7)
</a></li>
14224 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/drivstoffpriser">drivstoffpriser (
4)
</a></li>
14226 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (
183)
</a></li>
14228 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (
21)
</a></li>
14230 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (
12)
</a></li>
14232 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture (
10)
</a></li>
14234 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen (
11)
</a></li>
14236 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju (
33)
</a></li>
14238 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram (
5)
</a></li>
14240 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (
18)
</a></li>
14242 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap (
8)
</a></li>
14244 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (
6)
</a></li>
14246 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (
1)
</a></li>
14248 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (
25)
</a></li>
14250 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (
225)
</a></li>
14252 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (
151)
</a></li>
14254 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn (
7)
</a></li>
14256 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (
2)
</a></li>
14258 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (
42)
</a></li>
14260 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (
65)
</a></li>
14262 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid (
1)
</a></li>
14264 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (
11)
</a></li>
14266 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (
2)
</a></li>
14268 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (
6)
</a></li>
14270 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (
1)
</a></li>
14272 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ruter">ruter (
4)
</a></li>
14274 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/scraperwiki">scraperwiki (
2)
</a></li>
14276 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (
29)
</a></li>
14278 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (
4)
</a></li>
14280 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis (
4)
</a></li>
14282 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (
40)
</a></li>
14284 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (
3)
</a></li>
14286 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (
6)
</a></li>
14288 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (
15)
</a></li>
14290 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin (
1)
</a></li>
14292 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (
7)
</a></li>
14294 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (
38)
</a></li>
14296 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (
4)
</a></li>
14298 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (
26)
</a></li>
14304 <p style=
"text-align: right">
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