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  13  <h1>
  14      <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/">Petter Reinholdtsen</a>
  15
  16  </h1>
  17
  18 </div>
  19
  20
  21     <h3>Entries tagged "english".</h3>
  22
  23     <div class="entry">
  24       <div class="title">
  25         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_GNU_General_Public_License__is_not_magic_pixie_dust_.html">The GNU General Public License  is not magic pixie dust"</a>
  26       </div>
  27       <div class="date">
  28         30th November 2015
  29       </div>
  30       <div class="body">
  31         <p>A blog post from my fellow Debian developer Paul Wise titled
  32 "<a href="http://bonedaddy.net/pabs3/log/2015/11/27/sfc-supporter/">The
  33 GPL is not magic pixie dust</a>" explain the importance of making sure
  34 the <a href="http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html>GPL</a> is enforced.
  35 I quote the blog post from Paul in full here with his permission:<p>
  36
  37 <blockquote>
  38
  39 <p><a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/"><img src="https://sfconservancy.org/img/supporter-badge.png" width="194" height="90" alt="Become a Software Freedom Conservancy Supporter!" align="right" border="0" /></a></p>
  40
  41 <blockquote>
  42 The GPL is not magic pixie dust. It does not work by itself.<br/>
  43
  44 The first step is to choose a
  45 <a href="https://copyleft.org/">copyleft</a> license for your
  46 code.<br/>
  47
  48 The next step is, when someone fails to follow that copyleft license,
  49 <b>it must be enforced</b><br/>
  50
  51 and its a simple fact of our modern society that such type of
  52 work<br/>
  53
  54 is incredibly expensive to do and incredibly difficult to do.
  55 </blockquote>
  56
  57 <p><small>-- <a href="http://ebb.org/bkuhn/">Bradley Kuhn</a>, in
  58 <a href="http://faif.us/" title="Free as in Freedom">FaiF</a>
  59 <a href="http://faif.us/cast/2015/nov/24/0x57/">episode
  60 0x57</a></small></p>
  61
  62 <p>As the Debian Website
  63 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/794116">used</a>
  64 <a href="https://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/webwml/webwml/english/intro/free.wml?r1=1.24&amp;r2=1.25">to</a>
  65 imply, public domain and permissively licensed software can lead to
  66 the production of more proprietary software as people discover useful
  67 software, extend it and or incorporate it into their hardware or
  68 software products.  Copyleft licenses such as the GNU GPL were created
  69 to close off this avenue to the production of proprietary software but
  70 such licenses are not enough.  With the ongoing adoption of Free
  71 Software by individuals and groups, inevitably the community's
  72 expectations of license compliance are violated, usually out of
  73 ignorance of the way Free Software works, but not always.  As Karen
  74 and Bradley explained in <a href="http://faif.us/" title="Free as in
  75 Freedom">FaiF</a>
  76 <a href="http://faif.us/cast/2015/nov/24/0x57/">episode 0x57</a>,
  77 copyleft is nothing if no-one is willing and able to stand up in court
  78 to protect it.  The reality of today's world is that legal
  79 representation is expensive, difficult and time consuming.  With
  80 <a href="http://gpl-violations.org/">gpl-violations.org</a> in hiatus
  81 <a href="http://gpl-violations.org/news/20151027-homepage-recovers/">until</a>
  82 some time in 2016, the <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/">Software
  83 Freedom Conservancy</a> (a tax-exempt charity) is the major defender
  84 of the Linux project, Debian and other groups against GPL violations.
  85 In March the SFC supported a
  86 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/mar/05/vmware-lawsuit/">lawsuit
  87 by Christoph Hellwig</a> against VMware for refusing to
  88 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/linux-compliance/vmware-lawsuit-faq.html">comply
  89 with the GPL</a> in relation to their use of parts of the Linux
  90 kernel.  Since then two of their sponsors pulled corporate funding and
  91 conferences
  92 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/24/faif-carols-fundraiser/">blocked
  93 or cancelled their talks</a>.  As a result they have decided to rely
  94 less on corporate funding and more on the broad community of
  95 individuals who support Free Software and copyleft.  So the SFC has
  96 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/nov/23/2015fundraiser/">launched</a>
  97 a <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/">campaign</a> to create
  98 a community of folks who stand up for copyleft and the GPL by
  99 supporting their work on promoting and supporting copyleft and Free
 100 Software.</p>
 101
 102 <p>If you support Free Software,
 103 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/26/like-what-I-do/">like</a>
 104 what the SFC do, agree with their
 105 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/linux-compliance/principles.html">compliance
 106 principles</a>, are happy about their
 107 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/">successes</a> in 2015,
 108 work on a project that is an SFC
 109 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/members/current/">member</a> and or
 110 just want to stand up for copyleft, please join
 111 <a href="https://identi.ca/cwebber/image/JQGPA4qbTyyp3-MY8QpvuA">Christopher
 112 Allan Webber</a>,
 113 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/24/faif-carols-fundraiser/">Carol
 114 Smith</a>,
 115 <a href="http://www.jonobacon.org/2015/11/25/supporting-software-freedom-conservancy/">Jono
 116 Bacon</a>, myself and
 117 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/sponsors/#supporters">others</a> in
 118 becoming a
 119 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/">supporter</a>.  For the
 120 next week your donation will be
 121 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/nov/27/black-friday/">matched</a>
 122 by an anonymous donor.  Please also consider asking your employer to
 123 match your donation or become a sponsor of SFC.  Don't forget to
 124 spread the word about your support for SFC via email, your blog and or
 125 social media accounts.</p>
 126
 127 </blockquote>
 128
 129 <p>I agree with Paul on this topic and just signed up as a Supporter
 130 of Software Freedom Conservancy myself.  Perhaps you should be a
 131 supporter too?</p>
 132
 133       </div>
 134       <div class="tags">
 135
 136
 137         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
 138
 139
 140       </div>
 141     </div>
 142     <div class="padding"></div>
 143
 144     <div class="entry">
 145       <div class="title">
 146         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/PGP_key_transition_statement_for_key_EE4E02F9.html">PGP key transition statement for key EE4E02F9</a>
 147       </div>
 148       <div class="date">
 149         17th November 2015
 150       </div>
 151       <div class="body">
 152         <p>I've needed a new OpenPGP key for a while, but have not had time to
 153 set it up properly.  I wanted to generate it offline and have it
 154 available on <a href="http://shop.kernelconcepts.de/#openpgp">a OpenPGP
 155 smart card</a> for daily use, and learning how to do it and finding
 156 time to sit down with an offline machine almost took forever.  But
 157 finally I've been able to complete the process, and have now moved
 158 from my old GPG key to a new GPG key.  See
 159 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-11-17-new-gpg-key-transition.txt">the
 160 full transition statement, signed with both my old and new key</a> for
 161 the details.  This is my new key:</p>
 162
 163 <pre>
 164 pub   3936R/<a href="http://pgp.cs.uu.nl/stats/111D6B29EE4E02F9.html">111D6B29EE4E02F9</a> 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-14]
 165       Key fingerprint = 3AC7 B2E3 ACA5 DF87 78F1  D827 111D 6B29 EE4E 02F9
 166 uid                  Petter Reinholdtsen &lt;pere@hungry.com&gt;
 167 uid                  Petter Reinholdtsen &lt;pere@debian.org&gt;
 168 sub   4096R/87BAFB0E 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
 169 sub   4096R/F91E6DE9 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
 170 sub   4096R/A0439BAB 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
 171 </pre>
 172
 173 <p>The key can be downloaded from the OpenPGP key servers, signed by
 174 my old key.</p>
 175
 176 <p>If you signed my old key
 177 (<a href="http://pgp.cs.uu.nl/stats/DB4CCC4B2A30D729.html">DB4CCC4B2A30D729</a>),
 178 I'd very much appreciate a signature on my new key, details and
 179 instructions in the transition statement. I m happy to reciprocate if
 180 you have a similarly signed transition statement to present.</p>
 181
 182       </div>
 183       <div class="tags">
 184
 185
 186         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>.
 187
 188
 189       </div>
 190     </div>
 191     <div class="padding"></div>
 192
 193     <div class="entry">
 194       <div class="title">
 195         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Pentagon_deciding_the_Norwegian_negotiating_position_on_Internet_governance_.html">Is Pentagon deciding the Norwegian negotiating position on Internet governance?</a>
 196       </div>
 197       <div class="date">
 198          3rd November 2015
 199       </div>
 200       <div class="body">
 201         <p>In Norway, all government offices are required by law to keep a
 202 list of every document or letter arriving and leaving their offices.
 203 Internal notes should also be documented.  The document list (called a mail
 204 journal - "postjournal" in Norwegian) is public information and thanks
 205 to the Norwegian Freedom of Information Act (Offentleglova) the mail
 206 journal is available for everyone.  Most offices even publish the mail
 207 journal on their web pages, as PDFs or tables in web pages.  The state-level offices even have a shared web based search service (called
 208 <a href="https://www.oep.no/">Offentlig Elektronisk Postjournal -
 209 OEP</a>) to make it possible to search the entries in the list.  Not
 210 all journal entries show up on OEP, and the search service is hard to
 211 use, but OEP does make it easier to find at least some interesting
 212 journal entries .</p>
 213
 214 <p>In 2012 I came across a document in the mail journal for the
 215 Norwegian Ministry of Transport and Communications on OEP that
 216 piqued my interest.  The title of the document was
 217 "<a href="https://www.oep.no/search/resultSingle.html?journalPostId=4192362">Internet
 218 Governance and how it affects national security</a>" (Norwegian:
 219 "Internet Governance og påvirkning på nasjonal sikkerhet").  The
 220 document date was 2012-05-22, and it was said to be sent from the
 221 "Permanent Mission of Norway to the United Nations".  I asked for a
 222 copy, but my request was rejected with a reference to a legal clause said to authorize them to reject it
 223 (<a href="http://lovdata.no/lov/2006-05-19-16/§20">offentleglova § 20,
 224 letter c</a>) and an explanation that the document was exempt because
 225 of foreign policy interests as it contained information related to the
 226 Norwegian negotiating position, negotiating strategies or similar.  I
 227 was told the information in the document related to the ongoing
 228 negotiation in the International Telecommunications Union (ITU).  The
 229 explanation made sense to me in early January 2013, as a ITU
 230 conference in Dubay discussing Internet Governance
 231 (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Telecommunication_Union#World_Conference_on_International_Telecommunications_2012_.28WCIT-12.29">World
 232 Conference on International Telecommunications - WCIT-12</a>) had just
 233 ended,
 234 <a href="http://www.digi.no/kommentarer/2012/12/18/tvil-om-usas-rolle-pa-teletoppmote">reportedly
 235 in chaos</a> when USA walked out of the negotiations and 25 countries
 236 including Norway refused to sign the new treaty.  It seemed
 237 reasonable to believe talks were still going on a few weeks later.
 238 Norway was represented at the ITU meeting by two authorities, the
 239 <a href="http://www.nkom.no/">Norwegian Communications Authority</a>
 240 and the <a href="https://www.regjeringen.no/no/dep/sd/">Ministry of
 241 Transport and Communications</a>.  This might be the reason the letter
 242 was sent to the ministry.  As I was unable to find the document in the
 243 mail journal of any Norwegian UN mission, I asked the ministry who had
 244 sent the document to the ministry, and was told that it was the Deputy
 245 Permanent Representative with the Permanent Mission of Norway in
 246 Geneva.</p>
 247
 248 <p>Three years later, I was still curious about the content of that
 249 document, and again asked for a copy, believing the negotiation was
 250 over now.  This time
 251 <a href="https://mimesbronn.no/request/kopi_av_dokumenter_i_sak_2012914">I
 252 asked both the Ministry of Transport and Communications as the
 253 receiver</a> and
 254 <a href="https://mimesbronn.no/request/brev_om_internet_governance_og_p">asked
 255 the Permanent Mission of Norway in Geneva as the sender</a> for a
 256 copy, to see if they both agreed that it should be withheld from the
 257 public.  The ministry upheld its rejection quoting the same law
 258 reference as before, while the permanent mission rejected it quoting a
 259 different clause
 260 (<a href="http://lovdata.no/lov/2006-05-19-16/§20">offentleglova § 20
 261 letter b</a>), claiming that they were required to keep the
 262 content of the document from the public because it contained
 263 information given to Norway with the expressed or implied expectation
 264 that the information should not be made public.  I asked the permanent
 265 mission for an explanation, and was told that the document contained
 266 an account from a meeting held in the Pentagon for a limited group of NATO
 267 nations where the organiser of the meeting did not intend the content
 268 of the meeting to be publicly known.  They explained that giving me a
 269 copy might cause Norway to not get access to similar information in
 270 the future and thus hurt the future foreign interests of Norway.  They
 271 also explained that the Permanent Mission of Norway in Geneva was not
 272 the author of the document, they only got a copy of it, and because of
 273 this had not listed it in their mail journal.</p>
 274
 275 <p>Armed with this
 276 knowledge I asked the Ministry to reconsider and asked who was the
 277 author of the document, now realising that it was not same as the
 278 "sender" according to Ministry of Transport and Communications.  The
 279 ministry upheld its rejection but told me the name of the author of
 280 the document.  According to
 281 <a href="https://www.regjeringen.no/no/aktuelt/unga69_rapport1/id2001204/">a
 282 government report</a> the author was with the Permanent Mission of
 283 Norway in New York a bit more than a year later (2014-09-22), so I
 284 guessed that might be the office responsible for writing and sending
 285 the report initially and
 286 <a href="https://www.mimesbronn.no/request/mote_2012_i_pentagon_om_itu">asked
 287 them for a copy</a> but I was obviously wrong as I was told that the
 288 document was unknown to them and that the author did not work there
 289 when the document was written.  Next, I asked the Permanent Mission of
 290 Norway in Geneva and the Foreign Ministry to reconsider and at least
 291 tell me who sent the document to Deputy Permanent Representative with
 292 the Permanent Mission of Norway in Geneva.  The Foreign Ministry also
 293 upheld its rejection, but told me that the person sending the document
 294 to Permanent Mission of Norway in Geneva was the defence attaché with
 295 the Norwegian Embassy in Washington.  I do not know if this is the
 296 same person as the author of the document.</p>
 297
 298 <p>If I understand the situation correctly, someone capable of
 299 inviting selected NATO nations to a meeting in Pentagon organised a
 300 meeting where someone representing the Norwegian defence attaché in
 301 Washington attended, and the account from this meeting is interpreted
 302 by the Ministry of Transport and Communications to expose Norways
 303 negotiating position, negotiating strategies and similar regarding the
 304 ITU negotiations on Internet Governance.  It is truly amazing what can
 305 be derived from mere meta-data.</p>
 306
 307 <p>I wonder which NATO countries besides Norway attended this meeting?
 308 And what exactly was said and done at the meeting?  Anyone know?</p>
 309
 310       </div>
 311       <div class="tags">
 312
 313
 314         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn</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>.
 315
 316
 317       </div>
 318     </div>
 319     <div class="padding"></div>
 320
 321     <div class="entry">
 322       <div class="title">
 323         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_book___Fri_kultur__by__lessig__a_Norwegian_Bokm_l_translation_of__Free_Culture__from_2004.html">New book, "Fri kultur" by @lessig, a Norwegian Bokmål translation of "Free Culture" from 2004</a>
 324       </div>
 325       <div class="date">
 326         31st October 2015
 327       </div>
 328       <div class="body">
 329         <p>People keep asking me where to get the various forms of the book I
 330 published last week, the Norwegian Bokmål edition of Lawrence Lessigs
 331 book <a href="http://www.free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a>.  It was
 332 published on paper via lulu.com, and is also available in PDF, ePub
 333 and MOBI format.  I currently sell the paper edition for self cost
 334 from lulu.com, but might extend the distribution to book stores like
 335 Amazon and Barnes & Noble later.  This will double the price and force
 336 me to make a profit from selling the book.  Anyway, here are links to
 337 get the book in different formats:</p>
 338
 339 <ul>
 340
 341   <li><a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/fri-kultur/paperback/product-22406445.html">Buy
 342     paper edition from lulu.com</a></li>
 343
 344   <li><a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf">Download
 345     PDF, size 7.9 MiB</a> (gratis/free)</li>
 346
 347   <li><a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub">Download
 348     ePub, size 11 MiB</a> (gratis/free)</li>
 349
 350   <li><a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/archive/freeculture.nb.mobi">Download
 351     MOBI, size 3.8 MiB</a> (gratis/free)</li>
 352
 353 </ul>
 354
 355 <p>Note that the MOBI version have problems with the table of content,
 356 at least with the viewers I have been able to test.  And the ePub file
 357 have several problems according to
 358 <a href="https://github.com/IDPF/epubcheck">epubcheck</a>, but seem
 359 to display fine in the viewers I have tested.  All the files needed to
 360 create the book in various forms are available from
 361 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">the
 362 github project page</a>.</p>
 363
 364 <p>The project got press coverage from the Norwegian IT news site
 365 digi.no.  Check out the article
 366 "<a href="http://www.digi.no/juss_og_samfunn/2015/10/29/vil-apne-politikernes-oyne-for-creative-commons">Vil
 367 åpne politikernes øyne for Creative Commons</a>".</li>
 368
 369 <p>I've <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">blogged
 370 about the project</a> as it moved along.  The blogs document the translation
 371 progress and insights I had along the way.</p>
 372
 373       </div>
 374       <div class="tags">
 375
 376
 377         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>.
 378
 379
 380       </div>
 381     </div>
 382     <div class="padding"></div>
 383
 384     <div class="entry">
 385       <div class="title">
 386         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/_Free_Culture__by__lessig___The_background_story_for_Creative_Commons___new_edition_available.html">"Free Culture" by @lessig - The background story for Creative Commons - new edition available</a>
 387       </div>
 388       <div class="date">
 389         23rd October 2015
 390       </div>
 391       <div class="body">
 392         <p><a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/free-culture/paperback/product-22402863.html">Click
 393 here to buy the book</a>.</p>
 394
 395 <p>In 2004, as the <a href="https://creativecommons.org/">Creative Commons
 396 movement</a> gained momentum, its creator Lawrence Lessig wrote the
 397 book <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Culture_(book)">Free
 398 Culture</a> to explain the problems with increasing copyright
 399 regulation and suggest some solutions.  I read the book back then and
 400 was very moved by it.  Reading the book inspired me and changed the
 401 way I looked on copyright law, and I would love it if more people
 402 would read it too.</p>
 403
 404 <p>Because of this, I decided in the summer of 2012 to translate it to
 405 Norwegian Bokmål and publish it for those of my friends and family
 406 that prefer to read books in Norwegian.  I translated the book using
 407 docbook and a gettext PO file, and a byproduct of this process is a
 408 new edition of the English original.  I've been in touch with the
 409 author during by work, and he said it was fine with him if I also
 410 published an English version.  So I decided to do so.  Today, I made
 411 this edition
 412 <a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/free-culture/paperback/product-22402863.html">available
 413 for sale on Lulu.com</a>, for those interested in a paper book.  This
 414 is the cover:
 415
 416 <p align="center"><a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/free-culture/paperback/product-22402863.html"><img align="center" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-10-23-free-culture-english-published-cover.png"/></a></p>
 417
 418 <p>The Norwegian Bokmål version will be available for purchase in a
 419 few days.  I also plan to publish a French version in a few weeks or
 420 months, depending on the amount of people with knowledge of French to
 421 join the translation project.  So far there is only one active
 422 person, but the French book is almost completely translated but
 423 need some proof reading.</p>
 424
 425 <p>The book is also available in PDF, ePub and MOBI formats from
 426 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">my
 427 github project page</a>.  Note the ePub and MOBI versions have some
 428 formatting problems I believe is due to bugs in the docbook tool
 429 dbtoepub (Debian BTS issues
 430 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=795842">#795842</a>
 431 and
 432 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=796871">#796871</a>),
 433 but I have not taken the time to investigate.  I recommend the PDF and
 434 ePub version for now, as they seem to show up fine in the viewers I
 435 have available.</p>
 436
 437 <p>After the translation to Norwegian Bokmål was complete, I was able
 438 to secure some sponsoring from
 439 <a href="http://www.nuugfoundation.no/">the NUUG Foundation</a> to
 440 print the book.  This is the reason their logo is located on the back
 441 cover. I am very grateful for their contribution, and will use it to
 442 give a copy of the Norwegian edition to members of the Norwegian
 443 Parliament and other decision makers here in Norway.</p>
 444
 445       </div>
 446       <div class="tags">
 447
 448
 449         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>.
 450
 451
 452       </div>
 453     </div>
 454     <div class="padding"></div>
 455
 456     <div class="entry">
 457       <div class="title">
 458         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lawrence_Lessig_interviewed_Edward_Snowden_a_year_ago.html">Lawrence Lessig interviewed Edward Snowden a year ago</a>
 459       </div>
 460       <div class="date">
 461         19th October 2015
 462       </div>
 463       <div class="body">
 464         <p>Last year, <a href="https://lessig2016.us/">US president candidate
 465 in the Democratic Party</a> Lawrence interviewed Edward Snowden.  The
 466 one hour interview was
 467 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_Sr96TFQQE">published by
 468 Harvard Law School 2014-10-23 on Youtube</a>, and the meeting took
 469 place 2014-10-20.</p>
 470
 471 <p>The questions are very good, and there is lots of useful
 472 information to be learned and very interesting issues to think about
 473 being raised.  Please check it out.</p>
 474
 475 <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/o_Sr96TFQQE" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
 476
 477 <p>I find it especially interesting to hear again that Snowden did try
 478 to bring up his reservations through the official channels without any
 479 luck.  It is in sharp contrast to the answers made 2013-11-06 by the
 480 Norwegian prime minister Erna Solberg to the Norwegian Parliament,
 481 <a href="https://tale.holderdeord.no/speeches/s131106/68">claiming
 482 Snowden is no Whistle-Blower</a> because he should have taken up his
 483 concerns internally and using official channels.  It make me sad
 484 that this is the political leadership we have here in Norway.</p>
 485
 486       </div>
 487       <div class="tags">
 488
 489
 490         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>.
 491
 492
 493       </div>
 494     </div>
 495     <div class="padding"></div>
 496
 497     <div class="entry">
 498       <div class="title">
 499         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Story_of_Aaron_Swartz___Let_us_all_weep_.html">The Story of Aaron Swartz - Let us all weep!</a>
 500       </div>
 501       <div class="date">
 502          8th October 2015
 503       </div>
 504       <div class="body">
 505         <p>The movie "<a href="http://www.takepart.com/internets-own-boy">The
 506 Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz</a>" is both inspiring
 507 and depressing at the same time.  The work of Aaron Swartz has
 508 inspired me in my work, and I am grateful of all the improvements he
 509 was able to initiate or complete.  I wish I am able to do as much good
 510 in my life as he did in his.  Every minute of this 1:45 long movie is
 511 inspiring in documenting how much impact a single person can have on
 512 improving the society and this world.  And it is depressing in
 513 documenting how the law enforcement of USA (and other countries) is
 514 corrupted to a point where they can push a bright kid to his death for
 515 downloading too many scientific articles.  Aaron is dead.  Let us all
 516 weep.</p>
 517
 518 <p>The movie is also available on
 519 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXr-2hwTk58">Youtube</a>.  I
 520 wish there were Norwegian subtitles available, so I could show it to
 521 my parents.</p>
 522
 523       </div>
 524       <div class="tags">
 525
 526
 527         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>.
 528
 529
 530       </div>
 531     </div>
 532     <div class="padding"></div>
 533
 534     <div class="entry">
 535       <div class="title">
 536         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/French_Docbook_PDF_EPUB_MOBI_edition_of_the_Free_Culture_book.html">French Docbook/PDF/EPUB/MOBI edition of the Free Culture book</a>
 537       </div>
 538       <div class="date">
 539          1st October 2015
 540       </div>
 541       <div class="body">
 542         <p>As I wrap up the Norwegian version of
 543 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">Free
 544 Culture</a> book by Lawrence Lessig (still waiting for my final proof
 545 reading copy to arrive in the mail), my great
 546 <a href="http://dblatex.sourceforge.net/">dblatex</a> helper and
 547 developer of the dblatex docbook processor, Benoît Guillon, decided a
 548 to try to create a French version of the book.  He started with the
 549 French translation available from the
 550 <a href="http://www.wikilivres.ca/wiki/Culture_libre">Wikilivres wiki
 551 pages</a>, and wrote a program to convert it into a PO file, allowing
 552 the translation to be integrated into the po4a based framework I use
 553 to create the Norwegian translation from the English edition.  We meet
 554 on the <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23dblatex">#dblatex IRC
 555 channel</a> to discuss the work.  If you want to help create a French
 556 edition, check out
 557 <a href="https://github.com/marsgui/free-culture-lessig">his git
 558 repository</a> and join us on IRC.  If the French edition look good,
 559 we might publish it as a paper book on lulu.com.  A French version of
 560 the drawings and the cover need to be provided for this to happen.</p>
 561
 562       </div>
 563       <div class="tags">
 564
 565
 566         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>.
 567
 568
 569       </div>
 570     </div>
 571     <div class="padding"></div>
 572
 573     <div class="entry">
 574       <div class="title">
 575         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_life_and_death_of_a_laptop_battery.html">The life and death of a laptop battery</a>
 576       </div>
 577       <div class="date">
 578         24th September 2015
 579       </div>
 580       <div class="body">
 581         <p>When I get a new laptop, the battery life time at the start is OK.
 582 But this do not last.  The last few laptops gave me a feeling that
 583 within a year, the life time is just a fraction of what it used to be,
 584 and it slowly become painful to use the laptop without power connected
 585 all the time.  Because of this, when I got a new Thinkpad X230 laptop
 586 about two years ago, I decided to monitor its battery state to have
 587 more hard facts when the battery started to fail.</p>
 588
 589 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-09-24-laptop-battery-graph.png"/>
 590
 591 <p>First I tried to find a sensible Debian package to record the
 592 battery status, assuming that this must be a problem already handled
 593 by someone else.  I found
 594 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">battery-stats</a>,
 595 which collects statistics from the battery, but it was completely
 596 broken.  I sent a few suggestions to the maintainer, but decided to
 597 write my own collector as a shell script while I waited for feedback
 598 from him.  Via
 599 <a href="http://www.ifweassume.com/2013/08/the-de-evolution-of-my-laptop-battery.html">a
 600 blog post about the battery development on a MacBook Air</a> I also
 601 discovered
 602 <a href="https://github.com/jradavenport/batlog.git">batlog</a>, not
 603 available in Debian.</p>
 604
 605 <p>I started my collector 2013-07-15, and it has been collecting
 606 battery stats ever since. Now my
 607 /var/log/hjemmenett-battery-status.log file contain around 115,000
 608 measurements, from the time the battery was working great until now,
 609 when it is unable to charge above 7% of original capacity.  My
 610 collector shell script is quite simple and look like this:</p>
 611
 612 <pre>
 613 #!/bin/sh
 614 # Inspired by
 615 # http://www.ifweassume.com/2013/08/the-de-evolution-of-my-laptop-battery.html
 616 # See also
 617 # http://blog.sleeplessbeastie.eu/2013/01/02/debian-how-to-monitor-battery-capacity/
 618 logfile=/var/log/hjemmenett-battery-status.log
 619
 620 files="manufacturer model_name technology serial_number \
 621     energy_full energy_full_design energy_now cycle_count status"
 622
 623 if [ ! -e "$logfile" ] ; then
 624     (
 625         printf "timestamp,"
 626         for f in $files; do
 627             printf "%s," $f
 628         done
 629         echo
 630     ) > "$logfile"
 631 fi
 632
 633 log_battery() {
 634     # Print complete message in one echo call, to avoid race condition
 635     # when several log processes run in parallel.
 636     msg=$(printf "%s," $(date +%s); \
 637         for f in $files; do \
 638             printf "%s," $(cat $f); \
 639         done)
 640     echo "$msg"
 641 }
 642
 643 cd /sys/class/power_supply
 644
 645 for bat in BAT*; do
 646     (cd $bat && log_battery >> "$logfile")
 647 done
 648 </pre>
 649
 650 <p>The script is called when the power management system detect a
 651 change in the power status (power plug in or out), and when going into
 652 and out of hibernation and suspend.  In addition, it collect a value
 653 every 10 minutes.  This make it possible for me know when the battery
 654 is discharging, charging and how the maximum charge change over time.
 655 The code for the Debian package
 656 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-status">is now
 657 available on github</a>.</p>
 658
 659 <p>The collected log file look like this:</p>
 660
 661 <pre>
 662 timestamp,manufacturer,model_name,technology,serial_number,energy_full,energy_full_design,energy_now,cycle_count,status,
 663 1376591133,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,62800000,62160000,39050000,0,Discharging,
 664 [...]
 665 1443090528,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,4900000,62160000,4900000,0,Full,
 666 1443090601,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,4900000,62160000,4900000,0,Full,
 667 </pre>
 668
 669 <p>I wrote a small script to create a graph of the charge development
 670 over time.  This graph depicted above show the slow death of my laptop
 671 battery.</p>
 672
 673 <p>But why is this happening?  Why are my laptop batteries always
 674 dying in a year or two, while the batteries of space probes and
 675 satellites keep working year after year.  If we are to believe
 676 <a href="http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries">Battery
 677 University</a>, the cause is me charging the battery whenever I have a
 678 chance, and the fix is to not charge the Lithium-ion batteries to 100%
 679 all the time, but to stay below 90% of full charge most of the time.
 680 I've been told that the Tesla electric cars
 681 <a href="http://my.teslamotors.com/de_CH/forum/forums/battery-charge-limit">limit
 682 the charge of their batteries to 80%</a>, with the option to charge to
 683 100% when preparing for a longer trip (not that I would want a car
 684 like Tesla where rights to privacy is abandoned, but that is another
 685 story), which I guess is the option we should have for laptops on
 686 Linux too.</p>
 687
 688 <p>Is there a good and generic way with Linux to tell the battery to
 689 stop charging at 80%, unless requested to charge to 100% once in
 690 preparation for a longer trip?  I found
 691 <a href="http://askubuntu.com/questions/34452/how-can-i-limit-battery-charging-to-80-capacity">one
 692 recipe on askubuntu for Ubuntu to limit charging on Thinkpad to
 693 80%</a>, but could not get it to work (kernel module refused to
 694 load).</p>
 695
 696 <p>I wonder why the battery capacity was reported to be more than 100%
 697 at the start.  I also wonder why the "full capacity" increases some
 698 times, and if it is possible to repeat the process to get the battery
 699 back to design capacity.  And I wonder if the discharge and charge
 700 speed change over time, or if this stay the same.  I did not yet try
 701 to write a tool to calculate the derivative values of the battery
 702 level, but suspect some interesting insights might be learned from
 703 those.</p>
 704
 705 <p>Update 2015-09-24: I got a tip to install the packages
 706 acpi-call-dkms and tlp (unfortunately missing in Debian stable)
 707 packages instead of the tp-smapi-dkms package I had tried to use
 708 initially, and use 'tlp setcharge 40 80' to change when charging start
 709 and stop.  I've done so now, but expect my existing battery is toast
 710 and need to be replaced.  The proposal is unfortunately Thinkpad
 711 specific.</p>
 712
 713       </div>
 714       <div class="tags">
 715
 716
 717         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>.
 718
 719
 720       </div>
 721     </div>
 722     <div class="padding"></div>
 723
 724     <div class="entry">
 725       <div class="title">
 726         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Book_cover_for_the_Free_Culture_book_finally_done.html">Book cover for the Free Culture book finally done</a>
 727       </div>
 728       <div class="date">
 729          3rd September 2015
 730       </div>
 731       <div class="body">
 732         <p>Creating a good looking book cover proved harder than I expected.
 733 I wanted to create a cover looking similar to the original cover of
 734 the
 735 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">Free
 736 Culture</a> book we are translating to Norwegian, and I wanted it in
 737 vector format for high resolution printing.  But my inkscape knowledge
 738 were not nearly good enough to pull that off.
 739
 740 <p>But thanks to the great inkscape community, I was able to wrap up
 741 the cover yesterday evening.  I asked on the
 742 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23inkscape">#inkscape IRC channel</a>
 743 on Freenode for help and clues, and Marc Jeanmougin (Mc-) volunteered
 744 to try to recreate it based on the PDF of the cover from the HTML
 745 version.  Not only did he create a
 746 <a href="https://marc.jeanmougin.fr/share/copy1.svg ">SVG document with
 747 the original and his vector version side by side</a>, he even provided
 748 an <a href="https://marc.jeanmougin.fr/share/out-1.ogv">instruction
 749 video</a> explaining how he did it</a>.  But the instruction video is
 750 not easy to follow for an untrained inkscape user. The video is a
 751 recording on how he did it, and he is obviously very experienced as
 752 the menu selections are very quick and he mentioned on IRC that he did
 753 use some keyboard shortcuts that can't be seen on the video, but it
 754 give a good idea about the inkscape operations to use to create the
 755 stripes with the embossed copyright sign in the center.</p>
 756
 757 <p>I took his SVG file, copied the vector image and re-sized it to fit
 758 on the cover I was drawing.  I am happy with the end result, and the
 759 current english version look like this:</p>
 760
 761 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-09-03-free-culture-cover.png" width="70%" align="center"/>
 762
 763 <p>I am not quite sure about the text on the back, but guess it will
 764 do.  I picked three quotes from the official site for the book, and
 765 hope it will work to trigger the interest of potential readers.  The
 766 Norwegian cover will look the same, but with the texts and bar code
 767 replaced with the Norwegian version.</p>
 768
 769 <p>The book is very close to being ready for publication, and I expect
 770 to upload the final draft to Lulu in the next few days and order a
 771 final proof reading copy to verify that everything look like it should
 772 before allowing everyone to order their own copy of Free Culture, in
 773 English or Norwegian Bokmål.  I'm waiting to give the the productive
 774 proof readers a chance to complete their work.</p>
 775
 776       </div>
 777       <div class="tags">
 778
 779
 780         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>.
 781
 782
 783       </div>
 784     </div>
 785     <div class="padding"></div>
 786
 787     <div class="entry">
 788       <div class="title">
 789         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/In_my_hand__a_pocket_book_edition_of_the_Norwegian_Free_Culture_book_.html">In my hand, a pocket book edition of the Norwegian Free Culture book!</a>
 790       </div>
 791       <div class="date">
 792         19th August 2015
 793       </div>
 794       <div class="body">
 795         <p>Today, finally, my first printed draft edition of the Norwegian
 796 translation of Free Culture I have been working on for the last few
 797 years arrived in the mail.  I had to fake a cover to get the interior
 798 printed, and the exterior of the book look awful, but that is
 799 irrelevant at this point.  I asked for a printed pocket book version
 800 to get an idea about the font sizes and paper format as well as how
 801 good the figures and images look in print, but also to test what the
 802 pocket book version would look like.  After receiving the 500 page
 803 pocket book, it became obvious to me that that pocket book size is too
 804 small for this book.  I believe the book is too thick, and several
 805 tables and figures do not look good in the size they get with that
 806 small page sizes.  I believe I will go with the 5.5x8.5 inch size
 807 instead.  A surprise discovery from the paper version was how bad the
 808 URLs look in print.  They are very hard to read in the colophon page.
 809 The URLs are red in the PDF, but light gray on paper.  I need to
 810 change the color of links somehow to look better.  But there is a
 811 printed book in my hand, and it feels great. :)</p>
 812
 813 <p>Now I only need to fix the cover, wrap up the postscript with the
 814 store behind the book, and collect the last corrections from the proof
 815 readers before the book is ready for proper printing.  Cover artists
 816 willing to work for free and create a Creative Commons licensed vector
 817 file looking similar to the original is most welcome, as my skills as
 818 a graphics designer are mostly missing.</p>
 819
 820       </div>
 821       <div class="tags">
 822
 823
 824         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>.
 825
 826
 827       </div>
 828     </div>
 829     <div class="padding"></div>
 830
 831     <div class="entry">
 832       <div class="title">
 833         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_paper_version_of_the_Norwegian_Free_Culture_book_heading_my_way.html">First paper version of the Norwegian Free Culture book heading my way</a>
 834       </div>
 835       <div class="date">
 836          9th August 2015
 837       </div>
 838       <div class="body">
 839         <p>Typesetting a book is harder than I hoped.  As the translation is
 840 mostly done, and a volunteer proof reader was going to check the text
 841 on paper, it was time this summer to focus on formatting my translated
 842 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> based version of the
 843 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> book by Lawrence
 844 Lessig.  I've been trying to get both docboox-xsl+fop and dblatex to
 845 give me a good looking PDF, but in the end I went with dblatex, because
 846 its Debian maintainer and upstream developer were responsive and very
 847 helpful in solving my formatting challenges.</p>
 848
 849 <p>Last night, I finally managed to create a PDF that no longer made
 850 <a href="http://www.lulu.com/">Lulu.com</a> complain after uploading,
 851 and I ordered a text version of the book on paper.  It is lacking a
 852 proper book cover and is not tagged with the correct ISBN number, but
 853 should give me an idea what the finished book will look like.</p>
 854
 855 <p>Instead of using Lulu, I did consider printing the book using
 856 <a href="http://www.createspace.com/">CreateSpace</a>, but ended up
 857 using Lulu because it had smaller book size options (CreateSpace seem
 858 to lack pocket book with extended distribution).  I looked for a
 859 similar service in Norway, but have not seen anything so far.  Please
 860 let me know if I am missing out on something here.</p>
 861
 862 <p>But I still struggle to decide the book size.  Should I go for
 863 pocket book (4.25x6.875 inches / 10.8x17.5 cm) with 556 pages, Digest
 864 (5.5x8.5 inches / 14x21.6 cm) with 323 pages or US Trade (6x8 inches /
 865 15.3x22.9 cm) with 280 pages?  Fewer pager give a cheaper book, and a
 866 smaller book is easier to carry around.  The test book I ordered was
 867 pocket book sized, to give me an idea how well that fit in my hand,
 868 but I suspect I will end up using a digest sized book in the end to
 869 bring the prize down further.</p>
 870
 871 <p>My biggest challenge at the moment is making nice cover art.  My
 872 inkscape skills are not yet up to the task of replicating the original
 873 cover in SVG format.  I also need to figure out what to write about
 874 the book on the back (will most likely use the same text as the
 875 description on web based book stores).  I would love help with this,
 876 if you are willing to license the art source and final version using
 877 the same CC license as the book.  My artistic skills are not really up
 878 to the task.</p>
 879
 880 <p>I plan to publish the book in both English and Norwegian and on
 881 paper, in PDF form as well as EPUB and MOBI format.  The current
 882 status can as usual be found on
 883 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>
 884 in the archive/ directory.  So far I have spent all time on making the
 885 PDF version look good.  Someone should probably do the same with the
 886 dbtoepub generated e-book.  Help is definitely needed here, as I
 887 expect to run out of steem before I find time to improve the epub
 888 formatting.</p>
 889
 890 <p>Please let me know via github if you find typos in the book or
 891 discover translations that should be improved.  The final proof
 892 reading is being done right now, and I expect to publish the finished
 893 result in a few months.</p>
 894
 895       </div>
 896       <div class="tags">
 897
 898
 899         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>.
 900
 901
 902       </div>
 903     </div>
 904     <div class="padding"></div>
 905
 906     <div class="entry">
 907       <div class="title">
 908         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Typesetting_DocBook_footnotes_as_endnotes_with_dblatex.html">Typesetting DocBook footnotes as endnotes with dblatex</a>
 909       </div>
 910       <div class="date">
 911         16th July 2015
 912       </div>
 913       <div class="body">
 914         <p>I'm still working on the Norwegian version of the
 915 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture book by Lawrence
 916 Lessig</a>, and is now working on the final typesetting and layout.
 917 One of the features I want to get the structure similar to the
 918 original book is to typeset the footnotes as endnotes in the notes
 919 chapter.  Based on the
 920 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/685063">feedback from the Debian
 921 maintainer and the dblatex developer</a>, I came up with this recipe I
 922 would like to share with you.  The proposal was to create a new LaTeX
 923 class file and add the LaTeX code there, but this is not always
 924 practical, when I want to be able to replace the class using a make
 925 file variable.  So my proposal misuses the latex.begindocument XSL
 926 parameter value, to get a small fragment into the correct location in
 927 the generated LaTeX File.</p>
 928
 929 <p>First, decide where in the DocBook document to place the endnotes,
 930 and add this text there:</p>
 931
 932 <pre>
 933 &lt;?latex \theendnotes ?&gt;
 934 </pre>
 935
 936 <p>Next, create a xsl stylesheet file dblatex-endnotes.xsl to add the
 937 code needed to add the endnote instructions in the preamble of the
 938 generated LaTeX document, with content like this:</p>
 939
 940 <pre>
 941 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
 942 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
 943   &lt;xsl:param name="latex.begindocument"&gt;
 944     &lt;xsl:text&gt;
 945 \usepackage{endnotes}
 946 \let\footnote=\endnote
 947 \def\enoteheading{\mbox{}\par\vskip-\baselineskip }
 948 \begin{document}
 949     &lt;/xsl:text&gt;
 950   &lt;/xsl:param&gt;
 951 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
 952 </pre>
 953
 954 <p>Finally, load this xsl file when running dblatex, for example like
 955 this:</p>
 956
 957 <pre>
 958 dblatex --xsl-user=dblatex-endnotes.xsl freeculture.nb.xml
 959 </pre>
 960
 961 <p>The end result can be seen on github, where
 962 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">my
 963 book project</a> is located.</p>
 964
 965       </div>
 966       <div class="tags">
 967
 968
 969         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>.
 970
 971
 972       </div>
 973     </div>
 974     <div class="padding"></div>
 975
 976     <div class="entry">
 977       <div class="title">
 978         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/MPEG_LA_on__Internet_Broadcast_AVC_Video__licensing_and_non_private_use.html">MPEG LA on "Internet Broadcast AVC Video" licensing and non-private use</a>
 979       </div>
 980       <div class="date">
 981          7th July 2015
 982       </div>
 983       <div class="body">
 984         <p>After asking the Norwegian Broadcasting Company (NRK)
 985 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Hva_gj_r_at_NRK_kan_distribuere_H_264_video_uten_patentavtale_med_MPEG_LA_.html">why
 986 they can broadcast and stream H.264 video without an agreement with
 987 the MPEG LA</a>, I was wiser, but still confused.  So I asked MPEG LA
 988 if their understanding matched that of NRK.  As far as I can tell, it
 989 does not.</p>
 990
 991 <p>I started by asking for more information about the various
 992 licensing classes and what exactly is covered by the "Internet
 993 Broadcast AVC Video" class that NRK pointed me at to explain why NRK
 994 did not need a license for streaming H.264 video:
 995
 996 <p><blockquote>
 997
 998 <p>According to
 999 <a href="http://www.mpegla.com/Lists/MPEG%20LA%20News%20List/Attachments/226/n-10-02-02.pdf">a
1000 MPEG LA press release dated 2010-02-02</a>, there is no charge when
1001 using MPEG AVC/H.264 according to the terms of "Internet Broadcast AVC
1002 Video".  I am trying to understand exactly what the terms of "Internet
1003 Broadcast AVC Video" is, and wondered if you could help me.  What
1004 exactly is covered by these terms, and what is not?</p>
1005
1006 <p>The only source of more information I have been able to find is a
1007 PDF named
1008 <a href="http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/avc/Documents/avcweb.pdf">AVC
1009 Patent Portfolio License Briefing</a>, which states this about the
1010 fees:</p>
1011
1012 <ul>
1013  <li>Where End User pays for AVC Video
1014   <ul>
1015    <li>Subscription (not limited by title) – 100,000 or fewer
1016      subscribers/yr = no royalty; &gt; 100,000 to 250,000 subscribers/yr =
1017      $25,000; &gt;250,000 to 500,000 subscribers/yr = $50,000; &gt;500,000 to
1018      1M subscribers/yr = $75,000; &gt;1M subscribers/yr = $100,000</li>
1019
1020    <li>Title-by-Title - 12 minutes or less = no royalty; &gt;12 minutes in
1021      length = lower of (a) 2% or (b) $0.02 per title</li>
1022   </ul></li>
1023
1024  <li>Where remuneration is from other sources
1025   <ul>
1026    <li>Free Television - (a) one-time $2,500 per transmission encoder or
1027      (b) annual fee starting at $2,500 for &gt; 100,000 HH rising to
1028      maximum $10,000 for &gt;1,000,000 HH</li>
1029
1030    <li>Internet Broadcast AVC Video (not title-by-title, not subscription)
1031      – no royalty for life of the AVC Patent Portfolio License</li>
1032   </ul></li>
1033 </ul>
1034
1035 <p>Am I correct in assuming that the four categories listed is the
1036 categories used when selecting licensing terms, and that "Internet
1037 Broadcast AVC Video" is the category for things that do not fall into
1038 one of the other three categories?  Can you point me to a good source
1039 explaining what is ment by "title-by-title" and "Free Television" in
1040 the license terms for AVC/H.264?</p>
1041
1042 <p>Will a web service providing H.264 encoded video content in a
1043 "video on demand" fashing similar to Youtube and Vimeo, where no
1044 subscription is required and no payment is required from end users to
1045 get access to the videos, fall under the terms of the "Internet
1046 Broadcast AVC Video", ie no royalty for life of the AVC Patent
1047 Portfolio license?  Does it matter if some users are subscribed to get
1048 access to personalized services?</p>
1049
1050 <p>Note, this request and all answers will be published on the
1051 Internet.</p>
1052 </blockquote></p>
1053
1054 <p>The answer came quickly from Benjamin J. Myers, Licensing Associate
1055 with the MPEG LA:</p>
1056
1057 <p><blockquote>
1058 <p>Thank you for your message and for your interest in MPEG LA.  We
1059 appreciate hearing from you and I will be happy to assist you.</p>
1060
1061 <p>As you are aware, MPEG LA offers our AVC Patent Portfolio License
1062 which provides coverage under patents that are essential for use of
1063 the AVC/H.264 Standard (MPEG-4 Part 10).  Specifically, coverage is
1064 provided for end products and video content that make use of AVC/H.264
1065 technology.  Accordingly, the party offering such end products and
1066 video to End Users concludes the AVC License and is responsible for
1067 paying the applicable royalties.</p>
1068
1069 <p>Regarding Internet Broadcast AVC Video, the AVC License generally
1070 defines such content to be video that is distributed to End Users over
1071 the Internet free-of-charge.  Therefore, if a party offers a service
1072 which allows users to upload AVC/H.264 video to its website, and such
1073 AVC Video is delivered to End Users for free, then such video would
1074 receive coverage under the sublicense for Internet Broadcast AVC
1075 Video, which is not subject to any royalties for the life of the AVC
1076 License.  This would also apply in the scenario where a user creates a
1077 free online account in order to receive a customized offering of free
1078 AVC Video content.  In other words, as long as the End User is given
1079 access to or views AVC Video content at no cost to the End User, then
1080 no royalties would be payable under our AVC License.</p>
1081
1082 <p>On the other hand, if End Users pay for access to AVC Video for a
1083 specific period of time (e.g., one month, one year, etc.), then such
1084 video would constitute Subscription AVC Video.  In cases where AVC
1085 Video is delivered to End Users on a pay-per-view basis, then such
1086 content would constitute Title-by-Title AVC Video.  If a party offers
1087 Subscription or Title-by-Title AVC Video to End Users, then they would
1088 be responsible for paying the applicable royalties you noted below.</p>
1089
1090 <p>Finally, in the case where AVC Video is distributed for free
1091 through an "over-the-air, satellite and/or cable transmission", then
1092 such content would constitute Free Television AVC Video and would be
1093 subject to the applicable royalties.</p>
1094
1095 <p>For your reference, I have attached
1096 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-07-07-mpegla.pdf">a
1097 .pdf copy of the AVC License</a>. You will find the relevant
1098 sublicense information regarding AVC Video in Sections 2.2 through
1099 2.5, and the corresponding royalties in Section 3.1.2 through 3.1.4.
1100 You will also find the definitions of Title-by-Title AVC Video,
1101 Subscription AVC Video, Free Television AVC Video, and Internet
1102 Broadcast AVC Video in Section 1 of the License.  Please note that the
1103 electronic copy is provided for informational purposes only and cannot
1104 be used for execution.</p>
1105
1106 <p>I hope the above information is helpful.  If you have additional
1107 questions or need further assistance with the AVC License, please feel
1108 free to contact me directly.</p>
1109 </blockquote></p>
1110
1111 <p>Having a fresh copy of the license text was useful, and knowing
1112 that the definition of Title-by-Title required payment per title made
1113 me aware that my earlier understanding of that phrase had been wrong.
1114 But I still had a few questions:</p>
1115
1116 <p><blockquote>
1117 <p>I have a small followup question.  Would it be possible for me to get
1118 a license with MPEG LA even if there are no royalties to be paid?  The
1119 reason I ask, is that some video related products have a copyright
1120 clause limiting their use without a license with MPEG LA.  The clauses
1121 typically look similar to this:
1122
1123 <p><blockquote>
1124   This product is licensed under the AVC patent portfolio license for
1125   the personal and non-commercial use of a consumer to (a) encode
1126   video in compliance with the AVC standard ("AVC video") and/or (b)
1127   decode AVC video that was encoded by a consumer engaged in a
1128   personal and non-commercial activity and/or AVC video that was
1129   obtained from a video provider licensed to provide AVC video. No
1130   license is granted or shall be implied for any other use. additional
1131   information may be obtained from MPEG LA L.L.C.
1132 </blockquote></p>
1133
1134 <p>It is unclear to me if this clause mean that I need to enter into
1135 an agreement with MPEG LA to use the product in question, even if
1136 there are no royalties to be paid to MPEG LA.  I suspect it will
1137 differ depending on the jurisdiction, and mine is Norway.  What is
1138 MPEG LAs view on this?</p>
1139 </blockquote></p>
1140
1141 <p>According to the answer, MPEG LA believe those using such tools for
1142 non-personal or commercial use need a license with them:</p>
1143
1144 <p><blockquote>
1145
1146 <p>With regard to the Notice to Customers, I would like to begin by
1147 clarifying that the Notice from Section 7.1 of the AVC License
1148 reads:</p>
1149
1150 <p>THIS PRODUCT IS LICENSED UNDER THE AVC PATENT PORTFOLIO LICENSE FOR
1151 THE PERSONAL USE OF A CONSUMER OR OTHER USES IN WHICH IT DOES NOT
1152 RECEIVE REMUNERATION TO (i) ENCODE VIDEO IN COMPLIANCE WITH THE AVC
1153 STANDARD ("AVC VIDEO") AND/OR (ii) DECODE AVC VIDEO THAT WAS ENCODED
1154 BY A CONSUMER ENGAGED IN A PERSONAL ACTIVITY AND/OR WAS OBTAINED FROM
1155 A VIDEO PROVIDER LICENSED TO PROVIDE AVC VIDEO. NO LICENSE IS GRANTED
1156 OR SHALL BE IMPLIED FOR ANY OTHER USE. ADDITIONAL INFORMATION MAY BE
1157 OBTAINED FROM MPEG LA, L.L.C. SEE HTTP://WWW.MPEGLA.COM</p>
1158
1159 <p>The Notice to Customers is intended to inform End Users of the
1160 personal usage rights (for example, to watch video content) included
1161 with the product they purchased, and to encourage any party using the
1162 product for commercial purposes to contact MPEG LA in order to become
1163 licensed for such use (for example, when they use an AVC Product to
1164 deliver Title-by-Title, Subscription, Free Television or Internet
1165 Broadcast AVC Video to End Users, or to re-Sell a third party's AVC
1166 Product as their own branded AVC Product).</p>
1167
1168 <p>Therefore, if a party is to be licensed for its use of an AVC
1169 Product to Sell AVC Video on a Title-by-Title, Subscription, Free
1170 Television or Internet Broadcast basis, that party would need to
1171 conclude the AVC License, even in the case where no royalties were
1172 payable under the License.  On the other hand, if that party (either a
1173 Consumer or business customer) simply uses an AVC Product for their
1174 own internal purposes and not for the commercial purposes referenced
1175 above, then such use would be included in the royalty paid for the AVC
1176 Products by the licensed supplier.</p>
1177
1178 <p>Finally, I note that our AVC License provides worldwide coverage in
1179 countries that have AVC Patent Portfolio Patents, including
1180 Norway.</p>
1181
1182 <p>I hope this clarification is helpful.  If I may be of any further
1183 assistance, just let me know.</p>
1184 </blockquote></p>
1185
1186 <p>The mentioning of Norwegian patents made me a bit confused, so I
1187 asked for more information:</p>
1188
1189 <p><blockquote>
1190
1191 <p>But one minor question at the end.  If I understand you correctly,
1192 you state in the quote above that there are patents in the AVC Patent
1193 Portfolio that are valid in Norway.  This make me believe I read the
1194 list available from &lt;URL:
1195 <a href="http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/PatentList.aspx">http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/PatentList.aspx</a>
1196 &gt; incorrectly, as I believed the "NO" prefix in front of patents
1197 were Norwegian patents, and the only one I could find under Mitsubishi
1198 Electric Corporation expired in 2012.  Which patents are you referring
1199 to that are relevant for Norway?</p>
1200
1201 </blockquote></p>
1202
1203 <p>Again, the quick answer explained how to read the list of patents
1204 in that list:</p>
1205
1206 <p><blockquote>
1207
1208 <p>Your understanding is correct that the last AVC Patent Portfolio
1209 Patent in Norway expired on 21 October 2012.  Therefore, where AVC
1210 Video is both made and Sold in Norway after that date, then no
1211 royalties would be payable for such AVC Video under the AVC License.
1212 With that said, our AVC License provides historic coverage for AVC
1213 Products and AVC Video that may have been manufactured or Sold before
1214 the last Norwegian AVC patent expired.  I would also like to clarify
1215 that coverage is provided for the country of manufacture and the
1216 country of Sale that has active AVC Patent Portfolio Patents.</p>
1217
1218 <p>Therefore, if a party offers AVC Products or AVC Video for Sale in
1219 a country with active AVC Patent Portfolio Patents (for example,
1220 Sweden, Denmark, Finland, etc.), then that party would still need
1221 coverage under the AVC License even if such products or video are
1222 initially made in a country without active AVC Patent Portfolio
1223 Patents (for example, Norway).  Similarly, a party would need to
1224 conclude the AVC License if they make AVC Products or AVC Video in a
1225 country with active AVC Patent Portfolio Patents, but eventually Sell
1226 such AVC Products or AVC Video in a country without active AVC Patent
1227 Portfolio Patents.</p>
1228 </blockquote></p>
1229
1230 <p>As far as I understand it, MPEG LA believe anyone using Adobe
1231 Premiere and other video related software with a H.264 distribution
1232 license need a license agreement with MPEG LA to use such tools for
1233 anything non-private or commercial, while it is OK to set up a
1234 Youtube-like service as long as no-one pays to get access to the
1235 content.  I still have no clear idea how this applies to Norway, where
1236 none of the patents MPEG LA is licensing are valid.  Will the
1237 copyright terms take precedence or can those terms be ignored because
1238 the patents are not valid in Norway?</p>
1239
1240       </div>
1241       <div class="tags">
1242
1243
1244         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</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>.
1245
1246
1247       </div>
1248     </div>
1249     <div class="padding"></div>
1250
1251     <div class="entry">
1252       <div class="title">
1253         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_laptop___some_more_clues_and_ideas_based_on_feedback.html">New laptop - some more clues and ideas based on feedback</a>
1254       </div>
1255       <div class="date">
1256          5th July 2015
1257       </div>
1258       <div class="body">
1259         <p>Several people contacted me after my previous blog post about my
1260 need for a new laptop, and provided very useful feedback.  I wish to
1261 thank every one of these.  Several pointed me to the possibility of
1262 fixing my X230, and I am already in the process of getting Lenovo to
1263 do so thanks to the on site, next day support contract covering the
1264 machine.  But the battery is almost useless (I expect to replace it
1265 with a non-official battery) and I do not expect the machine to live
1266 for many more years, so it is time to plan its replacement.  If I did
1267 not have a support contract, it was suggested to find replacement parts
1268 using <a href="http://www.francecrans.com/">FrancEcrans</a>, but it
1269 might present a language barrier as I do not understand French.</p>
1270
1271 <p>One tip I got was to use the
1272 <a href="https://skinflint.co.uk/?cat=nb">Skinflint</a> web service to
1273 compare laptop models.  It seem to have more models available than
1274 prisjakt.no.  Another tip I got from someone I know have similar
1275 keyboard preferences was that the HP EliteBook 840 keyboard is not
1276 very good, and this matches my experience with earlier EliteBook
1277 keyboards I tested.  Because of this, I will not consider it any further.
1278
1279 <p>When I wrote my blog post, I was not aware of Thinkpad X250, the
1280 newest Thinkpad X model.  The keyboard reintroduces mouse buttons
1281 (which is missing from the X240), and is working fairly well with
1282 Debian Sid/Unstable according to
1283 <a href="http://www.corsac.net/X250/">Corsac.net</a>.  The reports I
1284 got on the keyboard quality are not consistent.  Some say the keyboard
1285 is good, others say it is ok, while others say it is not very good.
1286 Those with experience from X41 and and X60 agree that the X250
1287 keyboard is not as good as those trusty old laptops, and suggest I
1288 keep and fix my X230 instead of upgrading, or get a used X230 to
1289 replace it.  I'm also told that the X250 lack leds for caps lock, disk
1290 activity and battery status, which is very convenient on my X230.  I'm
1291 also told that the CPU fan is running very often, making it a bit
1292 noisy.  In any case, the X250 do not work out of the box with Debian
1293 Stable/Jessie, one of my requirements.</p>
1294
1295 <p>I have also gotten a few vendor proposals, one was
1296 <a href="http://pro-star.com">Pro-Star</a>, another was
1297 <a href="http://shop.gluglug.org.uk/product/libreboot-x200/">Libreboot</a>.
1298 The latter look very attractive to me.</p>
1299
1300 <p>Again, thank you all for the very useful feedback.  It help a lot
1301 as I keep looking for a replacement.</p>
1302
1303 <p>Update 2015-07-06: I was recommended to check out the
1304 <a href="">lapstore.de</a> web shop for used laptops.  They got several
1305 different
1306 <a href="http://www.lapstore.de/f.php/shop/lapstore/f/411/lang/x/kw/Lenovo_ThinkPad_X_Serie/">old
1307 thinkpad X models</a>, and provide one year warranty.</p>
1308
1309       </div>
1310       <div class="tags">
1311
1312
1313         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>.
1314
1315
1316       </div>
1317     </div>
1318     <div class="padding"></div>
1319
1320     <div class="entry">
1321       <div class="title">
1322         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_to_find_a_new_laptop__as_the_old_one_is_broken_after_only_two_years.html">Time to find a new laptop, as the old one is broken after only two years</a>
1323       </div>
1324       <div class="date">
1325          3rd July 2015
1326       </div>
1327       <div class="body">
1328         <p>My primary work horse laptop is failing, and will need a
1329 replacement soon.  The left 5 cm of the screen on my Thinkpad X230
1330 started flickering yesterday, and I suspect the cause is a broken
1331 cable, as changing the angle of the screen some times get rid of the
1332 flickering.</p>
1333
1334 <p>My requirements have not really changed since I bought it, and is
1335 still as
1336 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">I
1337 described them in 2013</a>.  The last time I bought a laptop, I had
1338 good help from
1339 <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/category.php?k=353">prisjakt.no</a>
1340 where I could select at least a few of the requirements (mouse pin,
1341 wifi, weight) and go through the rest manually.  Three button mouse
1342 and a good keyboard is not available as an option, and all the three
1343 laptop models proposed today (Thinkpad X240, HP EliteBook 820 G1 and
1344 G2) lack three mouse buttons).  It is also unclear to me how good the
1345 keyboard on the HP EliteBooks are.  I hope Lenovo have not messed up
1346 the keyboard, even if the quality and robustness in the X series have
1347 deteriorated since X41.</p>
1348
1349 <p>I wonder how I can find a sensible laptop when none of the options
1350 seem sensible to me?  Are there better services around to search the
1351 set of available laptops for features?  Please send me an email if you
1352 have suggestions.</p>
1353
1354 <p>Update 2015-07-23: I got a suggestion to check out the FSF
1355 <a href="http://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/endorsement/respects-your-freedom">list
1356 of endorsed hardware</a>, which is useful background information.</p>
1357
1358       </div>
1359       <div class="tags">
1360
1361
1362         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>.
1363
1364
1365       </div>
1366     </div>
1367     <div class="padding"></div>
1368
1369     <div class="entry">
1370       <div class="title">
1371         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/MakerCon_Nordic_videos_now_available_on_Frikanalen.html">MakerCon Nordic videos now available on Frikanalen</a>
1372       </div>
1373       <div class="date">
1374          2nd July 2015
1375       </div>
1376       <div class="body">
1377         <p>Last oktober I was involved on behalf of
1378 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a> with recording the talks at
1379 <a href="http://www.makercon.no/">MakerCon Nordic</a>, a conference for
1380 the Maker movement.  Since then it has been the plan to publish the
1381 recordings on <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a>, which
1382 finally happened the last few days.  A few talks are missing because
1383 the speakers asked the organizers to not publish them, but most of the
1384 talks are available.  The talks are being broadcasted on RiksTV
1385 channel 50 and using multicast on Uninett, as well as being available
1386 from the Frikanalen web site.  The unedited recordings are
1387 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/MakerConNordic/">available on
1388 Youtube too</a>.</p>
1389
1390 <p>This is the list of talks available at the moment.  Visit the
1391 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.no/video/?q=makercon">Frikanalen video
1392 pages</a> to view them.</p>
1393
1394 <ul>
1395
1396   <li>Evolutionary algorithms as a design tool - from art
1397       to robotics (Kyrre Glette)</li>
1398
1399   <li>Make and break (Hans Gerhard Meier)</li>
1400
1401   <li>Making a one year school course for young makers
1402       (Olav Helland)</li>
1403
1404   <li>Innovation Inspiration - IPR Databases as a Source of
1405       Inspiration (Hege Langlo)</li>
1406
1407   <li>Making a toy for makers (Erik Torstensson)</li>
1408
1409   <li>How to make 3D printer electronics (Elias Bakken)</li>
1410
1411   <li>Hovering Clouds: Looking at online tool offerings for Product
1412       Design and 3D Printing (William Kempton)</li>
1413
1414   <li>Travelling maker stories (Øyvind Nydal Dahl)</li>
1415
1416   <li>Making the first Maker Faire in Sweden (Nils Olander)</li>
1417
1418   <li>Breaking the mold: Printing 1000’s of parts (Espen Sivertsen)</li>
1419
1420   <li>Ultimaker — and open source 3D printing (Erik de Bruijn)</li>
1421
1422   <li>Autodesk’s 3D Printing Platform: Sparking innovation (Hilde
1423       Sevens)</li>
1424
1425   <li>How Making is Changing the World – and How You Can Too!
1426       (Jennifer Turliuk)</li>
1427
1428   <li>Open-Source Adventuring: OpenROV, OpenExplorer and the Future of
1429       Connected Exploration (David Lang)</li>
1430
1431   <li>Making in Norway (Haakon Karlsen Jr., Graham Hayward and Jens
1432       Dyvik)</li>
1433
1434   <li>The Impact of the Maker Movement (Mike Senese)</li>
1435
1436 </ul>
1437
1438 <p>Part of the reason this took so long was that the scripts NUUG had
1439 to prepare a recording for publication were five years old and no
1440 longer worked with the current video processing tools (command line
1441 argument changes).  In addition, we needed better audio normalization,
1442 which sent me on a detour to
1443 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Measuring_and_adjusting_the_loudness_of_a_TV_channel_using_bs1770gain.html">package
1444 bs1770gain for Debian</a>.  Now this is in place and it became a lot
1445 easier to publish NUUG videos on Frikanalen.</p>
1446
1447       </div>
1448       <div class="tags">
1449
1450
1451         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>.
1452
1453
1454       </div>
1455     </div>
1456     <div class="padding"></div>
1457
1458     <div class="entry">
1459       <div class="title">
1460         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Graphing_the_Norwegian_company_ownership_structure.html">Graphing the Norwegian company ownership structure</a>
1461       </div>
1462       <div class="date">
1463         15th June 2015
1464       </div>
1465       <div class="body">
1466         <p>It is a bit work to figure out the ownership structure of companies
1467 in Norway.  The information is publicly available, but one need to
1468 recursively look up ownership for all owners to figure out the complete
1469 ownership graph of a given set of companies.  To save me the work in
1470 the future, I wrote a script to do this automatically, outputting the
1471 ownership structure using the Graphviz/dotty format.  The data source
1472 is web scraping from <a href="http://www.proff.no/">Proff</a>, because
1473 I failed to find a useful source directly from the official keepers of
1474 the ownership data, <a href="http://www.brreg.no/">Brønnøysundsregistrene</a>.</p>
1475
1476 <p>To get an ownership graph for a set of companies, fetch
1477 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/brreg-norway-ownership-graph">the code from git</a> and run it using the organisation number.  I'm
1478 using the Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet as an example here, as its
1479 ownership structure is very simple:</p>
1480
1481 <pre>
1482 % time ./bin/eierskap-dotty 958033540 > dagbladet.dot
1483
1484 real    0m2.841s
1485 user    0m0.184s
1486 sys     0m0.036s
1487 %
1488 </pre>
1489
1490 <p>The script accept several organisation numbers on the command line,
1491 allowing a cluster of companies to be graphed in the same image.  The
1492 resulting dot file for the example above look like this.  The edges
1493 are labeled with the ownership percentage, and the nodes uses the
1494 organisation number as their name and the name as the label:</p>
1495
1496 <pre>
1497 digraph ownership {
1498 rankdir = LR;
1499 "Aller Holding A/s" -> "910119877" [label="100%"]
1500 "910119877" -> "998689015" [label="100%"]
1501 "998689015" -> "958033540" [label="99%"]
1502 "974530600" -> "958033540" [label="1%"]
1503 "958033540" [label="AS DAGBLADET"]
1504 "998689015" [label="Berner Media Holding AS"]
1505 "974530600" [label="Dagbladets Stiftelse"]
1506 "910119877" [label="Aller Media AS"]
1507 }
1508 </pre>
1509
1510 <p>To view the ownership graph, run "<tt>dotty dagbladet.dot</tt>" or
1511 convert it to a PNG using "<tt>dot -T png dagbladet.dot >
1512 dagbladet.png</tt>".  The result can be seen below:</p>
1513
1514 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-06-15-ownership-graphs-norway-dagbladet.png" width="80%">
1515
1516 <p>Note that I suspect the "Aller Holding A/S" entry to be incorrect
1517 data in the official ownership register, as that name is not
1518 registered in the official company register for Norway.  The ownership
1519 register is sensitive to typos and there seem to be no strict checking
1520 of the ownership links.</p>
1521
1522 <p>Let me know if you improve the script or find better data sources.
1523 The code is licensed according to GPL 2 or newer.</p>
1524
1525 <p>Update 2015-06-15: Since the initial post I've been told that
1526 "<a href="http://www.proff.dk/firma/carl-allers-etablissement-aktieselskab/københavn-v/hovedkontorer/13624518-3/">Aller
1527 Holding A/S</a>" is a Danish company, which explain why it did not
1528 have a Norwegian organisation number.  I've also been told that there
1529 is a <a href="http://www.brreg.no/automatiske/webservices/">web
1530 services API available</a> from Brønnøysundsregistrene, for those
1531 willing to accept the terms or pay the price.</p>
1532
1533       </div>
1534       <div class="tags">
1535
1536
1537         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn</a>.
1538
1539
1540       </div>
1541     </div>
1542     <div class="padding"></div>
1543
1544     <div class="entry">
1545       <div class="title">
1546         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Measuring_and_adjusting_the_loudness_of_a_TV_channel_using_bs1770gain.html">Measuring and adjusting the loudness of a TV channel using bs1770gain</a>
1547       </div>
1548       <div class="date">
1549         11th June 2015
1550       </div>
1551       <div class="body">
1552         <p>Television loudness is the source of frustration for viewers
1553 everywhere.  Some channels are very load, others are less loud, and
1554 ads tend to shout very high to get the attention of the viewers, and
1555 the viewers do not like this.  This fact is well known to the TV
1556 channels.  See for example the BBC white paper
1557 "<a href="http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/rd/pubs/whp/whp-pdf-files/WHP202.pdf">Terminology
1558 for loudness and level dBTP, LU, and all that</a>" from 2011 for a
1559 summary of the problem domain.  To better address the need for even
1560 loadness, the TV channels got together several years ago to agree on a
1561 new way to measure loudness in digital files as one step in
1562 standardizing loudness.  From this came the ITU-R standard BS.1770,
1563 "<a href="http://www.itu.int/rec/R-REC-BS.1770/en">Algorithms to
1564 measure audio programme loudness and true-peak audio level</a>".</p>
1565
1566 <p>The ITU-R BS.1770 specification describe an algorithm to measure
1567 loadness in LUFS (Loudness Units, referenced to Full Scale). But
1568 having a way to measure is not enough.  To get the same loudness
1569 across TV channels, one also need to decide which value to standardize
1570 on.  For European TV channels, this was done in the EBU Recommondaton
1571 R128, "<a href="https://tech.ebu.ch/docs/r/r128.pdf">Loudness
1572 normalisation and permitted maximum level of audio signals</a>", which
1573 specifies a recommended level of -23 LUFS.  In Norway, I have been
1574 told that NRK, TV2, MTG and SBS have decided among themselves to
1575 follow the R128 recommondation for playout from 2016-03-01.</p>
1576
1577 <p>There are free software available to measure and adjust the loudness
1578 level using the LUFS.  In Debian, I am aware of a library named
1579 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/libebur128">libebur128</a>
1580 able to measure the loudness and since yesterday morning a new binary
1581 named <a href="http://bs1770gain.sourceforge.net">bs1770gain</a>
1582 capable of both measuring and adjusting was uploaded and is waiting
1583 for NEW processing.  I plan to maintain the latter in Debian under the
1584 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?email=pkg-multimedia-maintainers%40lists.alioth.debian.org">Debian
1585 multimedia</a> umbrella.</p>
1586
1587 <p>The free software based TV channel I am involved in,
1588 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a>, plan to follow the
1589 R128 recommondation ourself as soon as we can adjust the software to
1590 do so, and the bs1770gain tool seem like a good fit for that part of
1591 the puzzle to measure loudness on new video uploaded to Frikanalen.
1592 Personally, I plan to use bs1770gain to adjust the loudness of videos
1593 I upload to Frikanalen on behalf of <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the
1594 NUUG member organisation</a>.  The program seem to be able to measure
1595 the LUFS value of any media file handled by ffmpeg, but I've only
1596 successfully adjusted the LUFS value of WAV files.  I suspect it
1597 should be able to adjust it for all the formats handled by ffmpeg.</p>
1598
1599       </div>
1600       <div class="tags">
1601
1602
1603         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>.
1604
1605
1606       </div>
1607     </div>
1608     <div class="padding"></div>
1609
1610     <div class="entry">
1611       <div class="title">
1612         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Norwegian_citizens_now_required_by_law_to_give_their_fingerprint_to_the_police.html">Norwegian citizens now required by law to give their fingerprint to the police</a>
1613       </div>
1614       <div class="date">
1615         10th May 2015
1616       </div>
1617       <div class="body">
1618         <p>5 days ago, the Norwegian Parliament decided, unanimously, that all
1619 citizens of Norway, no matter if they are suspected of something
1620 criminal or not, are
1621 <a href="https://www.holderdeord.no/votes/1430838871e">required to
1622 give fingerprints to the police</a> (vote details from Holder de
1623 ord).  The law make it sound like it will be optional, but in a few
1624 years there will be no option any more.  The ID will be required to
1625 vote, to get a bank account, a bank card, to change address on the
1626 post office, to receive an electronic ID or to get a drivers license
1627 and many other tasks required to function in Norway.  The banks plan
1628 to stop providing their own ID on the bank cards when this new
1629 national ID is introduced, and the national road authorities plan to
1630 change the drivers license to no longer be usable as identity cards.
1631 In effect, to function as a citizen in Norway a national ID card will
1632 be required, and to get it one need to provide the fingerprints to
1633 the police.</p>
1634
1635 <p>In addition to handing the fingerprint to the police (which
1636 promised to not make a copy of the fingerprint image at that point in
1637 time, but say nothing about doing it later), a picture of the
1638 fingerprint will be stored on the RFID chip, along with a picture of
1639 the face and other information about the person.  Some of the
1640 information will be encrypted, but the encryption will be the same
1641 system as currently used in the passports.  The codes to decrypt will
1642 be available to a lot of government offices and their suppliers around
1643 the globe, but for those that do not know anyone in those circles it
1644 is good to know that
1645 <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2006/nov/17/news.homeaffairs">the
1646 encryption is already broken</a>.  And they
1647 <a href="http://www.networkworld.com/article/2215057/wireless/bad-guys-could-read-rfid-passports-at-217-feet--maybe-a-lot-more.html">can
1648 be read from 70 meters away</a>.  This can be mitigated a bit by
1649 keeping it in a Faraday cage (metal box or metal wire container), but
1650 one will be required to take it out of there often enough to expose
1651 ones private and personal information to a lot of people that have no
1652 business getting access to that information.</p>
1653
1654 <p>The new Norwegian national IDs are a vehicle for identity theft,
1655 and I feel sorry for us all having politicians accepting such invasion
1656 of privacy without any objections.  So are the Norwegian passports,
1657 but it has been possible to function in Norway without those so far.
1658 That option is going away with the passing of the new law.  In this, I
1659 envy the Germans, because for them it is optional how much biometric
1660 information is stored in their national ID.</p>
1661
1662 <p>And if forced collection of fingerprints was not bad enough, the
1663 information collected in the national ID card register can be handed
1664 over to foreign intelligence services and police authorities, "when
1665 extradition is not considered disproportionate".</p>
1666
1667 <p>Update 2015-05-12: For those unable to believe that the Parliament
1668 really could make such decision, I wrote
1669 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Blir_det_virkelig_krav_om_fingeravtrykk_i_nasjonale_ID_kort_.html">a
1670 summary of the sources I have</a> for concluding the way I do
1671 (Norwegian Only, as the sources are all in Norwegian).</p>
1672
1673       </div>
1674       <div class="tags">
1675
1676
1677         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/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
1678
1679
1680       </div>
1681     </div>
1682     <div class="padding"></div>
1683
1684     <div class="entry">
1685       <div class="title">
1686         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_would_it_cost_to_store_all_phone_calls_in_Norway_.html">What would it cost to store all phone calls in Norway?</a>
1687       </div>
1688       <div class="date">
1689          1st May 2015
1690       </div>
1691       <div class="body">
1692         <p>Many years ago, a friend of mine calculated how much it would cost
1693 to store the sound of all phone calls in Norway, and came up with the
1694 cost of around 20 million NOK (2.4 mill EUR) for all the calls in a
1695 year.  I got curious and wondered what the same calculation would look
1696 like today.  To do so one need an idea of how much data storage is
1697 needed for each minute of sound, how many minutes all the calls in
1698 Norway sums up to, and the cost of data storage.</p>
1699
1700 <p>The 2005 numbers are from
1701 <a href="http://www.digi.no/analyser/2005/10/04/vi-prater-stadig-mindre-i-roret">digi.no</a>,
1702 the 2012 numbers are from
1703 <a href="http://www.nkom.no/aktuelt/nyheter/fortsatt-vekst-i-det-norske-ekommarkedet">a
1704 NKOM report</a>, and I got the 2013 numbers after asking NKOM via
1705 email.  I was told the numbers for 2014 will be presented May 20th,
1706 and decided not to wait for those, as I doubt they will be very
1707 different from the numbers from 2013.</p>
1708
1709 <p>The amount of data storage per minute sound depend on the wanted
1710 quality, and for phone calls it is generally believed that 8 Kbit/s is
1711 enough.  See for example a
1712 <a href="http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/voice/voice-quality/7934-bwidth-consume.html#topic1">summary
1713 on voice quality from Cisco</a> for some alternatives.  8 Kbit/s is 60
1714 Kbytes/min, and this can be multiplied with the number of call minutes
1715 to get the storage requirements.</p>
1716
1717 <p>Storage prices varies a lot, depending on speed, backup strategies,
1718 availability requirements etc.  But a simple way to calculate can be
1719 to use the price of a TiB-disk (around 1000 NOK / 120 EUR) and double
1720 it to take space, power and redundancy into account.  It could be much
1721 higher with high speed and good redundancy requirements.</p>
1722
1723 <p>But back to the question, What would it cost to store all phone
1724 calls in Norway?  Not much.  Here is a small table showing the
1725 estimated cost, which is within the budget constraint of most medium
1726 and large organisations:</p>
1727
1728 <table border="1">
1729 <tr><th>Year</th><th>Call minutes</th><th>Size</th><th>Price in NOK / EUR</th></tr>
1730 <tr><td>2005</td><td align="right">24 000 000 000</td><td align="right">1.3 PiB</td><td align="right">3 mill / 358 000</td></tr>
1731 <tr><td>2012</td><td align="right">18 000 000 000</td><td align="right">1.0 PiB</td><td align="right">2.2 mill / 262 000</td></tr>
1732 <tr><td>2013</td><td align="right">17 000 000 000</td><td align="right">950 TiB</td><td align="right">2.1 mill / 250 000</td></tr>
1733 </table>
1734
1735 <p>This is the cost of buying the storage.  Maintenance need to be
1736 taken into account too, but calculating that is left as an exercise
1737 for the reader.  But it is obvious to me from those numbers that
1738 recording the sound of all phone calls in Norway is not going to be
1739 stopped because it is too expensive.  I wonder if someone already is
1740 collecting the data?</p>
1741
1742       </div>
1743       <div class="tags">
1744
1745
1746         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/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
1747
1748
1749       </div>
1750     </div>
1751     <div class="padding"></div>
1752
1753     <div class="entry">
1754       <div class="title">
1755         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Jessie_based_Debian_Edu_beta_release.html">First Jessie based Debian Edu beta release</a>
1756       </div>
1757       <div class="date">
1758         26th April 2015
1759       </div>
1760       <div class="body">
1761         <p>I am happy to report that the Debian Edu team sent out
1762 <a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2015/04/msg00000.html">this
1763 announcement today</a>:</p>
1764
1765 <pre>
1766 the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is pleased to announce the first
1767 *beta* release of Debian Edu "Jessie" 8.0+edu0~b1, which for the first
1768 time is composed entirely of packages from the current Debian stable
1769 release, Debian 8 "Jessie".
1770
1771 (As most reading this will know, Debian "Jessie" hasn't actually been
1772 released by now. The release is still in progress but should finish
1773 later today ;)
1774
1775 We expect to make a final release of Debian Edu "Jessie" in the coming
1776 weeks, timed with the first point release of Debian Jessie. Upgrades
1777 from this beta release of Debian Edu Jessie to the final release will
1778 be possible and encouraged!
1779
1780 Please report feedback to debian-edu@lists.debian.org and/or submit
1781 bugs: http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs
1782
1783 Debian Edu - sometimes also known as "Skolelinux" - is a complete
1784 operating system for schools, universities and other
1785 organisations. Through its pre- prepared installation profiles
1786 administrators can install servers, workstations and laptops which
1787 will work in harmony on the school network.  With Debian Edu, the
1788 teachers themselves or their technical support staff can roll out a
1789 complete multi-user, multi-machine study environment within hours or
1790 days.
1791
1792 Debian Edu is already in use at several hundred schools all over the
1793 world, particularly in Germany, Spain and Norway. Installations come
1794 with hundreds of applications pre-installed, plus the whole Debian
1795 archive of thousands of compatible packages within easy reach.
1796
1797 For those who want to give Debian Edu Jessie a try, download and
1798 installation instructions are available, including detailed
1799 instructions in the manual explaining the first steps, such as setting
1800 up a network or adding users.  Please note that the password for the
1801 user your prompted for during installation must have a length of at
1802 least 5 characters!
1803
1804 == Where to download ==
1805
1806 A multi-architecture CD / usbstick image (649 MiB) for network booting
1807 can be downloaded at the following locations:
1808
1809     http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~b1-CD.iso
1810     rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~b1-CD.iso .
1811
1812 The SHA1SUM of this image is: 54a524d16246cddd8d2cfd6ea52f2dd78c47ee0a
1813
1814 Alternatively an extended DVD / usbstick image (4.9 GiB) is also
1815 available, with more software included (saving additional download
1816 time):
1817
1818     http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~b1-USB.iso
1819     rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~b1-USB.iso
1820
1821 The SHA1SUM of this image is: fb1f1504a490c077a48653898f9d6a461cb3c636
1822
1823 Sources are available from the Debian archive, see
1824 http://ftp.debian.org/debian-cd/8.0.0/source/ for some download
1825 options.
1826
1827 == Debian Edu Jessie manual in seven languages ==
1828
1829 Please see https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie/ for
1830 the English version of the Debian Edu jessie manual.
1831
1832 This manual has been fully translated to German, French, Italian,
1833 Danish, Dutch and Norwegian Bokmål. A partly translated version exists
1834 for Spanish.  See http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/ for
1835 online version of the translated manual.
1836
1837 More information about Debian 8 "Jessie" itself is provided in the
1838 release notes and the installation manual:
1839 - http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/releasenotes
1840 - http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/installmanual
1841
1842
1843 == Errata / known problems ==
1844
1845     It takes up to 15 minutes for a changed hostname to be updated via
1846     DHCP (#780461).
1847
1848     The hostname script fails to update LTSP server hostname (#783087).
1849
1850 Workaround: run update-hostname-from-ip on the client to update the
1851 hostname immediately.
1852
1853 Check https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie for a possibly
1854 more current and complete list.
1855
1856 == Some more details about Debian Edu 8.0+edu0~b1 Codename Jessie released 2015-04-25 ==
1857
1858 === Software updates ===
1859
1860 Everything which is new in Debian 8 Jessie, e.g.:
1861
1862  * Linux kernel 3.16.7-ctk9; for the i386 architecture, support for
1863    i486 processors has been dropped; oldest supported ones: i586 (like
1864    Intel Pentium and AMD K5).
1865
1866  * Desktop environments KDE Plasma Workspaces 4.11.13, GNOME 3.14,
1867    Xfce 4.12, LXDE 0.5.6
1868    * new optional desktop environment: MATE 1.8
1869    * KDE Plasma Workspaces is installed by default; to choose one of
1870      the others see the manual.
1871  * the browsers Iceweasel 31 ESR and Chromium 41
1872  * LibreOffice 4.3.3
1873  * GOsa 2.7.4
1874  * LTSP 5.5.4
1875  * CUPS print system 1.7.5
1876  * new boot framework: systemd
1877  * Educational toolbox GCompris 14.12
1878  * Music creator Rosegarden 14.02
1879  * Image editor Gimp 2.8.14
1880  * Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.13.1
1881  * golearn 0.9
1882  * tuxpaint 0.9.22
1883  * New version of debian-installer from Debian Jessie.
1884  * Debian Jessie includes about 43000 packages available for installation.
1885  * More information about Debian 8 Jessie is provided in its release
1886    notes and the installation manual, see the link above.
1887
1888 === Installation changes ===
1889
1890     Installations done via PXE now also install firmware automatically
1891     for the hardware present.
1892
1893 === Fixed bugs ===
1894
1895 A number of bugs have been fixed in this release; the most noticeable
1896 from a user perspective:
1897
1898  * Inserting incorrect DNS information in Gosa will no longer break
1899    DNS completely, but instead stop DNS updates until the incorrect
1900    information is corrected (710362)
1901
1902  * shutdown-at-night now shuts the system down if gdm3 is used (775608).
1903
1904 === Sugar desktop removed ===
1905
1906 As the Sugar desktop was removed from Debian Jessie, it is also not
1907 available in Debian Edu jessie.
1908
1909
1910 == About Debian Edu / Skolelinux ==
1911
1912 Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based on
1913 Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
1914 configured school network. Directly after installation a school server
1915 running all services needed for a school network is set up just
1916 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
1917 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
1918 initial installation of the main server from CD or USB stick all other
1919 machines can be installed via the network. The provided school server
1920 provides LDAP database and Kerberos authentication service,
1921 centralized home directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other
1922 services.  The desktop contains more than 60 educational software
1923 packages and more are available from the Debian archive, and schools
1924 can choose between KDE, GNOME, LXDE, Xfce and MATE desktop
1925 environment.
1926
1927 == About Debian ==
1928
1929 The Debian Project was founded in 1993 by Ian Murdock to be a truly
1930 free community project. Since then the project has grown to be one of
1931 the largest and most influential open source projects. Thousands of
1932 volunteers from all over the world work together to create and
1933 maintain Debian software. Available in 70 languages, and supporting a
1934 huge range of computer types, Debian calls itself the universal
1935 operating system.
1936
1937 == Thanks ==
1938
1939 Thanks to everyone making Debian and Debian Edu / Skolelinux happen!
1940 You rock.
1941 </pre>
1942
1943       </div>
1944       <div class="tags">
1945
1946
1947         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>.
1948
1949
1950       </div>
1951     </div>
1952     <div class="padding"></div>
1953
1954     <div class="entry">
1955       <div class="title">
1956         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Shirish_Agarwal.html">Debian Edu interview: Shirish Agarwal</a>
1957       </div>
1958       <div class="date">
1959         15th April 2015
1960       </div>
1961       <div class="body">
1962         <p>It was a surprise to me to learn that project to create a complete
1963 computer system for schools I've involved in,
1964 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>, was
1965 being used in India.  But apparently it is, and I managed to get an
1966 interview with one of the friends of the project there, Shirish
1967 Agarwal.</p>
1968
1969 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
1970
1971 <p>My name is Shirish Agarwal. Based out of the educational and
1972 historical city of Pune, from the western state of Maharashtra, India.
1973 My bread comes from giving training, giving policy tips,
1974 installations on free software to mom and pop shops in different
1975 fields from Desktop publishing to retail shops as well as work with
1976 few software start-ups as well.</p>
1977
1978 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
1979 project?</strong></p>
1980
1981 <p>It started innocently enough. I have been using Debian for a few
1982 years and in one local minidebconf / debutsav I was asked if there was
1983 anything for schools or education. I had worked / played with free
1984 educational softwares such as Gcompris and Stellarium for my many
1985 nieces and nephews so researched and found Debian Edu or Skolelinux as
1986 it was known then.  Since then I have started using the various
1987 education meta-packages provided by the project.</p>
1988
1989 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
1990 Edu?</strong></p>
1991
1992 <p>It's closest I have seen where a package full of educational
1993 software are packed, which are free and open (both literally and
1994 figuratively).  Even if I take the simplest software which is
1995 gcompris, the number of activities therein are amazing. Another one of
1996 the softwares that I have liked for a long time is stellarium. Even
1997 pysycache is cool except for couple of issues I encountered
1998 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/781841">#781841</a> and
1999 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/781842">#781842</a>.</p>
2000
2001 <p>I prefer software installed on the system over web based solutions,
2002 as a web site can disappear any time but the software on disk has the
2003 possibility of a larger life span.  Of course with both it's more a
2004 question if it has enough users who make it fun or sustainable or both
2005 for the developer per-se.</p>
2006
2007 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
2008 Edu?</strong></p>
2009
2010 <p>I do see that the Debian Edu team seems to be short-handed and I
2011 think more efforts should be made to make it popular and ask and take
2012 help from people and the larger community wherever possible.</p>
2013
2014 <p>I don't see any disadvantage to use Skolelinux apart from the fact
2015 that most apps. are generic which is good or bad how you see it.
2016 However, saying that I do acknowledge the fact that the canvas is
2017 pretty big and there are lot of interesting ideas that could be done
2018 but for reasons not known not done or if done I don't know about them.
2019 Let me share some of the ideas (these are more upstream based but
2020 still) I have had for a long time :</p>
2021
2022 <p>1. Classical maths question of two trains in opposing directions
2023 each running @x kmph/mph at y distance, when they will meet and how
2024 far would each travel and similar questions like these.
2025
2026 <p>The computer is a fantastic system where questions like these can
2027 be drawn, animated and the methodology and answers teased out in
2028 interactive manner. While sites such as the
2029 <a href="http://mathforum.org/dr.math/faq/faq.two.trains.html">Ask
2030 Dr. Math FAQ on The Two Trains problem</a> (as an example or point of
2031 inspiration) can be used there is lot more that can be done.  I dunno
2032 if there is a free software which does something like this.  The idea
2033 being a blend of objects + animation + interaction which does
2034 this. The whole interaction could be gamified with points or sounds or
2035 colourful celebration whenever the user gets even part of the question
2036 or/and methodology right. That would help reinforce good behaviour.
2037 This understanding could be used to share/showcase everything from how
2038 the first wheel came to be, to evolution to how astronomy started,
2039 psychics and everything in-between.</p>
2040
2041 <p>One specific idea in the train part was having the Linux mascot on
2042 one train and the BSD or GNU mascot on the other train and they
2043 meeting somewhere in-between. Characters from blender movies could
2044 also be used.</p>
2045
2046 <p>2. Loads of crossword-puzzles with reference to subjects: We have
2047 enormous data sets in Wikipedia and Wikitionary.  I don't think it
2048 should be a big job to design crossword puzzles. Using categories and
2049 sub-categories it should be doable to have Q&A single word answers
2050 from the existing data-sets. What would make it easy or hard could be
2051 the length of the word + existence of many or few vowels depending on
2052 the user's input.</p>
2053
2054 <p>3. Jigsaw puzzles - We already have a great software called
2055 palapeli with number of slicers making it pretty interesting. What
2056 needs to be done is to download large number of public domain and
2057 copyleft images, tease and use IPTC tags to categorise them into
2058 nature, history etc.  and let it loose. This could turn to be really
2059 huge collection of images. One source could be taken from
2060 commons.wikimedia.org, others could be huge collection of royalty-free
2061 stock photos. Potential is immense.</p>
2062
2063 <p>Apart from this, free software suffers in two directions, we lag
2064 both in development (of using new features per-se) and maintenance a
2065 lot.  This is more so in educational software as these applications
2066 need to be timely and the opportunity cost of missing deadlines is
2067 immense. If we are able to solve issues of funding for development and
2068 maintenance of such software I don't see any big difficulties. I know
2069 of few start-ups in and around India who would love to develop and
2070 maintain such software if funding issues could be solved.</p>
2071
2072 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
2073
2074 <p>That would be huge list. Some of the softwares are obviously apt,
2075 aptitude, debdelta, leafpad, the shell of course (zsh nowadays),
2076 quassel for IRC. In games I use shisen-sho while card-games are evenly
2077 between kpat and Aiselriot.  In desktops it's a tie between
2078 gnome-flashback and mate.</p>
2079
2080 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
2081 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
2082
2083 <p>I think it should first start with using specific FOSS apps. in
2084 whatever environment they are. If it's MS-Windows or Mac so be it.
2085 Once they are habitual with the apps. and there is buy-in from the
2086 school management then it could be installed anywhere. Most of the
2087 people now understand the concept of a repository because of the
2088 various online stores so it isn't hard to convince on that front.</p>
2089
2090 <p>What is harder is having enough people with technical skills and
2091 passion to service them. If you get buy-in from one or two teachers
2092 then ideas like above could also be asked to be done as a project as
2093 well.</p>
2094
2095 <p>I think where we fall short more than anything is in marketing. For
2096 instance, Debian has this whole range of fonts in its archive but
2097 there isn't even a page where all those different fonts in the La
2098 Ipsum format could be tried out for newcomers.</p>
2099
2100 <p>One of the issues faced constantly in installations is with updates
2101 and upgrades.  People have this myth that each update and upgrade
2102 means the user interface will / has to change. I have seen this
2103 innumerable times.  That perhaps is one of the reasons which browsers
2104 like Iceweasel / Firefox change user interfaces so much, not because
2105 it might be needed or be functional but because people believe that
2106 changed user interfaces are better. This, can easily be pointed with
2107 the user interfaces changed with almost every MS-Windows and Mac OS
2108 releases.</p>
2109
2110 <p>The problems with Debian Edu for deployment are many. The biggest
2111 is the huge gap between what is taught in schools and what Debian Edu
2112 is aimed at.
2113
2114 <p>Me and my friends did teach on week-ends in a government school for
2115 around 2 years, and
2116 <a href="https://flossexperiences.wordpress.com/2012/10/08/sharings/">gathered
2117 some experience</a> there.  Some of the things we learnt/discovered
2118 there was :</p>
2119
2120 <ol>
2121
2122   <li>Most of the teachers are very territorial about their subjects
2123    and they do not want you to teach anything out of the
2124    portion/syllabus given.</li>
2125
2126   <li>They want any activity on the system in accordance to whatever
2127    is in the syllabus.</li>
2128
2129   <li>There are huge barriers both with the English language and at
2130    times with objects or whatever. An example, let's say in gcompris
2131    you have objects falling down and you have to name them and let's
2132    say the falling object is a hat or a fedora hat, this would not be
2133    as recognizable as say a
2134    <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puneri_Pagadi">Puneri
2135    Pagdi</a> so there is need to inject local objects, words wherever
2136    possible. Especially for word-games there are so many hindi words
2137    which have become part of english vocabulary (for instance in
2138    parley), those could be made into a hinglish collection or
2139    something but that is something for upstream to do.</li>
2140
2141 </ol>
2142
2143       </div>
2144       <div class="tags">
2145
2146
2147         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>.
2148
2149
2150       </div>
2151     </div>
2152     <div class="padding"></div>
2153
2154     <div class="entry">
2155       <div class="title">
2156         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/I_m_going_to_the_Open_Source_Developers__Conference_Nordic_2015_.html">I'm going to the Open Source Developers' Conference Nordic 2015!</a>
2157       </div>
2158       <div class="date">
2159          7th April 2015
2160       </div>
2161       <div class="body">
2162         <p>I am happy to let you all know that I'm going to the <a
2163 href="http://act.osdc.no/osdc2015no/">Open Source Developers'
2164 Conference Nordic 2015</a>!</p>
2165
2166 <p>It take place Friday 8th to Sunday 10th of May in Oslo next to
2167 where I work, and I finally got around to submitting
2168 <a href="http://act.osdc.no/osdc2015no/talk/6192">a talk proposal for
2169 it</a> (dead link for most people until the talk is accepted).  As
2170 part of my involvement with the
2171 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group member
2172 association</a> I have been slightly involved in the planning of this
2173 conference for a while now, with a focus on organising a Civic Hacking
2174 Hackathon with our friends
2175 over at <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a> and
2176 <a href="http://www.holderdeord.no/">Holder de ord</a>.  This part is
2177 named the 'My Society' track in the program.  There is still space for
2178 more talks and participants.  I hope to see you there.</p>
2179
2180 <p>Check out <a href="http://act.osdc.no/osdc2015no/talks">the talks
2181 submitted and accepted so far</a>.</p>
2182
2183       </div>
2184       <div class="tags">
2185
2186
2187         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>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn</a>.
2188
2189
2190       </div>
2191     </div>
2192     <div class="padding"></div>
2193
2194     <div class="entry">
2195       <div class="title">
2196         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Proof_reading_the_Norwegian_translation_of_Free_Culture_by_Lessig.html">Proof reading the Norwegian translation of Free Culture by Lessig</a>
2197       </div>
2198       <div class="date">
2199          4th April 2015
2200       </div>
2201       <div class="body">
2202         <p>During eastern I had some time to continue working on the Norwegian
2203 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
2204 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
2205 At the moment I am proof reading the finished text, looking for typos,
2206 inconsistent wordings and sentences that do not flow as they should.
2207 I'm more than two thirds done with the text, and welcome others to
2208 check the text up to chapter 13.  The current status is available on the
2209 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>
2210 project pages.  You can also check out the
2211 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>,
2212 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
2213 and HTML version available in the
2214 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/tree/master/archive">archive
2215 directory</a>.</p>
2216
2217 <p>Please report typos, bugs and improvements to the github project if
2218 you find any.</p>
2219
2220       </div>
2221       <div class="tags">
2222
2223
2224         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>.
2225
2226
2227       </div>
2228     </div>
2229     <div class="padding"></div>
2230
2231     <div class="entry">
2232       <div class="title">
2233         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Frikanalen__Norwegian_TV_channel_for_technical_topics.html">Frikanalen, Norwegian TV channel for technical topics</a>
2234       </div>
2235       <div class="date">
2236          9th March 2015
2237       </div>
2238       <div class="body">
2239         <p>The <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a>,
2240 where I am a member, and where people interested in free software,
2241 open standards and UNIX like operating systems like Linux and the BSDs
2242 come together, record our monthly technical presentations on video.
2243 The purpose is to document the talks and spread them to a wider
2244 audience.  For this, the the Norwegian nationwide open channel
2245 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a> is a useful venue.
2246 Since a few days ago, when I figured out the
2247 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.no/api/">REST API</a> to program the
2248 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/guide/">channel time schedule</a>,
2249 the channel has been filled with NUUG talks, related recordings and
2250 some Creative Commons licensed TED talks (from archive.org).  I fill
2251 all "leftover bits" on the channel with content from NUUG, which at
2252 the moment is almost 17 of 24 hours every day.</p>
2253
2254 <p>The list of NUUG videos
2255 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/organization/82">uploaded so far</a>
2256 include things like a
2257 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/video/625090">one hour talk by John
2258 Perry Barlow when he visited Oslo</a>, a presentation of
2259 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/video/624275">Haiku, the BeOS
2260 re-implementation</a>, the
2261 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/video/624493">history of FiksGataMi,
2262 the Norwegian version of FixMyStreet</a>, the good old
2263 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/video/623566">Warriors of the net
2264 video</A> and many others.</p>
2265
2266 <p>We have a large backlog of NUUG talks not yet uploaded to
2267 Frikanalen, and plan to upload every useful bit to the channel to
2268 spread the word there.  I also hope to find useful recordings from the
2269 Chaos Computer Club and Debian conferences and spread them on the
2270 channel as well.  But this require locating the videos and their meta
2271 information (title, description, license, etc), and preparing the
2272 recordings for broadcast, and I have not yet had the spare time to
2273 focus on this.  Perhaps you want to help.  Please join us on IRC,
2274 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23nuug">#nuug on irc.freenode.net</a>
2275 if you want to help make this happen.</p>
2276
2277 <p>But as I said, already the channel is already almost exclusively
2278 filled with technical topics, and if you want to learn something new
2279 today, check out the <a href="http://www.frikanalen.tv/se">Ogg Theora
2280 web stream</a> or use one of the other ways to get access to the
2281 channel.  Unfortunately the Ogg Theora recoding for distribution still
2282 do not properly sync the video and sound.  It is generated by recoding
2283 a internal MPEG transport stream with MPEG4 coded video (ie H.264) to
2284 Ogg Theora / Vorbis, and we have not been able to find a way that
2285 produces acceptable quality.  Help needed, please get in touch if you
2286 know how to fix it using free software.</p>
2287
2288       </div>
2289       <div class="tags">
2290
2291
2292         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/h264">h264</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>.
2293
2294
2295       </div>
2296     </div>
2297     <div class="padding"></div>
2298
2299     <div class="entry">
2300       <div class="title">
2301         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Citizenfour_documentary_on_the_Snowden_confirmations_to_Norway.html">The Citizenfour documentary on the Snowden confirmations to Norway</a>
2302       </div>
2303       <div class="date">
2304         28th February 2015
2305       </div>
2306       <div class="body">
2307         <p>Today I was happy to learn that the documentary
2308 <a href="https://citizenfourfilm.com/">Citizenfour</a> by
2309 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_Poitras">Laura Poitras</a>
2310 finally will show up in Norway.  According to the magazine
2311 <a href="http://montages.no/">Montages</a>, a deal has finally been
2312 made for
2313 <a href="http://montages.no/nyheter/snowden-dokumentaren-citizenfour-far-norsk-kinodistribusjon/">Cinema
2314 distribution in Norway</a> and the movie will have its premiere soon.
2315 This is great news.  As part of my involvement with
2316 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the Norwegian Unix User Group</a>, me and
2317 a friend have
2318 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Dokumentar_om_Snowdenbekreftelsene_til_Norge_.shtml">tried
2319 to get the movie to Norway</a> ourselves, but obviously
2320 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Dokumentar_om_Snowdenbekreftelsene_endelig_til_Norge_.shtml">we
2321 were too late</a> and Tor Fosse beat us to it.  I am happy he did, as
2322 the movie will make its way to the public and we do not have to make
2323 it happen ourselves.
2324 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiGwAvd5mvM">The trailer</a>
2325 can be seen on youtube, if you are curious what kind of film this
2326 is.</p>
2327
2328 <p>The whistle blower Edward Snowden really deserve political asylum
2329 here in Norway, but I am afraid he would not be safe.</p>
2330
2331       </div>
2332       <div class="tags">
2333
2334
2335         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/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
2336
2337
2338       </div>
2339     </div>
2340     <div class="padding"></div>
2341
2342     <div class="entry">
2343       <div class="title">
2344         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Norwegian_open_channel_Frikanalen___24x7_on_the_Internet.html">The Norwegian open channel Frikanalen - 24x7 on the Internet</a>
2345       </div>
2346       <div class="date">
2347         25th February 2015
2348       </div>
2349       <div class="body">
2350         <p>The Norwegian nationwide open channel
2351 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a> is still going
2352 strong.  It allow everyone to send the video they want on national
2353 television.  It is a TV station administrated completely using a web
2354 browser, running only <ahref="https://github.com/Frikanalen">Free
2355 Software</a>, providing <ahref="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/api">a REST
2356 api</a> for administrators and members, and with distribution on the
2357 national DVB-T distribution network RiksTV.  But only between 12:00
2358 and 17:30 Norwegian time.  This has finally changed, after many years
2359 with limited distribution.  A few weeks ago, we set up a Ogg Theora
2360 stream via icecast to allow everyone with Internet access to check out
2361 the channel the rest of the day.  This is presented on
2362 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.tv/se">the Frikanalen web site now</a>.  And
2363 since a few days ago, the channel is also available
2364 via <a href="https://www.uninett.no/iptv-tilgang">multicast on
2365 UNINETT</a>, available for those using IPTV TVs and set-top boxes in
2366 the Norwegian National Research and Education network.</p>
2367
2368 <p>If you want to see what is on the channel, point your media player
2369 to one of these sources.  The first should work with most players and
2370 browsers, while as far as I know, the multicast UDP stream only work
2371 with VLC.</p>
2372
2373 <ul>
2374   <li><a href="http://video.nuug.no/frikanalen.ogv">http://video.nuug.no/frikanalen.ogv</a></li>
2375   <li>udp://@224.17.43.129:1234</li>
2376 </ul>
2377
2378 <p>The Ogg Theora / icecast stream is not working well, as the video
2379 and audio is slightly out of sync.  We have not been able to figure
2380 out how to fix it.  It is generated by recoding a internal MPEG
2381 transport stream with MPEG4 coded video (ie H.264) to Ogg Theora /
2382 Vorbis, and the result is less then stellar.  If you have ideas how to
2383 fix it, please let us know on frikanalen (at) nuug.no.  We currently
2384 use this with ffmpeg2theora 0.29:</p>
2385
2386 <blockquote><pre>
2387 ./ffmpeg2theora.linux &lt;OBE_gemini_URL.ts&gt; -F 25 -x 720 -y 405 \
2388  --deinterlace --inputfps 25 -c 1 -H 48000 --keyint 8 --buf-delay 100 \
2389  --nosync -V 700 -o - | oggfwd video.nuug.no 8000 &lt;pw&gt; /frikanalen.ogv
2390 </pre></blockquote>
2391
2392 <p>If you get the multicast UDP stream working, please let me know, as
2393 I am curious how far the multicast stream reach.  It do not make it to
2394 my home network, nor any other commercially available network in
2395 Norway that I am aware of.</p>
2396
2397       </div>
2398       <div class="tags">
2399
2400
2401         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/h264">h264</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>.
2402
2403
2404       </div>
2405     </div>
2406     <div class="padding"></div>
2407
2408     <div class="entry">
2409       <div class="title">
2410         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Nude_body_scanner_now_present_on_Norwegian_airport.html">Nude body scanner now present on Norwegian airport</a>
2411       </div>
2412       <div class="date">
2413         10th February 2015
2414       </div>
2415       <div class="body">
2416         <p>Aftenposten, one of the largest newspapers in Norway, today report
2417 that
2418 <a href="http://www.aftenposten.no/reise/Slik-skannes-kroppen-din-i-fremtidens-sikkerhetskontroll-490666_1.snd">three
2419 of the nude body scanners now is put to use at Gardermoen</a>, the
2420 main airport in Norway.  This way the travelers can have their body
2421 photographed without cloths when visiting Norway.  Of course this
2422 horrible news is presented with a positive spin, stating that "now
2423 travelers can move past the security check point faster and more
2424 efficiently", but fail to mention that the machines in question take
2425 pictures of their nude bodies and store them internally in the
2426 computer, while only presenting sketch figure of the body to the
2427 public.  The article is written in a way that leave the impression
2428 that the new machines do not take these nude pictures and only create
2429 the sketch figures.  In reality the same nude pictures are still
2430 taken, but not presented to everyone.  They are still available for
2431 the owners of the system and the people doing maintenance of the
2432 scanners, as long as they are taken and stored.</p>
2433
2434 <p>Wikipedia have a more on
2435 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_body_scanner">Full body
2436 scanners</a>, including example images and a summary of the
2437 controversy about these scanners.</p>
2438
2439 <p>Personally I will decline to use these machines, as I believe strip
2440 searches of my body is a very intrusive attack on my privacy, and not
2441 something everyone should have to accept to travel.</p>
2442
2443       </div>
2444       <div class="tags">
2445
2446
2447         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>.
2448
2449
2450       </div>
2451     </div>
2452     <div class="padding"></div>
2453
2454     <div class="entry">
2455       <div class="title">
2456         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Nagios_module_to_check_if_the_Frikanalen_video_stream_is_working.html">Nagios module to check if the Frikanalen video stream is working</a>
2457       </div>
2458       <div class="date">
2459          8th February 2015
2460       </div>
2461       <div class="body">
2462         <p>When running a TV station with both broadcast and web stream
2463 distribution, it is useful to know that the stream is working.  As I
2464 am involved in the Norwegian open channel
2465 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a> as part of my
2466 activity in the <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG member
2467 organisation</a>, I wrote a script to use mplayer to connect to a
2468 video stream, pick two images 35 seconds apart and compare them.  If
2469 the images are missing or identical, something is probably wrong with
2470 the stream and an alarm should be triggered.  The script is written as
2471 a Nagios plugin, allowing us to use Nagios to run the check regularly
2472 and sound the alarm when something is wrong.  It is able to detect
2473 both a hanging and a broken video stream.</p>
2474
2475 <p>I just uploaded the code for the script into the
2476 <a href="https://github.com/Frikanalen/frikanalen/blob/master/nagios-plugin/check_video_stream_images">Frikanalen
2477 git repository</a> on github.  If you run a TV station with web
2478 streaming, perhaps you can find it useful too.</p>
2479
2480 <p>Last year, the Frikanalen public TV station transformed into using
2481 only Linux based free software to administrate, schedule and
2482 distribute the TV content.  The
2483 <a href="https://github.com/Frikanalen">source code for the entire TV
2484 station</a> is available from the Github project page.  Everyone can
2485 use it to send their content on national TV, and we provide both a web
2486 GUI and <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/api/">a web API</a> to
2487 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/login/?next=/members/video/">add</a>
2488 and <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/members/plan/">schedule
2489 content</a>.  And thanks to last weeks developer gathering and
2490 following activity, we now have the schedule
2491 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/xmltv/2015/01/01">available as
2492 XMLTV</a> too.  Still a lot of work left to do, especially with the
2493 process to add videos and with the scheduling, so your contribution is
2494 most welcome.  Perhaps you want to set up your own TV station?</p>
2495
2496 <p>Update 2015-02-25: Got a tip from Uninett about their
2497 <a href="https://scm.uninett.no/maalepaaler/qstream/">qstream
2498 monitoring system</a>, which gather connection time, jitter, packet
2499 loss and burst bandwidth usage.  It look useful to check if UDP
2500 streams are working as they should.</p>
2501
2502       </div>
2503       <div class="tags">
2504
2505
2506         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>.
2507
2508
2509       </div>
2510     </div>
2511     <div class="padding"></div>
2512
2513     <div class="entry">
2514       <div class="title">
2515         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Norwegian_Bokm_l_subtitles_for_the_FSF_video_User_Liberation.html">Norwegian Bokmål subtitles for the FSF video User Liberation</a>
2516       </div>
2517       <div class="date">
2518         12th January 2015
2519       </div>
2520       <div class="body">
2521         <p>A few days ago, the <a href="https://www.fsf.org/">Free Software
2522 Foundation</a> announced a new video
2523 <a href="https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/user-liberation-watch-and-share-our-new-video">explaining
2524 Free software</a> in simple terms.  The video named User Liberation is
2525 3 minutes long, and I recommend showing it to everyone you know as a
2526 way to explain what Free Software is all about.  Unfortunately several
2527 of the people I know do not understand English and Spanish, so it did
2528 not make sense to show it to them.</p>
2529
2530 <p>But today I was told that
2531 <a href="https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/user-liberation-watch-and-share-our-new-video">English
2532 subtitles were available</a> and set out to provide Norwegian Bokmål
2533 subtitles based on these.  The result has been sent to FSF and made
2534 available in
2535 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/fsf-video-user-liberation-subtitles">a
2536 git repository</a> provided by Github.  Please let me know if you find
2537 errors or have improvements to the subtitles.</p>
2538
2539 <p>Update 2015-02-03: Since I publised this post, FSF created a
2540 Libreplanet
2541 <a href="http://libreplanet.org/wiki/Group:FSF/User_Liberation_Video_Translation">project
2542 to track subtitles</A> for the video.</p>
2543
2544       </div>
2545       <div class="tags">
2546
2547
2548         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
2549
2550
2551       </div>
2552     </div>
2553     <div class="padding"></div>
2554
2555     <div class="entry">
2556       <div class="title">
2557         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Updated_version_of_the_Norwegian_web_service_FiksGataMi.html">Updated version of the Norwegian web service FiksGataMi</a>
2558       </div>
2559       <div class="date">
2560         30th December 2014
2561       </div>
2562       <div class="body">
2563         <p>I am very happy that we in the
2564 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User group (NUUG)</a>,
2565 spearheaded by Marius Halden from NUUG and Matthew Somerville from
2566 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a>, finally managed to
2567 upgrade the code base for the Norwegian version of
2568 <a href="http://fixmystreet.org/">FixMyStreet</a>.  This
2569 was the first major update since 2011. The refurbished
2570 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is already live, and
2571 seem to hold up the pressure.  The
2572 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Pressemelding__FiksGataMi_i_oppdatert_og_mobilvennlig_klesdrakt.shtml">press
2573 release and announcement</a> went out this morning.</p>
2574
2575 <p>FixMyStreet is a web platform for allowing the citizens to easily
2576 report problems with public infrastructure to the responsible
2577 authorities.  Think of it as a shared mail client with map support,
2578 allowing everyone to see what already was reported and comment on the
2579 reports in public.</p>
2580
2581       </div>
2582       <div class="tags">
2583
2584
2585         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>.
2586
2587
2588       </div>
2589     </div>
2590     <div class="padding"></div>
2591
2592     <div class="entry">
2593       <div class="title">
2594         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Of_course_USA_loses_in_cyber_war___NSA_and_friends_made_sure_it_would_happen.html">Of course USA loses in cyber war - NSA and friends made sure it would happen</a>
2595       </div>
2596       <div class="date">
2597         19th December 2014
2598       </div>
2599       <div class="body">
2600         <p>So, Sony caved in
2601 (<a href="https://twitter.com/RobLowe/status/545338568512917504">according
2602 to Rob Lowe</a>) and demonstrated that America lost its first cyberwar
2603 (<a href="https://twitter.com/newtgingrich/status/545339074975109122">according
2604 to Newt Gingrich</a>).  It should not surprise anyone, after the
2605 whistle blower Edward Snowden documented that the government of USA
2606 and their allies for many years have done their best to make sure the
2607 technology used by its citizens is filled with security holes allowing
2608 the secret services to spy on its own population.  No one in their
2609 right minds could believe that the ability to snoop on the people all
2610 over the globe could only be used by the personnel authorized to do so
2611 by the president of the United States of America.  If the capabilities
2612 are there, they will be used by friend and foe alike, and now they are
2613 being used to bring Sony on its knees.</p>
2614
2615 <p>I doubt it will a lesson learned, and expect USA to lose its next
2616 cyber war too, given how eager the western intelligence communities
2617 (and probably the non-western too, but it is less in the news) seem to
2618 be to continue its current dragnet surveillance practice.</p>
2619
2620 <p>There is a reason why China and others are trying to move away from
2621 Windows to Linux and other alternatives, and it is not to avoid
2622 sending its hard earned dollars to Cayman Islands (or whatever
2623 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_haven">tax haven</a>
2624 Microsoft is using these days to collect the majority of its
2625 income. :)</p>
2626
2627       </div>
2628       <div class="tags">
2629
2630
2631         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/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
2632
2633
2634       </div>
2635     </div>
2636     <div class="padding"></div>
2637
2638     <div class="entry">
2639       <div class="title">
2640         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_stay_with_sysvinit_in_Debian_Jessie.html">How to stay with sysvinit in Debian Jessie</a>
2641       </div>
2642       <div class="date">
2643         22nd November 2014
2644       </div>
2645       <div class="body">
2646         <p>By now, it is well known that Debian Jessie will not be using
2647 sysvinit as its boot system by default.  But how can one keep using
2648 sysvinit in Jessie?  It is fairly easy, and here are a few recipes,
2649 courtesy of
2650 <a href="http://www.vitavonni.de/blog/201410/2014102101-avoiding-systemd.html">Erich
2651 Schubert</a> and
2652 <a href="http://smcv.pseudorandom.co.uk/2014/still_universal/">Simon
2653 McVittie</a>.
2654
2655 <p>If you already are using Wheezy and want to upgrade to Jessie and
2656 keep sysvinit as your boot system, create a file
2657 <tt>/etc/apt/preferences.d/use-sysvinit</tt> with this content before
2658 you upgrade:</p>
2659
2660 <p><blockquote><pre>
2661 Package: systemd-sysv
2662 Pin: release o=Debian
2663 Pin-Priority: -1
2664 </pre></blockquote><p>
2665
2666 <p>This file content will tell apt and aptitude to not consider
2667 installing systemd-sysv as part of any installation and upgrade
2668 solution when resolving dependencies, and thus tell it to avoid
2669 systemd as a default boot system.  The end result should be that the
2670 upgraded system keep using sysvinit.</p>
2671
2672 <p>If you are installing Jessie for the first time, there is no way to
2673 get sysvinit installed by default (debootstrap used by
2674 debian-installer have no option for this), but one can tell the
2675 installer to switch to sysvinit before the first boot.  Either by
2676 using a kernel argument to the installer, or by adding a line to the
2677 preseed file used.  First, the kernel command line argument:
2678
2679 <p><blockquote><pre>
2680 preseed/late_command="in-target apt-get install --purge -y sysvinit-core"
2681 </pre></blockquote><p>
2682
2683 <p>Next, the line to use in a preseed file:</p>
2684
2685 <p><blockquote><pre>
2686 d-i preseed/late_command string in-target apt-get install -y sysvinit-core
2687 </pre></blockquote><p>
2688
2689 <p>One can of course also do this after the first boot by installing
2690 the sysvinit-core package.</p>
2691
2692 <p>I recommend only using sysvinit if you really need it, as the
2693 sysvinit boot sequence in Debian have several hardware specific bugs
2694 on Linux caused by the fact that it is unpredictable when hardware
2695 devices show up during boot.  But on the other hand, the new default
2696 boot system still have a few rough edges I hope will be fixed before
2697 Jessie is released.</p>
2698
2699 <p>Update 2014-11-26: Inspired by
2700 <ahref="https://www.mirbsd.org/permalinks/wlog-10-tg_e20141125-tg.htm#e20141125-tg_wlog-10-tg">a
2701 blog post by Torsten Glaser</a>, added --purge to the preseed
2702 line.</p>
2703
2704       </div>
2705       <div class="tags">
2706
2707
2708         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>.
2709
2710
2711       </div>
2712     </div>
2713     <div class="padding"></div>
2714
2715     <div class="entry">
2716       <div class="title">
2717         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Debian_package_for_SMTP_via_Tor__aka_SMTorP__using_exim4.html">A Debian package for SMTP via Tor (aka SMTorP) using exim4</a>
2718       </div>
2719       <div class="date">
2720         10th November 2014
2721       </div>
2722       <div class="body">
2723         <p>The right to communicate with your friends and family in private,
2724 without anyone snooping, is a right every citicen have in a liberal
2725 democracy.  But this right is under serious attack these days.</p>
2726
2727 <p>A while back it occurred to me that one way to make the dragnet
2728 surveillance conducted by NSA, GCHQ, FRA and others (and confirmed by
2729 the whisleblower Snowden) more expensive for Internet email,
2730 is to deliver all email using SMTP via Tor.  Such SMTP option would be
2731 a nice addition to the FreedomBox project if we could send email
2732 between FreedomBox machines without leaking metadata about the emails
2733 to the people peeking on the wire.  I
2734 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2014-October/006493.html">proposed
2735 this on the FreedomBox project mailing list in October</a> and got a
2736 lot of useful feedback and suggestions.  It also became obvious to me
2737 that this was not a novel idea, as the same idea was tested and
2738 documented by Johannes Berg as early as 2006, and both
2739 <a href="https://github.com/pagekite/Mailpile/wiki/SMTorP">the
2740 Mailpile</a> and <a href="http://dee.su/cables">the Cables</a> systems
2741 propose a similar method / protocol to pass emails between users.</p>
2742
2743 <p>To implement such system one need to set up a Tor hidden service
2744 providing the SMTP protocol on port 25, and use email addresses
2745 looking like username@hidden-service-name.onion.  With such addresses
2746 the connections to port 25 on hidden-service-name.onion using Tor will
2747 go to the correct SMTP server.  To do this, one need to configure the
2748 Tor daemon to provide the hidden service and the mail server to accept
2749 emails for this .onion domain.  To learn more about Exim configuration
2750 in Debian and test the design provided by Johannes Berg in his FAQ, I
2751 set out yesterday to create a Debian package for making it trivial to
2752 set up such SMTP over Tor service based on Debian.  Getting it to work
2753 were fairly easy, and
2754 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/exim4-smtorp">the
2755 source code for the Debian package</a> is available from github.  I
2756 plan to move it into Debian if further testing prove this to be a
2757 useful approach.</p>
2758
2759 <p>If you want to test this, set up a blank Debian machine without any
2760 mail system installed (or run <tt>apt-get purge exim4-config</tt> to
2761 get rid of exim4).  Install tor, clone the git repository mentioned
2762 above, build the deb and install it on the machine.  Next, run
2763 <tt>/usr/lib/exim4-smtorp/setup-exim-hidden-service</tt> and follow
2764 the instructions to get the service up and running.  Restart tor and
2765 exim when it is done, and test mail delivery using swaks like
2766 this:</p>
2767
2768 <p><blockquote><pre>
2769 torsocks swaks --server dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion \
2770   --to fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion
2771 </pre></blockquote></p>
2772
2773 <p>This will test the SMTP delivery using tor.  Replace the email
2774 address with your own address to test your server. :)</p>
2775
2776 <p>The setup procedure is still to complex, and I hope it can be made
2777 easier and more automatic.  Especially the tor setup need more work.
2778 Also, the package include a tor-smtp tool written in C, but its task
2779 should probably be rewritten in some script language to make the deb
2780 architecture independent.  It would probably also make the code easier
2781 to review.  The tor-smtp tool currently need to listen on a socket for
2782 exim to talk to it and is started using xinetd.  It would be better if
2783 no daemon and no socket is needed.  I suspect it is possible to get
2784 exim to run a command line tool for delivery instead of talking to a
2785 socket, and hope to figure out how in a future version of this
2786 system.</p>
2787
2788 <p>Until I wipe my test machine, I can be reached using the
2789 <tt>fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion</tt> mail address, deliverable over
2790 SMTorP. :)</p>
2791
2792       </div>
2793       <div class="tags">
2794
2795
2796         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
2797
2798
2799       </div>
2800     </div>
2801     <div class="padding"></div>
2802
2803     <div class="entry">
2804       <div class="title">
2805         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Jessie_based_Debian_Edu_released__alpha0_.html">First Jessie based Debian Edu released (alpha0)</a>
2806       </div>
2807       <div class="date">
2808         27th October 2014
2809       </div>
2810       <div class="body">
2811         <p>I am happy to report that I on behalf of the Debian Edu team just
2812 sent out
2813 <a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2014/10/msg00000.html">this
2814 announcement</a>:</p>
2815
2816 <pre>
2817 The Debian Edu Team is pleased to announce the release of Debian Edu
2818 Jessie 8.0+edu0~alpha0
2819
2820 Debian Edu is a complete operating system for schools. Through its
2821 various installation profiles you can install servers, workstations
2822 and laptops which will work together on the school network. With
2823 Debian Edu, the teachers themselves or their technical support can
2824 roll out a complete multi-user multi-machine study environment within
2825 hours or a few days. Debian Edu comes with hundreds of applications
2826 pre-installed, but you can always add more packages from Debian.
2827
2828 For those who want to give Debian Edu Jessie a try, download and
2829 installation instructions are available, including detailed
2830 instructions in the manual[1] explaining the first steps, such as
2831 setting up a network or adding users. Please note that the password
2832 for the user your prompted for during installation must have a length
2833 of at least 5 characters!
2834
2835  [1] &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie">https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie</a> &gt;
2836
2837 Would you like to give your school's computer a longer life? Are you
2838 tired of sneaker administration, running from computer to computer
2839 reinstalling the operating system? Would you like to administrate all
2840 the computers in your school using only a couple of hours every week?
2841 Check out Debian Edu Jessie!
2842
2843 Skolelinux is used by at least two hundred schools all over the world,
2844 mostly in Germany and Norway.
2845
2846 About Debian Edu and Skolelinux
2847 ===============================
2848
2849 Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux[2], is a Linux distribution based
2850 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
2851 configured school network. Immediately after installation a school
2852 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
2853 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
2854 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
2855 initial installation of the main server from CD or USB stick all other
2856 machines can be installed via the network.  The provided school server
2857 provides LDAP database and Kerberos authentication service,
2858 centralized home directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other
2859 services.  The desktop contains more than 60 educational software
2860 packages[3] and more are available from the Debian archive, and
2861 schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE, Xfce and MATE desktop
2862 environment.
2863
2864  [2] &lt;URL: <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">http://www.skolelinux.org/</a> &gt;
2865  [3] &lt;URL: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html</a> &gt;
2866
2867 Full release notes and manual
2868 =============================
2869
2870 Below the download URLs there is a list of some of the new features
2871 and bugfixes of Debian Edu 8.0+edu0~alpha0 Codename Jessie. The full
2872 list is part of the manual. (See the feature list in the manual[4] for
2873 the English version.) For some languages manual translations are
2874 available, see the manual translation overview[5].
2875
2876  [4] &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie/Features">https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie/Features</a> &gt;
2877  [5] &lt;URL: <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/">http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/</a> &gt;
2878
2879 Where to get it
2880 ---------------
2881
2882 To download the multiarch netinstall CD release (624 MiB) you can use
2883
2884  * <a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso</a>
2885  * <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso</a>
2886  * rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso .
2887
2888 The SHA1SUM of this image is: 361188818e036ce67280a572f757de82ebfeb095
2889
2890 New features for Debian Edu 8.0+edu0~alpha0 Codename Jessie released 2014-10-27
2891 ===============================================================================
2892
2893
2894 Installation changes
2895 --------------------
2896
2897  * PXE installation now installs firmware automatically for the hardware present.
2898
2899 Software updates
2900 ----------------
2901
2902 Everything which is new in Debian Jessie 8.0, eg:
2903
2904  * Linux kernel 3.16.x
2905  * Desktop environments KDE "Plasma" 4.11.12, GNOME 3.14, Xfce 4.10,
2906    LXDE 0.5.6 and MATE 1.8 (KDE "Plasma" is installed by default; to
2907    choose one of the others see manual.)
2908  * the browsers Iceweasel 31 ESR and Chromium 38
2909  * !LibreOffice 4.3.3
2910  * GOsa 2.7.4
2911  * LTSP 5.5.4
2912  * CUPS print system 1.7.5
2913  * new boot framework: systemd
2914  * Educational toolbox GCompris 14.07
2915  * Music creator Rosegarden 14.02
2916  * Image editor Gimp 2.8.14
2917  * Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.13.0
2918  * golearn 0.9
2919  * tuxpaint 0.9.22
2920  * New version of debian-installer from Debian Jessie.
2921  * Debian Jessie includes about 42000 packages available for
2922    installation.
2923  * More information about Debian Jessie 8.0 is provided in the release
2924    notes[6] and the installation manual[7].
2925
2926  [6] &lt;URL: <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/releasenotes">http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/releasenotes</a> &gt;
2927  [7] &lt;URL: <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/installmanual">http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/installmanual</a> &gt;
2928
2929 Fixed bugs
2930 ----------
2931
2932  * Inserting incorrect DNS information in Gosa will no longer break
2933    DNS completely, but instead stop DNS updates until the incorrect
2934    information is corrected (Debian bug #710362)
2935  * and many others.
2936
2937 Documentation and translation updates
2938 -------------------------------------
2939
2940  * The Debian Edu Jessie Manual is fully translated to German, French,
2941    Italian, Danish and Dutch. Partly translated versions exist for
2942    Norwegian Bokmal and Spanish.
2943
2944 Other changes
2945 -------------
2946
2947  * Due to new Squid settings, powering off or rebooting the main
2948    server takes more time.
2949  * To manage printers localhost:631 has to be used, currently www:631
2950    doesn't work.
2951
2952 Regressions / known problems
2953 ----------------------------
2954
2955  * Installing LTSP chroot fails with a bug related to eatmydata about
2956    exim4-config failing to run its postinst (see Debian bug #765694
2957    and Debian bug #762103).
2958  * Munin collection is not properly configured on clients (Debian bug
2959    #764594).  The fix is available in a newer version of munin-node.
2960  * PXE setup for Main Server and Thin Client Server setup does not
2961    work when installing on a machine without direct Internet access.
2962    Will be fixed when Debian bug #766960 is fixed in Jessie.
2963
2964 See the status page[8] for the complete list.
2965
2966  [8] &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie">https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie</a> &gt;
2967
2968 How to report bugs
2969 ------------------
2970
2971 &lt;URL: <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a> &gt;
2972
2973 About Debian
2974 ============
2975
2976 The Debian Project was founded in 1993 by Ian Murdock to be a truly
2977 free community project. Since then the project has grown to be one of
2978 the largest and most influential open source projects. Thousands of
2979 volunteers from all over the world work together to create and
2980 maintain Debian software. Available in 70 languages, and supporting a
2981 huge range of computer types, Debian calls itself the universal
2982 operating system.
2983
2984 Contact Information
2985 For further information, please visit the Debian web pages[9] or send
2986 mail to press@debian.org.
2987
2988  [9] &lt;URL: <a href="http://www.debian.org/">http://www.debian.org/</a> &gt;
2989 </pre>
2990
2991       </div>
2992       <div class="tags">
2993
2994
2995         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>.
2996
2997
2998       </div>
2999     </div>
3000     <div class="padding"></div>
3001
3002     <div class="entry">
3003       <div class="title">
3004         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/I_spent_last_weekend_recording_MakerCon_Nordic.html">I spent last weekend recording MakerCon Nordic</a>
3005       </div>
3006       <div class="date">
3007         23rd October 2014
3008       </div>
3009       <div class="body">
3010         <p>I spent last weekend at <a href="http://www.makercon.no/">Makercon
3011 Nordic</a>, a great conference and workshop for makers in Norway and
3012 the surrounding countries.  I had volunteered on behalf of the
3013 Norwegian Unix Users Group (NUUG) to video record the talks, and we
3014 had a great and exhausting time recording the entire day, two days in
3015 a row.  There were only two of us, Hans-Petter and me, and we used the
3016 regular video equipment for NUUG, with a
3017 <a href="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/wiki/">dvswitch</a>, a
3018 camera and a VGA to DV convert box, and mixed video and slides
3019 live.</p>
3020
3021 <p>Hans-Petter did the post-processing, consisting of uploading the
3022 around 180 GiB of raw video to Youtube, and the result is
3023 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/MakerConNordic/">now becoming
3024 public</a> on the MakerConNordic account.  The videos have the license
3025 NUUG always use on our recordings, which is
3026 <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/no/">Creative
3027 Commons Navngivelse-Del på samme vilkår 3.0 Norge</a>.  Many great
3028 talks available.  Check it out! :)</p>
3029
3030       </div>
3031       <div class="tags">
3032
3033
3034         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>.
3035
3036
3037       </div>
3038     </div>
3039     <div class="padding"></div>
3040
3041     <div class="entry">
3042       <div class="title">
3043         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/listadmin__the_quick_way_to_moderate_mailman_lists___nice_free_software.html">listadmin, the quick way to moderate mailman lists - nice free software</a>
3044       </div>
3045       <div class="date">
3046         22nd October 2014
3047       </div>
3048       <div class="body">
3049         <p>If you ever had to moderate a mailman list, like the ones on
3050 alioth.debian.org, you know the web interface is fairly slow to
3051 operate.  First you visit one web page, enter the moderation password
3052 and get a new page shown with a list of all the messages to moderate
3053 and various options for each email address.  This take a while for
3054 every list you moderate, and you need to do it regularly to do a good
3055 job as a list moderator.  But there is a quick alternative,
3056 <a href="http://heim.ifi.uio.no/kjetilho/hacks/#listadmin">the
3057 listadmin program</a>.  It allow you to check lists for new messages
3058 to moderate in a fraction of a second.  Here is a test run on two
3059 lists I recently took over:</p>
3060
3061 <p><blockquote><pre>
3062 % time listadmin xiph
3063 fetching data for pkg-xiph-commits@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
3064 fetching data for pkg-xiph-maint@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
3065
3066 real    0m1.709s
3067 user    0m0.232s
3068 sys     0m0.012s
3069 %
3070 </pre></blockquote></p>
3071
3072 <p>In 1.7 seconds I had checked two mailing lists and confirmed that
3073 there are no message in the moderation queue.  Every morning I
3074 currently moderate 68 mailman lists, and it normally take around two
3075 minutes.  When I took over the two pkg-xiph lists above a few days
3076 ago, there were 400 emails waiting in the moderator queue.  It took me
3077 less than 15 minutes to process them all using the listadmin
3078 program.</p>
3079
3080 <p>If you install
3081 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/listadmin">the listadmin
3082 package</a> from Debian and create a file <tt>~/.listadmin.ini</tt>
3083 with content like this, the moderation task is a breeze:</p>
3084
3085 <p><blockquote><pre>
3086 username username@example.org
3087 spamlevel 23
3088 default discard
3089 discard_if_reason "Posting restricted to members only. Remove us from your mail list."
3090
3091 password secret
3092 adminurl https://{domain}/mailman/admindb/{list}
3093 mailman-list@lists.example.com
3094
3095 password hidden
3096 other-list@otherserver.example.org
3097 </pre></blockquote></p>
3098
3099 <p>There are other options to set as well.  Check the manual page to
3100 learn the details.</p>
3101
3102 <p>If you are forced to moderate lists on a mailman installation where
3103 the SSL certificate is self signed or not properly signed by a
3104 generally accepted signing authority, you can set a environment
3105 variable when calling listadmin to disable SSL verification:</p>
3106
3107 <p><blockquote><pre>
3108 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 listadmin
3109 </pre></blockquote></p>
3110
3111 <p>If you want to moderate a subset of the lists you take care of, you
3112 can provide an argument to the listadmin script like I do in the
3113 initial screen dump (the xiph argument).  Using an argument, only
3114 lists matching the argument string will be processed.  This make it
3115 quick to accept messages if you notice the moderation request in your
3116 email.</p>
3117
3118 <p>Without the listadmin program, I would never be the moderator of 68
3119 mailing lists, as I simply do not have time to spend on that if the
3120 process was any slower. The listadmin program have saved me hours of
3121 time I could spend elsewhere over the years.  It truly is nice free
3122 software.</p>
3123
3124 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3125 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
3126 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
3127
3128 <p>Update 2014-10-27: Added missing 'username' statement in
3129 configuration example.  Also, I've been told that the
3130 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 setting do not work for everyone.  Not
3131 sure why.</p>
3132
3133       </div>
3134       <div class="tags">
3135
3136
3137         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>.
3138
3139
3140       </div>
3141     </div>
3142     <div class="padding"></div>
3143
3144     <div class="entry">
3145       <div class="title">
3146         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Jessie__PXE_and_automatic_firmware_installation.html">Debian Jessie, PXE and automatic firmware installation</a>
3147       </div>
3148       <div class="date">
3149         17th October 2014
3150       </div>
3151       <div class="body">
3152         <p>When PXE installing laptops with Debian, I often run into the
3153 problem that the WiFi card require some firmware to work properly.
3154 And it has been a pain to fix this using preseeding in Debian.
3155 Normally something more is needed.  But thanks to
3156 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/i/isenkram.html">my isenkram
3157 package</a> and its recent tasksel extension, it has now become easy
3158 to do this using simple preseeding.</p>
3159
3160 <p>The isenkram-cli package provide tasksel tasks which will install
3161 firmware for the hardware found in the machine (actually, requested by
3162 the kernel modules for the hardware).  (It can also install user space
3163 programs supporting the hardware detected, but that is not the focus
3164 of this story.)</p>
3165
3166 <p>To get this working in the default installation, two preeseding
3167 values are needed.  First, the isenkram-cli package must be installed
3168 into the target chroot (aka the hard drive) before tasksel is executed
3169 in the pkgsel step of the debian-installer system.  This is done by
3170 preseeding the base-installer/includes debconf value to include the
3171 isenkram-cli package.  The package name is next passed to debootstrap
3172 for installation.  With the isenkram-cli package in place, tasksel
3173 will automatically use the isenkram tasks to detect hardware specific
3174 packages for the machine being installed and install them, because
3175 isenkram-cli contain tasksel tasks.</p>
3176
3177 <p>Second, one need to enable the non-free APT repository, because
3178 most firmware unfortunately is non-free.  This is done by preseeding
3179 the apt-mirror-setup step.  This is unfortunate, but for a lot of
3180 hardware it is the only option in Debian.</p>
3181
3182 <p>The end result is two lines needed in your preseeding file to get
3183 firmware installed automatically by the installer:</p>
3184
3185 <p><blockquote><pre>
3186 base-installer base-installer/includes string isenkram-cli
3187 apt-mirror-setup apt-setup/non-free boolean true
3188 </pre></blockquote></p>
3189
3190 <p>The current version of isenkram-cli in testing/jessie will install
3191 both firmware and user space packages when using this method.  It also
3192 do not work well, so use version 0.15 or later.  Installing both
3193 firmware and user space packages might give you a bit more than you
3194 want, so I decided to split the tasksel task in two, one for firmware
3195 and one for user space programs.  The firmware task is enabled by
3196 default, while the one for user space programs is not.  This split is
3197 implemented in the package currently in unstable.</p>
3198
3199 <p>If you decide to give this a go, please let me know (via email) how
3200 this recipe work for you. :)</p>
3201
3202 <p>So, I bet you are wondering, how can this work.  First and
3203 foremost, it work because tasksel is modular, and driven by whatever
3204 files it find in /usr/lib/tasksel/ and /usr/share/tasksel/.  So the
3205 isenkram-cli package place two files for tasksel to find.  First there
3206 is the task description file (/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc):</p>
3207
3208 <p><blockquote><pre>
3209 Task: isenkram-packages
3210 Section: hardware
3211 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
3212  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
3213  proposed.
3214 Test-new-install: show show
3215 Relevance: 8
3216 Packages: for-current-hardware
3217
3218 Task: isenkram-firmware
3219 Section: hardware
3220 Description: Hardware specific firmware packages (autodetected by isenkram)
3221  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific firmware
3222  packages are proposed.
3223 Test-new-install: mark show
3224 Relevance: 8
3225 Packages: for-current-hardware-firmware
3226 </pre></blockquote></p>
3227
3228 <p>The key parts are Test-new-install which indicate how the task
3229 should be handled and the Packages line referencing to a script in
3230 /usr/lib/tasksel/packages/.  The scripts use other scripts to get a
3231 list of packages to install.  The for-current-hardware-firmware script
3232 look like this to list relevant firmware for the machine:
3233
3234 <p><blockquote><pre>
3235 #!/bin/sh
3236 #
3237 PATH=/usr/sbin:$PATH
3238 export PATH
3239 isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
3240 </pre></blockquote></p>
3241
3242 <p>With those two pieces in place, the firmware is installed by
3243 tasksel during the normal d-i run. :)</p>
3244
3245 <p>If you want to test what tasksel will install when isenkram-cli is
3246 installed, run <tt>DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical tasksel --test
3247 --new-install</tt> to get the list of packages that tasksel would
3248 install.</p>
3249
3250 <p><a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu</a> will be
3251 pilots in testing this feature, as isenkram is used there now to
3252 install firmware, replacing the earlier scripts.</p>
3253
3254       </div>
3255       <div class="tags">
3256
3257
3258         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin</a>.
3259
3260
3261       </div>
3262     </div>
3263     <div class="padding"></div>
3264
3265     <div class="entry">
3266       <div class="title">
3267         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ubuntu_used_to_show_the_bread_prizes_at_ICA_Storo.html">Ubuntu used to show the bread prizes at ICA Storo</a>
3268       </div>
3269       <div class="date">
3270          4th October 2014
3271       </div>
3272       <div class="body">
3273         <p>Today I came across an unexpected Ubuntu boot screen.  Above the
3274 bread shelf on the ICA shop at Storo in Oslo, the grub menu of Ubuntu
3275 with Linux kernel 3.2.0-23 (ie probably version 12.04 LTS) was stuck
3276 on a screen normally showing the bread types and prizes:</p>
3277
3278 <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2014-10-04-ubuntu-ica-storo-crop.jpeg"></p>
3279
3280 <p>If it had booted as it was supposed to, I would never had known
3281 about this hidden Linux installation.  It is interesting what
3282 <a href="http://revealingerrors.com/">errors can reveal</a>.</p>
3283
3284       </div>
3285       <div class="tags">
3286
3287
3288         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>.
3289
3290
3291       </div>
3292     </div>
3293     <div class="padding"></div>
3294
3295     <div class="entry">
3296       <div class="title">
3297         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_lsdvd_release_version_0_17_is_ready.html">New lsdvd release version 0.17 is ready</a>
3298       </div>
3299       <div class="date">
3300          4th October 2014
3301       </div>
3302       <div class="body">
3303         <p>The <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd project</a>
3304 got a new set of developers a few weeks ago, after the original
3305 developer decided to step down and pass the project to fresh blood.
3306 This project is now maintained by Petter Reinholdtsen and Steve
3307 Dibb.</p>
3308
3309 <p>I just wrapped up
3310 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/message/32896061/">a
3311 new lsdvd release</a>, available in git or from
3312 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/projects/lsdvd/files/lsdvd/">the
3313 download page</a>.  This is the changelog dated 2014-10-03 for version
3314 0.17.</p>
3315
3316 <ul>
3317
3318  <li>Ignore 'phantom' audio, subtitle tracks</li>
3319  <li>Check for garbage in the program chains, which indicate that a track is
3320    non-existant, to work around additional copy protection</li>
3321  <li>Fix displaying content type for audio tracks, subtitles</li>
3322  <li>Fix pallete display of first entry</li>
3323  <li>Fix include orders</li>
3324  <li>Ignore read errors in titles that would not be displayed anyway</li>
3325  <li>Fix the chapter count</li>
3326  <li>Make sure the array size and the array limit used when initialising
3327    the palette size is the same.</li>
3328  <li>Fix array printing.</li>
3329  <li>Correct subsecond calculations.</li>
3330  <li>Add sector information to the output format.</li>
3331  <li>Clean up code to be closer to ANSI C and compile without warnings
3332    with more GCC compiler warnings.</li>
3333
3334 </ul>
3335
3336 <p>This change bring together patches for lsdvd in use in various
3337 Linux and Unix distributions, as well as patches submitted to the
3338 project the last nine years.  Please check it out. :)</p>
3339
3340       </div>
3341       <div class="tags">
3342
3343
3344         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
3345
3346
3347       </div>
3348     </div>
3349     <div class="padding"></div>
3350
3351     <div class="entry">
3352       <div class="title">
3353         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_test_Debian_Edu_Jessie_despite_some_fatal_problems_with_the_installer.html">How to test Debian Edu Jessie despite some fatal problems with the installer</a>
3354       </div>
3355       <div class="date">
3356         26th September 2014
3357       </div>
3358       <div class="body">
3359         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
3360 project</a> provide a Linux solution for schools, including a
3361 powerful desktop with education software, a central server providing
3362 web pages, user database, user home directories, central login and PXE
3363 boot of both  clients without disk and the installation to install Debian
3364 Edu on machines with disk (and a few other services perhaps to small
3365 to mention here).  We in the Debian Edu team are currently working on
3366 the Jessie based version, trying to get everything in shape before the
3367 freeze, to avoid having to maintain our own package repository in the
3368 future.  The
3369 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie">current
3370 status</a> can be seen on the Debian wiki, and there is still heaps of
3371 work left.  Some fatal problems block testing, breaking the installer,
3372 but it is possible to work around these to get anyway.  Here is a
3373 recipe on how to get the installation limping along.</p>
3374
3375 <p>First, download the test ISO via
3376 <a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">ftp</a>,
3377 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">http</a>
3378 or rsync (use
3379 ftp.skolelinux.org::cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso).
3380 The ISO build was broken on Tuesday, so we do not get a new ISO every
3381 12 hours or so, but thankfully the ISO we already got we are able to
3382 install with some tweaking.</p>
3383
3384 <p>When you get to the Debian Edu profile question, go to tty2
3385 (use Alt-Ctrl-F2), run</p>
3386
3387 <p><blockquote><pre>
3388 nano /usr/bin/edu-eatmydata-install
3389 </pre></blockquote></p>
3390
3391 <p>and add 'exit 0' as the second line, disabling the eatmydata
3392 optimization.  Return to the installation, select the profile you want
3393 and continue.  Without this change, exim4-config will fail to install
3394 due to a known bug in eatmydata.</p>
3395
3396 <p>When you get the grub question at the end, answer /dev/sda (or if
3397 this do not work, figure out what your correct value would be.  All my
3398 test machines need /dev/sda, so I have no advice if it do not fit
3399 your need.</p>
3400
3401 <p>If you installed a profile including a graphical desktop, log in as
3402 root after the initial boot from hard drive, and install the
3403 education-desktop-XXX metapackage.  XXX can be kde, gnome, lxde, xfce
3404 or mate.  If you want several desktop options, install more than one
3405 metapackage.  Once this is done, reboot and you should have a working
3406 graphical login screen.  This workaround should no longer be needed
3407 once the education-tasks package version 1.801 enter testing in two
3408 days.</p>
3409
3410 <p>I believe the ISO build will start working on two days when the new
3411 tasksel package enter testing and Steve McIntyre get a chance to
3412 update the debian-cd git repository.  The eatmydata, grub and desktop
3413 issues are already fixed in unstable and testing, and should show up
3414 on the ISO as soon as the ISO build start working again.  Well the
3415 eatmydata optimization is really just disabled.  The proper fix
3416 require an upload by the eatmydata maintainer applying the patch
3417 provided in bug <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/702711">#702711</a>.
3418 The rest have proper fixes in unstable.</p>
3419
3420 <p>I hope this get you going with the installation testing, as we are
3421 quickly running out of time trying to get our Jessie based
3422 installation ready before the distribution freeze in a month.</p>
3423
3424       </div>
3425       <div class="tags">
3426
3427
3428         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>.
3429
3430
3431       </div>
3432     </div>
3433     <div class="padding"></div>
3434
3435     <div class="entry">
3436       <div class="title">
3437         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Suddenly_I_am_the_new_upstream_of_the_lsdvd_command_line_tool.html">Suddenly I am the new upstream of the lsdvd command line tool</a>
3438       </div>
3439       <div class="date">
3440         25th September 2014
3441       </div>
3442       <div class="body">
3443         <p>I use the <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd tool</a>
3444 to handle my fairly large DVD collection.  It is a nice command line
3445 tool to get details about a DVD, like title, tracks, track length,
3446 etc, in XML, Perl or human readable format.  But lsdvd have not seen
3447 any new development since 2006 and had a few irritating bugs affecting
3448 its use with some DVDs.  Upstream seemed to be dead, and in January I
3449 sent a small probe asking for a version control repository for the
3450 project, without any reply.  But I use it regularly and would like to
3451 get <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/lsdvd">an updated version
3452 into Debian</a>.  So two weeks ago I tried harder to get in touch with
3453 the project admin, and after getting a reply from him explaining that
3454 he was no longer interested in the project, I asked if I could take
3455 over.  And yesterday, I became project admin.</p>
3456
3457 <p>I've been in touch with a Gentoo developer and the Debian
3458 maintainer interested in joining forces to maintain the upstream
3459 project, and I hope we can get a new release out fairly quickly,
3460 collecting the patches spread around on the internet into on place.
3461 I've added the relevant Debian patches to the freshly created git
3462 repository, and expect the Gentoo patches to make it too.  If you got
3463 a DVD collection and care about command line tools, check out
3464 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/git/ci/master/tree/">the git source</a> and join
3465 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/">the project mailing
3466 list</a>. :)</p>
3467
3468       </div>
3469       <div class="tags">
3470
3471
3472         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
3473
3474
3475       </div>
3476     </div>
3477     <div class="padding"></div>
3478
3479     <div class="entry">
3480       <div class="title">
3481         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Speeding_up_the_Debian_installer_using_eatmydata_and_dpkg_divert.html">Speeding up the Debian installer using eatmydata and dpkg-divert</a>
3482       </div>
3483       <div class="date">
3484         16th September 2014
3485       </div>
3486       <div class="body">
3487         <p>The <a href="https://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> installer could be
3488 a lot quicker.  When we install more than 2000 packages in
3489 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a> using
3490 tasksel in the installer, unpacking the binary packages take forever.
3491 A part of the slow I/O issue was discussed in
3492 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/613428">bug #613428</a> about too
3493 much file system sync-ing done by dpkg, which is the package
3494 responsible for unpacking the binary packages.  Other parts (like code
3495 executed by postinst scripts) might also sync to disk during
3496 installation.  All this sync-ing to disk do not really make sense to
3497 me.  If the machine crash half-way through, I start over, I do not try
3498 to salvage the half installed system.  So the failure sync-ing is
3499 supposed to protect against, hardware or system crash, is not really
3500 relevant while the installer is running.</p>
3501
3502 <p>A few days ago, I thought of a way to get rid of all the file
3503 system sync()-ing in a fairly non-intrusive way, without the need to
3504 change the code in several packages.  The idea is not new, but I have
3505 not heard anyone propose the approach using dpkg-divert before.  It
3506 depend on the small and clever package
3507 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/eatmydata">eatmydata</a>, which
3508 uses LD_PRELOAD to replace the system functions for syncing data to
3509 disk with functions doing nothing, thus allowing programs to live
3510 dangerous while speeding up disk I/O significantly.  Instead of
3511 modifying the implementation of dpkg, apt and tasksel (which are the
3512 packages responsible for selecting, fetching and installing packages),
3513 it occurred to me that we could just divert the programs away, replace
3514 them with a simple shell wrapper calling
3515 "eatmydata&nbsp;$program&nbsp;$@", to get the same effect.
3516 Two days ago I decided to test the idea, and wrapped up a simple
3517 implementation for the Debian Edu udeb.</p>
3518
3519 <p>The effect was stunning.  In my first test it reduced the running
3520 time of the pkgsel step (installing tasks) from 64 to less than 44
3521 minutes (20 minutes shaved off the installation) on an old Dell
3522 Latitude D505 machine.  I am not quite sure what the optimised time
3523 would have been, as I messed up the testing a bit, causing the debconf
3524 priority to get low enough for two questions to pop up during
3525 installation.  As soon as I saw the questions I moved the installation
3526 along, but do not know how long the question were holding up the
3527 installation.  I did some more measurements using Debian Edu Jessie,
3528 and got these results.  The time measured is the time stamp in
3529 /var/log/syslog between the "pkgsel: starting tasksel" and the
3530 "pkgsel: finishing up" lines, if you want to do the same measurement
3531 yourself.  In Debian Edu, the tasksel dialog do not show up, and the
3532 timing thus do not depend on how quickly the user handle the tasksel
3533 dialog.</p>
3534
3535 <p><table>
3536
3537 <tr>
3538 <th>Machine/setup</th>
3539 <th>Original tasksel</th>
3540 <th>Optimised tasksel</th>
3541 <th>Reduction</th>
3542 </tr>
3543
3544 <tr>
3545 <td>Latitude D505 Main+LTSP LXDE</td>
3546 <td>64 min (07:46-08:50)</td>
3547 <td><44 min (11:27-12:11)</td>
3548 <td>>20 min 18%</td>
3549 </tr>
3550
3551 <tr>
3552 <td>Latitude D505 Roaming LXDE</td>
3553 <td>57 min (08:48-09:45)</td>
3554 <td>34 min (07:43-08:17)</td>
3555 <td>23 min 40%</td>
3556 </tr>
3557
3558 <tr>
3559 <td>Latitude D505 Minimal</td>
3560 <td>22 min (10:37-10:59)</td>
3561 <td>11 min (11:16-11:27)</td>
3562 <td>11 min 50%</td>
3563 </tr>
3564
3565 <tr>
3566 <td>Thinkpad X200 Minimal</td>
3567 <td>6 min (08:19-08:25)</td>
3568 <td>4 min (08:04-08:08)</td>
3569 <td>2 min 33%</td>
3570 </tr>
3571
3572 <tr>
3573 <td>Thinkpad X200 Roaming KDE</td>
3574 <td>19 min (09:21-09:40)</td>
3575 <td>15 min (10:25-10:40)</td>
3576 <td>4 min 21%</td>
3577 </tr>
3578
3579 </table></p>
3580
3581 <p>The test is done using a netinst ISO on a USB stick, so some of the
3582 time is spent downloading packages.  The connection to the Internet
3583 was 100Mbit/s during testing, so downloading should not be a
3584 significant factor in the measurement.  Download typically took a few
3585 seconds to a few minutes, depending on the amount of packages being
3586 installed.</p>
3587
3588 <p>The speedup is implemented by using two hooks in
3589 <a href="https://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/">Debian
3590 Installer</a>, the pre-pkgsel.d hook to set up the diverts, and the
3591 finish-install.d hook to remove the divert at the end of the
3592 installation.  I picked the pre-pkgsel.d hook instead of the
3593 post-base-installer.d hook because I test using an ISO without the
3594 eatmydata package included, and the post-base-installer.d hook in
3595 Debian Edu can only operate on packages included in the ISO.  The
3596 negative effect of this is that I am unable to activate this
3597 optimization for the kernel installation step in d-i.  If the code is
3598 moved to the post-base-installer.d hook, the speedup would be larger
3599 for the entire installation.</p>
3600
3601 <p>I've implemented this in the
3602 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-install">debian-edu-install</a>
3603 git repository, and plan to provide the optimization as part of the
3604 Debian Edu installation.  If you want to test this yourself, you can
3605 create two files in the installer (or in an udeb).  One shell script
3606 need do go into /usr/lib/pre-pkgsel.d/, with content like this:</p>
3607
3608 <p><blockquote><pre>
3609 #!/bin/sh
3610 set -e
3611 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
3612 info() {
3613     logger -t my-pkgsel "info: $*"
3614 }
3615 error() {
3616     logger -t my-pkgsel "error: $*"
3617 }
3618 override_install() {
3619     apt-install eatmydata || true
3620     if [ -x /target/usr/bin/eatmydata ] ; then
3621         for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
3622             file=/usr/bin/$bin
3623             # Test that the file exist and have not been diverted already.
3624             if [ -f /target$file ] ; then
3625                 info "diverting $file using eatmydata"
3626                 printf "#!/bin/sh\neatmydata $bin.distrib \"\$@\"\n" \
3627                     > /target$file.edu
3628                 chmod 755 /target$file.edu
3629                 in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
3630                     --rename --quiet --add $file
3631                 ln -sf ./$bin.edu /target$file
3632             else
3633                 error "unable to divert $file, as it is missing."
3634             fi
3635         done
3636     else
3637         error "unable to find /usr/bin/eatmydata after installing the eatmydata pacage"
3638     fi
3639 }
3640
3641 override_install
3642 </pre></blockquote></p>
3643
3644 <p>To clean up, another shell script should go into
3645 /usr/lib/finish-install.d/ with code like this:
3646
3647 <p><blockquote><pre>
3648 #! /bin/sh -e
3649 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
3650 error() {
3651     logger -t my-finish-install "error: $@"
3652 }
3653 remove_install_override() {
3654     for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
3655         file=/usr/bin/$bin
3656         if [ -x /target$file.edu ] ; then
3657             rm /target$file
3658             in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
3659                 --rename --quiet --remove $file
3660             rm /target$file.edu
3661         else
3662             error "Missing divert for $file."
3663         fi
3664     done
3665     sync # Flush file buffers before continuing
3666 }
3667
3668 remove_install_override
3669 </pre></blockquote></p>
3670
3671 <p>In Debian Edu, I placed both code fragments in a separate script
3672 edu-eatmydata-install and call it from the pre-pkgsel.d and
3673 finish-install.d scripts.</p>
3674
3675 <p>By now you might ask if this change should get into the normal
3676 Debian installer too?  I suspect it should, but am not sure the
3677 current debian-installer coordinators find it useful enough.  It also
3678 depend on the side effects of the change.  I'm not aware of any, but I
3679 guess we will see if the change is safe after some more testing.
3680 Perhaps there is some package in Debian depending on sync() and
3681 fsync() having effect?  Perhaps it should go into its own udeb, to
3682 allow those of us wanting to enable it to do so without affecting
3683 everyone.</p>
3684
3685 <p>Update 2014-09-24: Since a few days ago, enabling this optimization
3686 will break installation of all programs using gnutls because of
3687 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/702711">bug #702711</a>.  An updated
3688 eatmydata package in Debian will solve it.</p>
3689
3690 <p>Update 2014-10-17: The bug mentioned above is fixed in testing and
3691 the optimization work again.  And I have discovered that the
3692 dpkg-divert trick is not really needed and implemented a slightly
3693 simpler approach as part of the debian-edu-install package.  See
3694 tools/edu-eatmydata-install in the source package.</p>
3695
3696 <p>Update 2014-11-11: Unfortunately, a new
3697 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/765738">bug #765738</a> in eatmydata only
3698 triggering on i386 made it into testing, and broke this installation
3699 optimization again.  If <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/768893">unblock
3700 request 768893</a> is accepted, it should be working again.</p>
3701
3702       </div>
3703       <div class="tags">
3704
3705
3706         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>.
3707
3708
3709       </div>
3710     </div>
3711     <div class="padding"></div>
3712
3713     <div class="entry">
3714       <div class="title">
3715         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Good_bye_subkeys_pgp_net__welcome_pool_sks_keyservers_net.html">Good bye subkeys.pgp.net, welcome pool.sks-keyservers.net</a>
3716       </div>
3717       <div class="date">
3718         10th September 2014
3719       </div>
3720       <div class="body">
3721         <p>Yesterday, I had the pleasure of attending a talk with the
3722 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a> about
3723 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20140909-sks-keyservers/">the
3724 OpenPGP keyserver pool sks-keyservers.net</a>, and was very happy to
3725 learn that there is a large set of publicly available key servers to
3726 use when looking for peoples public key.  So far I have used
3727 subkeys.pgp.net, and some times wwwkeys.nl.pgp.net when the former
3728 were misbehaving, but those days are ended.  The servers I have used
3729 up until yesterday have been slow and some times unavailable.  I hope
3730 those problems are gone now.</p>
3731
3732 <p>Behind the round robin DNS entry of the
3733 <a href="https://sks-keyservers.net/">sks-keyservers.net</a> service
3734 there is a pool of more than 100 keyservers which are checked every
3735 day to ensure they are well connected and up to date.  It must be
3736 better than what I have used so far. :)</p>
3737
3738 <p>Yesterdays speaker told me that the service is the default
3739 keyserver provided by the default configuration in GnuPG, but this do
3740 not seem to be used in Debian.  Perhaps it should?</p>
3741
3742 <p>Anyway, I've updated my ~/.gnupg/options file to now include this
3743 line:</p>
3744
3745 <p><blockquote><pre>
3746 keyserver pool.sks-keyservers.net
3747 </pre></blockquote></p>
3748
3749 <p>With GnuPG version 2 one can also locate the keyserver using SRV
3750 entries in DNS.  Just for fun, I did just that at work, so now every
3751 user of GnuPG at the University of Oslo should find a OpenGPG
3752 keyserver automatically should their need it:</p>
3753
3754 <p><blockquote><pre>
3755 % host -t srv _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no
3756 _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no has SRV record 0 100 11371 pool.sks-keyservers.net.
3757 %
3758 </pre></blockquote></p>
3759
3760 <p>Now if only
3761 <a href="http://ietfreport.isoc.org/idref/draft-shaw-openpgp-hkp/">the
3762 HKP lookup protocol</a> supported finding signature paths, I would be
3763 very happy.  It can look up a given key or search for a user ID, but I
3764 normally do not want that, but to find a trust path from my key to
3765 another key.  Given a user ID or key ID, I would like to find (and
3766 download) the keys representing a signature path from my key to the
3767 key in question, to be able to get a trust path between the two keys.
3768 This is as far as I can tell not possible today.  Perhaps something
3769 for a future version of the protocol?</p>
3770
3771       </div>
3772       <div class="tags">
3773
3774
3775         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
3776
3777
3778       </div>
3779     </div>
3780     <div class="padding"></div>
3781
3782     <div class="entry">
3783       <div class="title">
3784         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Do_you_need_an_agreement_with_MPEG_LA_to_publish_and_broadcast_H_264_video_in_Norway_.html">Do you need an agreement with MPEG-LA to publish and broadcast H.264 video in Norway?</a>
3785       </div>
3786       <div class="date">
3787         25th August 2014
3788       </div>
3789       <div class="body">
3790         <p>Two years later, I am still not sure if it is legal here in Norway
3791 to use or publish a video in H.264 or MPEG4 format edited by the
3792 commercially licensed video editors, without limiting the use to
3793 create "personal" or "non-commercial" videos or get a license
3794 agreement with <a href="http://www.mpegla.com">MPEG LA</a>.  If one
3795 want to publish and broadcast video in a non-personal or commercial
3796 setting, it might be that those tools can not be used, or that video
3797 format can not be used, without breaking their copyright license.  I
3798 am not sure.
3799 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Trenger_en_avtale_med_MPEG_LA_for___publisere_og_kringkaste_H_264_video_.html">Back
3800 then</a>, I found that the copyright license terms for Adobe Premiere
3801 and Apple Final Cut Pro both specified that one could not use the
3802 program to produce anything else without a patent license from MPEG
3803 LA.  The issue is not limited to those two products, though.  Other
3804 much used products like those from Avid and Sorenson Media have terms
3805 of use are similar to those from Adobe and Apple.  The complicating
3806 factor making me unsure if those terms have effect in Norway or not is
3807 that the patents in question are not valid in Norway, but copyright
3808 licenses are.</p>
3809
3810 <p>These are the terms for Avid Artist Suite, according to their
3811 <a href="http://www.avid.com/US/about-avid/legal-notices/legal-enduserlicense2">published
3812 end user</a>
3813 <a href="http://www.avid.com/static/resources/common/documents/corporate/LICENSE.pdf">license
3814 text</a> (converted to lower case text for easier reading):</p>
3815
3816 <p><blockquote>
3817 <p>18.2. MPEG-4. MPEG-4 technology may be included with the
3818 software. MPEG LA, L.L.C. requires this notice: </p>
3819
3820 <p>This product is licensed under the MPEG-4 visual patent portfolio
3821 license for the personal and non-commercial use of a consumer for (i)
3822 encoding video in compliance with the MPEG-4 visual standard (“MPEG-4
3823 video”) and/or (ii) decoding MPEG-4 video that was encoded by a
3824 consumer engaged in a personal and non-commercial activity and/or was
3825 obtained from a video provider licensed by MPEG LA to provide MPEG-4
3826 video.  No license is granted or shall be implied for any other
3827 use. Additional information including that relating to promotional,
3828 internal and commercial uses and licensing may be obtained from MPEG
3829 LA, LLC.  See http://www.mpegla.com. This product is licensed under
3830 the MPEG-4 systems patent portfolio license for encoding in compliance
3831 with the MPEG-4 systems standard, except that an additional license
3832 and payment of royalties are necessary for encoding in connection with
3833 (i) data stored or replicated in physical media which is paid for on a
3834 title by title basis and/or (ii) data which is paid for on a title by
3835 title basis and is transmitted to an end user for permanent storage
3836 and/or use, such additional license may be obtained from MPEG LA,
3837 LLC. See http://www.mpegla.com for additional details.</p>
3838
3839 <p>18.3. H.264/AVC. H.264/AVC technology may be included with the
3840 software.  MPEG LA, L.L.C. requires this notice:</p>
3841
3842 <p>This product is licensed under the AVC patent portfolio license for
3843 the personal use of a consumer or other uses in which it does not
3844 receive remuneration to (i) encode video in compliance with the AVC
3845 standard (“AVC video”) and/or (ii) decode AVC video that was encoded
3846 by a consumer engaged in a personal activity and/or was obtained from
3847 a video provider licensed to provide AVC video. No license is granted
3848 or shall be implied for any other use. Additional information may be
3849 obtained from MPEG LA, L.L.C. See http://www.mpegla.com.</p>
3850 </blockquote></p>
3851
3852 <p>Note the requirement that the videos created can only be used for
3853 personal or non-commercial purposes.</p>
3854
3855 <p>The Sorenson Media software have
3856 <a href="http://www.sorensonmedia.com/terms/">similar terms</a>:</p>
3857
3858 <p><blockquote>
3859
3860 <p>With respect to a license from Sorenson pertaining to MPEG-4 Video
3861 Decoders and/or Encoders: Any such product is licensed under the
3862 MPEG-4 visual patent portfolio license for the personal and
3863 non-commercial use of a consumer for (i) encoding video in compliance
3864 with the MPEG-4 visual standard (“MPEG-4 video”) and/or (ii) decoding
3865 MPEG-4 video that was encoded by a consumer engaged in a personal and
3866 non-commercial activity and/or was obtained from a video provider
3867 licensed by MPEG LA to provide MPEG-4 video. No license is granted or
3868 shall be implied for any other use. Additional information including
3869 that relating to promotional, internal and commercial uses and
3870 licensing may be obtained from MPEG LA, LLC. See
3871 http://www.mpegla.com.</p>
3872
3873 <p>With respect to a license from Sorenson pertaining to MPEG-4
3874 Consumer Recorded Data Encoder, MPEG-4 Systems Internet Data Encoder,
3875 MPEG-4 Mobile Data Encoder, and/or MPEG-4 Unique Use Encoder: Any such
3876 product is licensed under the MPEG-4 systems patent portfolio license
3877 for encoding in compliance with the MPEG-4 systems standard, except
3878 that an additional license and payment of royalties are necessary for
3879 encoding in connection with (i) data stored or replicated in physical
3880 media which is paid for on a title by title basis and/or (ii) data
3881 which is paid for on a title by title basis and is transmitted to an
3882 end user for permanent storage and/or use. Such additional license may
3883 be obtained from MPEG LA, LLC. See http://www.mpegla.com for
3884 additional details.</p>
3885
3886 </blockquote></p>
3887
3888 <p>Some free software like
3889 <a href="https://handbrake.fr/">Handbrake</A> and
3890 <a href="http://ffmpeg.org/">FFMPEG</a> uses GPL/LGPL licenses and do
3891 not have any such terms included, so for those, there is no
3892 requirement to limit the use to personal and non-commercial.</p>
3893
3894       </div>
3895       <div class="tags">
3896
3897
3898         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</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>.
3899
3900
3901       </div>
3902     </div>
3903     <div class="padding"></div>
3904
3905     <div class="entry">
3906       <div class="title">
3907         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Bernd_Zeitzen.html">Debian Edu interview: Bernd Zeitzen</a>
3908       </div>
3909       <div class="date">
3910         31st July 2014
3911       </div>
3912       <div class="body">
3913         <p>The complete and free “out of the box” software solution for
3914 schools, <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
3915 Skolelinux</a>, is used quite a lot in Germany, and one of the people
3916 involved is Bernd Zeitzen, who show up on the project mailing lists
3917 from time to time with interesting questions and tips on how to adjust
3918 the setup.  I managed to interview him this summer.</p>
3919
3920 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
3921
3922 <p>My name is Bernd Zeitzen and I'm married with Hedda, a self
3923 employed physiotherapist.  My former profession is tool maker, but I
3924 haven't worked for 30 years in this job.  30 years ago I started to
3925 support my wife and become her officeworker and a few years later the
3926 administrator for a small computer network, today based on Ubuntu
3927 Server (Samba, OpenVPN). For her daily work she has to use Windows
3928 Desktops because the software she needs to organize her business only
3929 works with Windows . :-(</p>
3930
3931 <p>In 1988 we started with one PC and DOS, then I learned to use
3932 Windows 98, 2000, XP, …, 8, Ubuntu, MacOSX.  Today we are running a
3933 Linux server with 6 Windows clients and 10 persons (teacher of
3934 children with special needs, speech therapist, occupational therapist,
3935 psychologist and officeworkers) using our Samba shares via OpenVPN to
3936 work with the documentations of our patients.</p>
3937
3938 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
3939 project?</strong></p>
3940
3941 <p>Two years ago a friend of mine asked me, if I want to get a job in
3942 his school (<a href="http://www.gymnasium-harsewinkel.de/">Gymnasium
3943 Harsewinkel</a>).  They started with Skolelinux / Debian Edu and they
3944 were looking for people to give support to the teachers using the
3945 software and the network and teaching the pupils increasing their
3946 computer skills in optional lessons.  I'm spending 4-6 hours a week
3947 with this job.</p>
3948
3949 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
3950 Edu?</strong></p>
3951
3952 <p>The independence.</p>
3953
3954 <p>First: Every person is allowed to use, share and develop the
3955 software. Even if you are poor, you are allowed to use the software
3956 included in Skolelinux/Debian Edu and all the other Free Software.</p>
3957
3958 <p>Second: The software runs on old machines and this gives us the
3959 possibility to recycle computers, weeded out from offices.  The
3960 servers and desktops are running for more than two years and they are
3961 working reliable. </p>
3962
3963 <p>We have two servers (one tjener and one terminal server), 45
3964 workstations in three classrooms and seven laptops as a mobile
3965 solution for all classrooms.  These machines are all booting from the
3966 terminal server.  In the moment we are installing 30 laptops as mobile
3967 workstations.  Then the pupils have the possibility to work with these
3968 machines in their classrooms.  Internet access is realized by a WLAN
3969 router, connected to the schools network. This is all done without a
3970 dedicated system administrator or a computer science teacher.</p>
3971
3972 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
3973 Edu?</strong></p>
3974
3975 <p>Teachers and pupils are Windows users.  &lt;Irony on&gt; And Linux
3976 isn't cool. It's software for freaks using the command line. &lt;Irony
3977 off&gt; They don't realize the stability of the system. </p>
3978
3979 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
3980
3981 <p>Firefox, Thunderbird, LibreOffice, Ubuntu Server 12.04 (Samba,
3982 Apache, MySQL, Joomla!, … and Skolelinux / Debian Edu)</p>
3983
3984 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
3985 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
3986
3987 <p>In Germany we have the situation: every school is free to decide
3988 which software they want to use. This decision is influenced by
3989 teachers who learned to use Windows and MS Office. They buy a PC with
3990 Windows preinstalled and an additional testing version of MS
3991 Office. They don't know about the possibility to use Free Software
3992 instead.  Another problem are the publisher of school books.  They
3993 develop their software, added to the school books, for Windows.</p>
3994
3995       </div>
3996       <div class="tags">
3997
3998
3999         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>.
4000
4001
4002       </div>
4003     </div>
4004     <div class="padding"></div>
4005
4006     <div class="entry">
4007       <div class="title">
4008         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/98_6_percent_done_with_the_Norwegian_draft_translation_of_Free_Culture.html">98.6 percent done with the Norwegian draft translation of Free Culture</a>
4009       </div>
4010       <div class="date">
4011         23rd July 2014
4012       </div>
4013       <div class="body">
4014         <p>This summer I finally had time to continue working on the Norwegian
4015 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
4016 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
4017 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with todays copyright
4018 law.  Yesterday, I finally completed translated the book text.  There
4019 are still some foot/end notes left to translate, the colophon page
4020 need to be rewritten, and a few words and phrases still need to be
4021 translated, but the Norwegian text is ready for the first proof
4022 reading. :) More spell checking is needed, and several illustrations
4023 need to be cleaned up.  The work stopped up because I had to give
4024 priority to other projects the last year, and the progress graph of
4025 the translation show this very well:</p>
4026
4027 <p><img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png"></p>
4028
4029 <p>If you want to read the result, check out the
4030 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>
4031 project pages and the
4032 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>,
4033 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
4034 and HTML version available in the
4035 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/tree/master/archive">archive
4036 directory</a>.</p>
4037
4038 <p>Please report typos, bugs and improvements to the github project if
4039 you find any.</p>
4040
4041       </div>
4042       <div class="tags">
4043
4044
4045         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>.
4046
4047
4048       </div>
4049     </div>
4050     <div class="padding"></div>
4051
4052     <div class="entry">
4053       <div class="title">
4054         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/From_English_wiki_to_translated_PDF_and_epub_via_Docbook.html">From English wiki to translated PDF and epub via Docbook</a>
4055       </div>
4056       <div class="date">
4057         17th June 2014
4058       </div>
4059       <div class="body">
4060         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
4061 project</a> provide an instruction manual for teachers, system
4062 administrators and other users that contain useful tips for setting up
4063 and maintaining a Debian Edu installation.  This text is about how the
4064 text processing of this manual is handled in the project.</p>
4065
4066 <p>One goal of the project is to provide information in the native
4067 language of its users, and for this we need to handle translations.
4068 But we also want to make sure each language contain the same
4069 information, so for this we need a good way to keep the translations
4070 in sync.  And we want it to be easy for our users to improve the
4071 documentation, avoiding the need to learn special formats or tools to
4072 contribute, and the obvious way to do this is to make it possible to
4073 edit the documentation using a web browser.  We also want it to be
4074 easy for translators to keep the translation up to date, and give them
4075 help in figuring out what need to be translated. Here is the list of
4076 tools and the process we have found trying to reach all these
4077 goals.</p>
4078
4079 <p>We maintain the authoritative source of our manual in the
4080 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">Debian
4081 wiki</a>, as several wiki pages written in English.  It consist of one
4082 front page with references to the different chapters, several pages
4083 for each chapter, and finally one "collection page" gluing all the
4084 chapters together into one large web page (aka
4085 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/AllInOne">the
4086 AllInOne page</a>).  The AllInOne page is the one used for further
4087 processing and translations.  Thanks to the fact that the
4088 <a href="http://moinmo.in/">MoinMoin</a> installation on
4089 wiki.debian.org support exporting pages in
4090 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">the Docbook format</a>, we can fetch
4091 the list of pages to export using the raw version of the AllInOne
4092 page, loop over each of them to generate a Docbook XML version of the
4093 manual.  This process also download images and transform image
4094 references to use the locally downloaded images.  The generated
4095 Docbook XML files are slightly broken, so some post-processing is done
4096 using the <tt>documentation/scripts/get_manual</tt> program, and the
4097 result is a nice Docbook XML file (debian-edu-wheezy-manual.xml) and
4098 a handfull of images.  The XML file can now be used to generate PDF, HTML
4099 and epub versions of the English manual.  This is the basic step of
4100 our process, making PDF (using dblatex), HTML (using xsltproc) and
4101 epub (using dbtoepub) version from Docbook XML, and the resulting files
4102 are placed in the debian-edu-doc-en binary package.</p>
4103
4104 <p>But English documentation is not enough for us.  We want translated
4105 documentation too, and we want to make it easy for translators to
4106 track the English original.  For this we use the
4107 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/poxml.html">poxml</a> package,
4108 which allow us to transform the English Docbook XML file into a
4109 translation file (a .pot file), usable with the normal gettext based
4110 translation tools used by those translating free software.  The pot
4111 file is used to create and maintain translation files (several .po
4112 files), which the translations update with the native language
4113 translations of all titles, paragraphs and blocks of text in the
4114 original.  The next step is combining the original English Docbook XML
4115 and the translation file (say debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.po), to
4116 create a translated Docbook XML file (in this case
4117 debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.xml).  This translated (or partly
4118 translated, if the translation is not complete) Docbook XML file can
4119 then be used like the original to create a PDF, HTML and epub version
4120 of the documentation.</p>
4121
4122 <p>The translators use different tools to edit the .po files.  We
4123 recommend using
4124 <a href="http://www.kde.org/applications/development/lokalize/">lokalize</a>,
4125 while some use emacs and vi, others can use web based editors like
4126 <a href="http://pootle.translatehouse.org/">Poodle</a> or
4127 <a href="https://www.transifex.com/">Transifex</a>.  All we care about
4128 is where the .po file end up, in our git repository.  Updated
4129 translations can either be committed directly to git, or submitted as
4130 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/src:debian-edu-doc">bug reports
4131 against the debian-edu-doc package</a>.</p>
4132
4133 <p>One challenge is images, which both might need to be translated (if
4134 they show translated user applications), and are needed in different
4135 formats when creating PDF and HTML versions (epub is a HTML version in
4136 this regard).  For this we transform the original PNG images to the
4137 needed density and format during build, and have a way to provide
4138 translated images by storing translated versions in
4139 images/$LANGUAGECODE/.  I am a bit unsure about the details here.  The
4140 package maintainers know more.</p>
4141
4142 <p>If you wonder what the result look like, we provide
4143 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/">the content
4144 of the documentation packages on the web</a>.  See for example the
4145 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/it/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.pdf">Italian
4146 PDF version</a> or the
4147 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/de/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.html">German
4148 HTML version</a>.  We do not yet build the epub version by default,
4149 but perhaps it will be done in the future.</p>
4150
4151 <p>To learn more, check out
4152 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/debian-edu-doc.html">the
4153 debian-edu-doc package</a>,
4154 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">the
4155 manual on the wiki</a> and
4156 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/Translations">the
4157 translation instructions</a> in the manual.</p>
4158
4159       </div>
4160       <div class="tags">
4161
4162
4163         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4164
4165
4166       </div>
4167     </div>
4168     <div class="padding"></div>
4169
4170     <div class="entry">
4171       <div class="title">
4172         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_software_car_computer_solution_.html">Free software car computer solution?</a>
4173       </div>
4174       <div class="date">
4175         29th May 2014
4176       </div>
4177       <div class="body">
4178         <p>Dear lazyweb.  I'm planning to set up a small Raspberry Pi computer
4179 in my car, connected to
4180 <a href="http://www.dx.com/p/400a-4-0-tft-lcd-digital-monitor-for-vehicle-parking-reverse-camera-1440x272-12v-dc-57776">a
4181 small screen</a> next to the rear mirror.  I plan to hook it up with a
4182 GPS and a USB wifi card too.  The idea is to get my own
4183 "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carputer">Carputer</a>".  But I
4184 wonder if someone already created a good free software solution for
4185 such car computer.</p>
4186
4187 <p>This is my current wish list for such system:</p>
4188
4189 <ul>
4190
4191  <li>Work on Raspberry Pi.</li>
4192
4193  <li>Show current speed limit based on location, and warn if going too
4194    fast (for example using color codes yellow and red on the screen,
4195    or make a sound).  This could be done either using either data from
4196    <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">Openstreetmap</a> or OCR
4197    info gathered from a dashboard camera.</li>
4198
4199  <li>Track automatic toll road passes and their cost, show total spent
4200    and make it possible to calculate toll costs for planned
4201    route.</li>
4202
4203  <li>Collect GPX tracks for use with OpenStreetMap.</li>
4204
4205  <li>Automatically detect and use any wireless connection to connect
4206    to home server.  Try IP over DNS
4207    (<a href="http://dev.kryo.se/iodine/">iodine</a>) or ICMP
4208    (<a href="http://code.gerade.org/hans/">Hans</a>) if direct
4209    connection do not work.</li>
4210
4211  <li>Set up mesh network to talk to other cars with the same system,
4212    or some standard car mesh protocol.</li>
4213
4214  <li>Warn when approaching speed cameras and speed camera ranges
4215    (speed calculated between two cameras).</li>
4216
4217  <li>Suport dashboard/front facing camera to discover speed limits and
4218    run OCR to track registration number of passing cars.</li>
4219
4220 </ul>
4221
4222 <p>If you know of any free software car computer system supporting
4223 some or all of these features, please let me know.</p>
4224
4225       </div>
4226       <div class="tags">
4227
4228
4229         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4230
4231
4232       </div>
4233     </div>
4234     <div class="padding"></div>
4235
4236     <div class="entry">
4237       <div class="title">
4238         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Half_the_Coverity_issues_in_Gnash_fixed_in_the_next_release.html">Half the Coverity issues in Gnash fixed in the next release</a>
4239       </div>
4240       <div class="date">
4241         29th April 2014
4242       </div>
4243       <div class="body">
4244         <p>I've been following <a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">the Gnash
4245 project</a> for quite a while now.  It is a free software
4246 implementation of Adobe Flash, both a standalone player and a browser
4247 plugin.  Gnash implement support for the AVM1 format (and not the
4248 newer AVM2 format - see
4249 <a href="http://lightspark.github.io/">Lightspark</a> for that one),
4250 allowing several flash based sites to work.  Thanks to the friendly
4251 developers at Youtube, it also work with Youtube videos, because the
4252 Javascript code at Youtube detect Gnash and serve a AVM1 player to
4253 those users. :) Would be great if someone found time to implement AVM2
4254 support, but it has not happened yet.  If you install both Lightspark
4255 and Gnash, Lightspark will invoke Gnash if it find a AVM1 flash file,
4256 so you can get both handled as free software.  Unfortunately,
4257 Lightspark so far only implement a small subset of AVM2, and many
4258 sites do not work yet.</p>
4259
4260 <p>A few months ago, I started looking at
4261 <a href="http://scan.coverity.com/">Coverity</a>, the static source
4262 checker used to find heaps and heaps of bugs in free software (thanks
4263 to the donation of a scanning service to free software projects by the
4264 company developing this non-free code checker), and Gnash was one of
4265 the projects I decided to check out.  Coverity is able to find lock
4266 errors, memory errors, dead code and more.  A few days ago they even
4267 extended it to also be able to find the heartbleed bug in OpenSSL.
4268 There are heaps of checks being done on the instrumented code, and the
4269 amount of bogus warnings is quite low compared to the other static
4270 code checkers I have tested over the years.</p>
4271
4272 <p>Since a few weeks ago, I've been working with the other Gnash
4273 developers squashing bugs discovered by Coverity.  I was quite happy
4274 today when I checked the current status and saw that of the 777 issues
4275 detected so far, 374 are marked as fixed.  This make me confident that
4276 the next Gnash release will be more stable and more dependable than
4277 the previous one.  Most of the reported issues were and are in the
4278 test suite, but it also found a few in the rest of the code.</p>
4279
4280 <p>If you want to help out, you find us on
4281 <a href="https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnash-dev">the
4282 gnash-dev mailing list</a> and on
4283 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#gnash">the #gnash channel on
4284 irc.freenode.net IRC server</a>.</p>
4285
4286       </div>
4287       <div class="tags">
4288
4289
4290         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>.
4291
4292
4293       </div>
4294     </div>
4295     <div class="padding"></div>
4296
4297     <div class="entry">
4298       <div class="title">
4299         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Install_hardware_dependent_packages_using_tasksel__Isenkram_0_7_.html">Install hardware dependent packages using tasksel (Isenkram 0.7)</a>
4300       </div>
4301       <div class="date">
4302         23rd April 2014
4303       </div>
4304       <div class="body">
4305         <p>It would be nice if it was easier in Debian to get all the hardware
4306 related packages relevant for the computer installed automatically.
4307 So I implemented one, using
4308 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">my Isenkram
4309 package</a>.  To use it, install the tasksel and isenkram packages and
4310 run tasksel as user root.  You should be presented with a new option,
4311 "Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)".  When you
4312 select it, tasksel will install the packages isenkram claim is fit for
4313 the current hardware, hot pluggable or not.<p>
4314
4315 <p>The implementation is in two files, one is the tasksel menu entry
4316 description, and the other is the script used to extract the list of
4317 packages to install.  The first part is in
4318 <tt>/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc</tt> and look like
4319 this:</p>
4320
4321 <p><blockquote><pre>
4322 Task: isenkram
4323 Section: hardware
4324 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
4325  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
4326  proposed.
4327 Test-new-install: mark show
4328 Relevance: 8
4329 Packages: for-current-hardware
4330 </pre></blockquote></p>
4331
4332 <p>The second part is in
4333 <tt>/usr/lib/tasksel/packages/for-current-hardware</tt> and look like
4334 this:</p>
4335
4336 <p><blockquote><pre>
4337 #!/bin/sh
4338 #
4339 (
4340     isenkram-lookup
4341     isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
4342 ) | sort -u
4343 </pre></blockquote></p>
4344
4345 <p>All in all, a very short and simple implementation making it
4346 trivial to install the hardware dependent package we all may want to
4347 have installed on our machines.  I've not been able to find a way to
4348 get tasksel to tell you exactly which packages it plan to install
4349 before doing the installation.  So if you are curious or careful,
4350 check the output from the isenkram-* command line tools first.</p>
4351
4352 <p>The information about which packages are handling which hardware is
4353 fetched either from the isenkram package itself in
4354 /usr/share/isenkram/, from git.debian.org or from the APT package
4355 database (using the Modaliases header).  The APT package database
4356 parsing have caused a nasty resource leak in the isenkram daemon (bugs
4357 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/719837">#719837</a> and
4358 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/730704">#730704</a>).  The cause is in
4359 the python-apt code (bug
4360 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/745487">#745487</a>), but using a
4361 workaround I was able to get rid of the file descriptor leak and
4362 reduce the memory leak from ~30 MiB per hardware detection down to
4363 around 2 MiB per hardware detection.  It should make the desktop
4364 daemon a lot more useful.  The fix is in version 0.7 uploaded to
4365 unstable today.</p>
4366
4367 <p>I believe the current way of mapping hardware to packages in
4368 Isenkram is is a good draft, but in the future I expect isenkram to
4369 use the AppStream data source for this.  A proposal for getting proper
4370 AppStream support into Debian is floating around as
4371 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">DEP-11</a>, and
4372 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/SummerOfCode2014/Projects#SummerOfCode2014.2FProjects.2FAppStreamDEP11Implementation.AppStream.2FDEP-11_for_the_Debian_Archive">GSoC
4373 project</a> will take place this summer to improve the situation.  I
4374 look forward to seeing the result, and welcome patches for isenkram to
4375 start using the information when it is ready.</p>
4376
4377 <p>If you want your package to map to some specific hardware, either
4378 add a "Xb-Modaliases" header to your control file like I did in
4379 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">the pymissile
4380 package</a> or submit a bug report with the details to the isenkram
4381 package.  See also
4382 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">all my
4383 blog posts tagged isenkram</a> for details on the notation.  I expect
4384 the information will be migrated to AppStream eventually, but for the
4385 moment I got no better place to store it.</p>
4386
4387       </div>
4388       <div class="tags">
4389
4390
4391         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>.
4392
4393
4394       </div>
4395     </div>
4396     <div class="padding"></div>
4397
4398     <div class="entry">
4399       <div class="title">
4400         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/FreedomBox_milestone___all_packages_now_in_Debian_Sid.html">FreedomBox milestone - all packages now in Debian Sid</a>
4401       </div>
4402       <div class="date">
4403         15th April 2014
4404       </div>
4405       <div class="body">
4406         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
4407 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware to make
4408 it easy for non-technical people to host their data and communication
4409 at home, and being able to communicate with their friends and family
4410 encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It is still going strong, and
4411 today a major mile stone was reached.</p>
4412
4413 <p>Today, the last of the packages currently used by the project to
4414 created the system images were accepted into Debian Unstable.  It was
4415 the freedombox-setup package, which is used to configure the images
4416 during build and on the first boot.  Now all one need to get going is
4417 the build code from the freedom-maker git repository and packages from
4418 Debian.  And once the freedombox-setup package enter testing, we can
4419 build everything directly from Debian. :)</p>
4420
4421 <p>Some key packages used by Freedombox are
4422 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>,
4423 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/plinth">plinth</a>,
4424 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pagekite">pagekite</a>,
4425 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/tor">tor</a>,
4426 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>,
4427 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/owncloud">owncloud</a> and
4428 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/dnsmasq">dnsmasq</a>.  There
4429 are plans to integrate more packages into the setup.  User
4430 documentation is maintained on the Debian wiki.  Please
4431 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/Manual/Jessie">check out
4432 the manual</a> and help us improve it.</p>
4433
4434 <p>To test for yourself and create boot images with the FreedomBox
4435 setup, run this on a Debian machine using a user with sudo rights to
4436 become root:</p>
4437
4438 <p><pre>
4439 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
4440   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
4441   u-boot-tools
4442 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
4443   freedom-maker
4444 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
4445 </pre></p>
4446
4447 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
4448 devices.  See the README in the freedom-maker git repo for more
4449 details on the build.  If you do not want all three images, trim the
4450 make line.  Note that the virtualbox-image target is not really
4451 virtualbox specific.  It create a x86 image usable in kvm, qemu,
4452 vmware and any other x86 virtual machine environment.  You might need
4453 the version of vmdebootstrap in Jessie to get the build working, as it
4454 include fixes for a race condition with kpartx.</p>
4455
4456 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
4457 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
4458 the preseed values:</p>
4459
4460 <p><pre>
4461 url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
4462 </pre></p>
4463
4464 <p>I have not tested it myself the last few weeks, so I do not know if
4465 it still work.</p>
4466
4467 <p>If you wonder how to help, one task you could look at is using
4468 systemd as the boot system.  It will become the default for Linux in
4469 Jessie, so we need to make sure it is usable on the Freedombox.  I did
4470 a simple test a few weeks ago, and noticed dnsmasq failed to start
4471 during boot when using systemd.  I suspect there are other problems
4472 too. :) To detect problems, there is a test suite included, which can
4473 be run from the plinth web interface.</p>
4474
4475 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
4476 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
4477 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
4478 irc.debian.org)</a> and
4479 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
4480 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
4481
4482       </div>
4483       <div class="tags">
4484
4485
4486         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
4487
4488
4489       </div>
4490     </div>
4491     <div class="padding"></div>
4492
4493     <div class="entry">
4494       <div class="title">
4495         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/S3QL__a_locally_mounted_cloud_file_system___nice_free_software.html">S3QL, a locally mounted cloud file system - nice free software</a>
4496       </div>
4497       <div class="date">
4498          9th April 2014
4499       </div>
4500       <div class="body">
4501         <p>For a while now, I have been looking for a sensible offsite backup
4502 solution for use at home.  My requirements are simple, it must be
4503 cheap and locally encrypted (in other words, I keep the encryption
4504 keys, the storage provider do not have access to my private files).
4505 One idea me and my friends had many years ago, before the cloud
4506 storage providers showed up, was to use Google mail as storage,
4507 writing a Linux block device storing blocks as emails in the mail
4508 service provided by Google, and thus get heaps of free space.  On top
4509 of this one can add encryption, RAID and volume management to have
4510 lots of (fairly slow, I admit that) cheap and encrypted storage.  But
4511 I never found time to implement such system.  But the last few weeks I
4512 have looked at a system called
4513 <a href="https://bitbucket.org/nikratio/s3ql/">S3QL</a>, a locally
4514 mounted network backed file system with the features I need.</p>
4515
4516 <p>S3QL is a fuse file system with a local cache and cloud storage,
4517 handling several different storage providers, any with Amazon S3,
4518 Google Drive or OpenStack API.  There are heaps of such storage
4519 providers.  S3QL can also use a local directory as storage, which
4520 combined with sshfs allow for file storage on any ssh server.  S3QL
4521 include support for encryption, compression, de-duplication, snapshots
4522 and immutable file systems, allowing me to mount the remote storage as
4523 a local mount point, look at and use the files as if they were local,
4524 while the content is stored in the cloud as well.  This allow me to
4525 have a backup that should survive fire.  The file system can not be
4526 shared between several machines at the same time, as only one can
4527 mount it at the time, but any machine with the encryption key and
4528 access to the storage service can mount it if it is unmounted.</p>
4529
4530 <p>It is simple to use.  I'm using it on Debian Wheezy, where the
4531 package is included already.  So to get started, run <tt>apt-get
4532 install s3ql</tt>.  Next, pick a storage provider.  I ended up picking
4533 Greenqloud, after reading their nice recipe on
4534 <a href="https://greenqloud.zendesk.com/entries/44611757-How-To-Use-S3QL-to-mount-a-StorageQloud-bucket-on-Debian-Wheezy">how
4535 to use S3QL with their Amazon S3 service</a>, because I trust the laws
4536 in Iceland more than those in USA when it come to keeping my personal
4537 data safe and private, and thus would rather spend money on a company
4538 in Iceland.  Another nice recipe is available from the article
4539 <a href="http://www.admin-magazine.com/HPC/Articles/HPC-Cloud-Storage">S3QL
4540 Filesystem for HPC Storage</a> by Jeff Layton in the HPC section of
4541 Admin magazine.  When the provider is picked, figure out how to get
4542 the API key needed to connect to the storage API.  With Greencloud,
4543 the key did not show up until I had added payment details to my
4544 account.</p>
4545
4546 <p>Armed with the API access details, it is time to create the file
4547 system.  First, create a new bucket in the cloud.  This bucket is the
4548 file system storage area.  I picked a bucket name reflecting the
4549 machine that was going to store data there, but any name will do.
4550 I'll refer to it as <tt>bucket-name</tt> below.  In addition, one need
4551 the API login and password, and a locally created password.  Store it
4552 all in ~root/.s3ql/authinfo2 like this:
4553
4554 <p><blockquote><pre>
4555 [s3c]
4556 storage-url: s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
4557 backend-login: API-login
4558 backend-password: API-password
4559 fs-passphrase: local-password
4560 </pre></blockquote></p>
4561
4562 <p>I create my local passphrase using <tt>pwget 50</tt> or similar,
4563 but any sensible way to create a fairly random password should do it.
4564 Armed with these details, it is now time to run mkfs, entering the API
4565 details and password to create it:</p>
4566
4567 <p><blockquote><pre>
4568 # mkdir -m 700 /var/lib/s3ql-cache
4569 # mkfs.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
4570   --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
4571 Enter backend login:
4572 Enter backend password:
4573 Before using S3QL, make sure to read the user's guide, especially
4574 the 'Important Rules to Avoid Loosing Data' section.
4575 Enter encryption password:
4576 Confirm encryption password:
4577 Generating random encryption key...
4578 Creating metadata tables...
4579 Dumping metadata...
4580 ..objects..
4581 ..blocks..
4582 ..inodes..
4583 ..inode_blocks..
4584 ..symlink_targets..
4585 ..names..
4586 ..contents..
4587 ..ext_attributes..
4588 Compressing and uploading metadata...
4589 Wrote 0.00 MB of compressed metadata.
4590 # </pre></blockquote></p>
4591
4592 <p>The next step is mounting the file system to make the storage available.
4593
4594 <p><blockquote><pre>
4595 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
4596   --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
4597 Using 4 upload threads.
4598 Downloading and decompressing metadata...
4599 Reading metadata...
4600 ..objects..
4601 ..blocks..
4602 ..inodes..
4603 ..inode_blocks..
4604 ..symlink_targets..
4605 ..names..
4606 ..contents..
4607 ..ext_attributes..
4608 Mounting filesystem...
4609 # df -h /s3ql
4610 Filesystem                              Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
4611 s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name  1.0T     0  1.0T   0% /s3ql
4612 #
4613 </pre></blockquote></p>
4614
4615 <p>The file system is now ready for use.  I use rsync to store my
4616 backups in it, and as the metadata used by rsync is downloaded at
4617 mount time, no network traffic (and storage cost) is triggered by
4618 running rsync.  To unmount, one should not use the normal umount
4619 command, as this will not flush the cache to the cloud storage, but
4620 instead running the umount.s3ql command like this:
4621
4622 <p><blockquote><pre>
4623 # umount.s3ql /s3ql
4624 #
4625 </pre></blockquote></p>
4626
4627 <p>There is a fsck command available to check the file system and
4628 correct any problems detected.  This can be used if the local server
4629 crashes while the file system is mounted, to reset the "already
4630 mounted" flag.  This is what it look like when processing a working
4631 file system:</p>
4632
4633 <p><blockquote><pre>
4634 # fsck.s3ql --force --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
4635 Using cached metadata.
4636 File system seems clean, checking anyway.
4637 Checking DB integrity...
4638 Creating temporary extra indices...
4639 Checking lost+found...
4640 Checking cached objects...
4641 Checking names (refcounts)...
4642 Checking contents (names)...
4643 Checking contents (inodes)...
4644 Checking contents (parent inodes)...
4645 Checking objects (reference counts)...
4646 Checking objects (backend)...
4647 ..processed 5000 objects so far..
4648 ..processed 10000 objects so far..
4649 ..processed 15000 objects so far..
4650 Checking objects (sizes)...
4651 Checking blocks (referenced objects)...
4652 Checking blocks (refcounts)...
4653 Checking inode-block mapping (blocks)...
4654 Checking inode-block mapping (inodes)...
4655 Checking inodes (refcounts)...
4656 Checking inodes (sizes)...
4657 Checking extended attributes (names)...
4658 Checking extended attributes (inodes)...
4659 Checking symlinks (inodes)...
4660 Checking directory reachability...
4661 Checking unix conventions...
4662 Checking referential integrity...
4663 Dropping temporary indices...
4664 Backing up old metadata...
4665 Dumping metadata...
4666 ..objects..
4667 ..blocks..
4668 ..inodes..
4669 ..inode_blocks..
4670 ..symlink_targets..
4671 ..names..
4672 ..contents..
4673 ..ext_attributes..
4674 Compressing and uploading metadata...
4675 Wrote 0.89 MB of compressed metadata.
4676 #
4677 </pre></blockquote></p>
4678
4679 <p>Thanks to the cache, working on files that fit in the cache is very
4680 quick, about the same speed as local file access.  Uploading large
4681 amount of data is to me limited by the bandwidth out of and into my
4682 house.  Uploading 685 MiB with a 100 MiB cache gave me 305 kiB/s,
4683 which is very close to my upload speed, and downloading the same
4684 Debian installation ISO gave me 610 kiB/s, close to my download speed.
4685 Both were measured using <tt>dd</tt>.  So for me, the bottleneck is my
4686 network, not the file system code.  I do not know what a good cache
4687 size would be, but suspect that the cache should e larger than your
4688 working set.</p>
4689
4690 <p>I mentioned that only one machine can mount the file system at the
4691 time.  If another machine try, it is told that the file system is
4692 busy:</p>
4693
4694 <p><blockquote><pre>
4695 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
4696   --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
4697 Using 8 upload threads.
4698 Backend reports that fs is still mounted elsewhere, aborting.
4699 #
4700 </pre></blockquote></p>
4701
4702 <p>The file content is uploaded when the cache is full, while the
4703 metadata is uploaded once every 24 hour by default.  To ensure the
4704 file system content is flushed to the cloud, one can either umount the
4705 file system, or ask S3QL to flush the cache and metadata using
4706 s3qlctrl:
4707
4708 <p><blockquote><pre>
4709 # s3qlctrl upload-meta /s3ql
4710 # s3qlctrl flushcache /s3ql
4711 #
4712 </pre></blockquote></p>
4713
4714 <p>If you are curious about how much space your data uses in the
4715 cloud, and how much compression and deduplication cut down on the
4716 storage usage, you can use s3qlstat on the mounted file system to get
4717 a report:</p>
4718
4719 <p><blockquote><pre>
4720 # s3qlstat /s3ql
4721 Directory entries:    9141
4722 Inodes:               9143
4723 Data blocks:          8851
4724 Total data size:      22049.38 MB
4725 After de-duplication: 21955.46 MB (99.57% of total)
4726 After compression:    21877.28 MB (99.22% of total, 99.64% of de-duplicated)
4727 Database size:        2.39 MB (uncompressed)
4728 (some values do not take into account not-yet-uploaded dirty blocks in cache)
4729 #
4730 </pre></blockquote></p>
4731
4732 <p>I mentioned earlier that there are several possible suppliers of
4733 storage.  I did not try to locate them all, but am aware of at least
4734 <a href="https://www.greenqloud.com/">Greenqloud</a>,
4735 <a href="http://drive.google.com/">Google Drive</a>,
4736 <a href="http://aws.amazon.com/s3/">Amazon S3 web serivces</a>,
4737 <a href="http://www.rackspace.com/">Rackspace</a> and
4738 <a href="http://crowncloud.net/">Crowncloud</A>.  The latter even
4739 accept payment in Bitcoin.  Pick one that suit your need.  Some of
4740 them provide several GiB of free storage, but the prize models are
4741 quite different and you will have to figure out what suits you
4742 best.</p>
4743
4744 <p>While researching this blog post, I had a look at research papers
4745 and posters discussing the S3QL file system.  There are several, which
4746 told me that the file system is getting a critical check by the
4747 science community and increased my confidence in using it.  One nice
4748 poster is titled
4749 "<a href="http://www.lanl.gov/orgs/adtsc/publications/science_highlights_2013/docs/pg68_69.pdf">An
4750 Innovative Parallel Cloud Storage System using OpenStack’s SwiftObject
4751 Store and Transformative Parallel I/O Approach</a>" by Hsing-Bung
4752 Chen, Benjamin McClelland, David Sherrill, Alfred Torrez, Parks Fields
4753 and Pamela Smith.  Please  have a look.</p>
4754
4755 <p>Given my problems with different file systems earlier, I decided to
4756 check out the mounted S3QL file system to see if it would be usable as
4757 a home directory (in other word, that it provided POSIX semantics when
4758 it come to locking and umask handling etc).  Running
4759 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">my
4760 test code to check file system semantics</a>, I was happy to discover that
4761 no error was found.  So the file system can be used for home
4762 directories, if one chooses to do so.</p>
4763
4764 <p>If you do not want a locally file system, and want something that
4765 work without the Linux fuse file system, I would like to mention the
4766 <a href="http://www.tarsnap.com/">Tarsnap service</a>, which also
4767 provide locally encrypted backup using a command line client.  It have
4768 a nicer access control system, where one can split out read and write
4769 access, allowing some systems to write to the backup and others to
4770 only read from it.</p>
4771
4772 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
4773 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
4774 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
4775
4776       </div>
4777       <div class="tags">
4778
4779
4780         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
4781
4782
4783       </div>
4784     </div>
4785     <div class="padding"></div>
4786
4787     <div class="entry">
4788       <div class="title">
4789         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ReactOS_Windows_clone___nice_free_software.html">ReactOS Windows clone - nice free software</a>
4790       </div>
4791       <div class="date">
4792          1st April 2014
4793       </div>
4794       <div class="body">
4795         <p>Microsoft have announced that Windows XP reaches its end of life
4796 2014-04-08, in 7 days.  But there are heaps of machines still running
4797 Windows XP, and depending on Windows XP to run their applications, and
4798 upgrading will be expensive, both when it comes to money and when it
4799 comes to the amount of effort needed to migrate from Windows XP to a
4800 new operating system.  Some obvious options (buy new a Windows
4801 machine, buy a MacOSX machine, install Linux on the existing machine)
4802 are already well known and covered elsewhere.  Most of them involve
4803 leaving the user applications installed on Windows XP behind and
4804 trying out replacements or updated versions. In this blog post I want
4805 to mention one strange bird that allow people to keep the hardware and
4806 the existing Windows XP applications and run them on a free software
4807 operating system that is Windows XP compatible.</p>
4808
4809 <p><a href="http://www.reactos.org/">ReactOS</a> is a free software
4810 operating system (GNU GPL licensed) working on providing a operating
4811 system that is binary compatible with Windows, able to run windows
4812 programs directly and to use Windows drivers for hardware directly.
4813 The project goal is for Windows user to keep their existing machines,
4814 drivers and software, and gain the advantages from user a operating
4815 system without usage limitations caused by non-free licensing.  It is
4816 a Windows clone running directly on the hardware, so quite different
4817 from the approach taken by <a href="http://www.winehq.org/">the Wine
4818 project</a>, which make it possible to run Windows binaries on
4819 Linux.</p>
4820
4821 <p>The ReactOS project share code with the Wine project, so most
4822 shared libraries available on Windows are already implemented already.
4823 There is also a software manager like the one we are used to on Linux,
4824 allowing the user to install free software applications with a simple
4825 click directly from the Internet.  Check out the
4826 <a href="http://www.reactos.org/screenshots">screen shots on the
4827 project web site</a> for an idea what it look like (it looks just like
4828 Windows before metro).</p>
4829
4830 <p>I do not use ReactOS myself, preferring Linux and Unix like
4831 operating systems.  I've tested it, and it work fine in a virt-manager
4832 virtual machine.  The browser, minesweeper, notepad etc is working
4833 fine as far as I can tell.  Unfortunately, my main test application
4834 is the software included on a CD with the Lego Mindstorms NXT, which
4835 seem to install just fine from CD but fail to leave any binaries on
4836 the disk after the installation.  So no luck with that test software.
4837 No idea why, but hope someone else figure out and fix the problem.
4838 I've tried the ReactOS Live ISO on a physical machine, and it seemed
4839 to work just fine.  If you like Windows and want to keep running your
4840 old Windows binaries, check it out by
4841 <a href="http://www.reactos.org/download">downloading</a> the
4842 installation CD, the live CD or the preinstalled virtual machine
4843 image.</p>
4844
4845       </div>
4846       <div class="tags">
4847
4848
4849         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reactos">reactos</a>.
4850
4851
4852       </div>
4853     </div>
4854     <div class="padding"></div>
4855
4856     <div class="entry">
4857       <div class="title">
4858         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Roger_Marsal.html">Debian Edu interview: Roger Marsal</a>
4859       </div>
4860       <div class="date">
4861         30th March 2014
4862       </div>
4863       <div class="body">
4864         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
4865 keep gaining new users.  Some weeks ago, a person showed up on IRC,
4866 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/#debian-edu">#debian-edu</a>, with a
4867 wish to contribute, and I managed to get a interview with this great
4868 contributor Roger Marsal to learn more about his background.</p>
4869
4870 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
4871
4872 <p>My name is Roger Marsal, I'm 27 years old (1986 generation) and I
4873 live in Barcelona, Spain. I've got a strong business background and I
4874 work as a patrimony manager and as a real estate agent.  Additionally,
4875 I've co-founded a British based tech company that is nowadays on the
4876 last development phase of a new social networking concept.</p>
4877
4878 <p>I'm a Linux enthusiast that started its journey with Ubuntu four years
4879 ago and have recently switched to Debian seeking rock solid stability
4880 and as a necessary step to gain expertise.</p>
4881
4882 <p>In a nutshell, I spend my days working and learning as much as I
4883 can to face both my job, entrepreneur project and feed my Linux
4884 hunger.</p>
4885
4886 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
4887 project?</strong></p>
4888
4889 <p>I discovered the <a href="http://www.ltsp.org/">LTSP</a> advantages
4890 with "Ubuntu 12.04 alternate install" and after a year of use I
4891 started looking for an alternative.  Even though I highly value and
4892 respect the Ubuntu project, I thought it was necessary for me to
4893 change to a more robust and stable alternative.  As far as I was using
4894 Debian on my personal laptop I thought it would be fine to install
4895 Debian and configure an LTSP server myself.  Surprised, I discovered
4896 that the Debian project also supported a kind of Edubuntu equivalent,
4897 and after having some pain I obtained a Debian Edu network up and
4898 running.  I just loved it.</p>
4899
4900 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
4901 Edu?</strong></p>
4902
4903 <p>I found a main advantage in that, once you know "the tips and
4904 tricks", a new installation just works out of the box. It's the most
4905 complete alternative I've found to create an LTSP network. All the
4906 other distributions seems to be made of plastic, Debian Edu seems to
4907 be made of steel.</p>
4908
4909 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
4910 Edu?</strong></p>
4911
4912 <p>I found two main disadvantages.</p>
4913
4914 <p>I'm not an expert but I've got notions and I had to spent a considerable
4915 amount of time trying to bring up a standard network topology. I'm quite
4916 stubborn and I just worked until I did but I'm sure many people with few
4917 resources (not big schools, but academies for example) would have switched
4918 or dropped.</p>
4919
4920 <p>It's amazing how such a complex system like Debian Edu has achieved
4921 this out-of-the-box state. Even though tweaking without breaking gets
4922 more difficult, as more factors have to be considered. This can
4923 discourage many people too.</p>
4924
4925 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
4926
4927 <p>I use Debian, Firefox, Okular, Inkscape, LibreOffice and
4928 Virtualbox.</p>
4929
4930
4931 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
4932 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
4933
4934 <p>I don't think there is a need for a particular strategy. The free
4935 attribute in both "freedom" and "no price" meanings is what will
4936 really bring free software to schools. In my experience I can think of
4937 the <a href="http://www.r-project.org/">"R" statistical language</a>; a
4938 few years a ago was an extremely nerd tool for university people.
4939 Today it's being increasingly used to teach statistics at many
4940 different level of studies.  I believe free and open software will
4941 increasingly gain popularity, but I'm sure schools will be one of the
4942 first scenarios where this will happen.</p>
4943
4944       </div>
4945       <div class="tags">
4946
4947
4948         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>.
4949
4950
4951       </div>
4952     </div>
4953     <div class="padding"></div>
4954
4955     <div class="entry">
4956       <div class="title">
4957         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Public_Trusted_Timestamping_services_for_everyone.html">Public Trusted Timestamping services for everyone</a>
4958       </div>
4959       <div class="date">
4960         25th March 2014
4961       </div>
4962       <div class="body">
4963         <p>Did you ever need to store logs or other files in a way that would
4964 allow it to be used as evidence in court, and needed a way to
4965 demonstrate without reasonable doubt that the file had not been
4966 changed since it was created?  Or, did you ever need to document that
4967 a given document was received at some point in time, like some
4968 archived document or the answer to an exam, and not changed after it
4969 was received?  The problem in these settings is to remove the need to
4970 trust yourself and your computers, while still being able to prove
4971 that a file is the same as it was at some given time in the past.</p>
4972
4973 <p>A solution to these problems is to have a trusted third party
4974 "stamp" the document and verify that at some given time the document
4975 looked a given way.  Such
4976 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notarius">notarius</a> service
4977 have been around for thousands of years, and its digital equivalent is
4978 called a
4979 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_timestamping">trusted
4980 timestamping service</a>.  <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">The Internet
4981 Engineering Task Force</a> standardised how such service could work a
4982 few years ago as <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3161">RFC
4983 3161</a>.  The mechanism is simple.  Create a hash of the file in
4984 question, send it to a trusted third party which add a time stamp to
4985 the hash and sign the result with its private key, and send back the
4986 signed hash + timestamp.  Both email, FTP and HTTP can be used to
4987 request such signature, depending on what is provided by the service
4988 used. Anyone with the document and the signature can then verify that
4989 the document matches the signature by creating their own hash and
4990 checking the signature using the trusted third party public key.
4991 There are several commercial services around providing such
4992 timestamping.  A quick search for
4993 "<a href="https://duckduckgo.com/?q=rfc+3161+service">rfc 3161
4994 service</a>" pointed me to at least
4995 <a href="https://www.digistamp.com/technical/how-a-digital-time-stamp-works/">DigiStamp</a>,
4996 <a href="http://www.quovadisglobal.co.uk/CertificateServices/SigningServices/TimeStamp.aspx">Quo
4997 Vadis</a>,
4998 <a href="https://www.globalsign.com/timestamp-service/">Global Sign</a>
4999 and <a href="http://www.globaltrustfinder.com/TSADefault.aspx">Global
5000 Trust Finder</a>.  The system work as long as the private key of the
5001 trusted third party is not compromised.</p>
5002
5003 <p>But as far as I can tell, there are very few public trusted
5004 timestamp services available for everyone.  I've been looking for one
5005 for a while now. But yesterday I found one over at
5006 <a href="https://www.pki.dfn.de/zeitstempeldienst/">Deutches
5007 Forschungsnetz</a> mentioned in
5008 <a href="http://www.d-mueller.de/blog/dealing-with-trusted-timestamps-in-php-rfc-3161/">a
5009 blog by David Müller</a>.  I then found
5010 <a href="http://www.rz.uni-greifswald.de/support/dfn-pki-zertifikate/zeitstempeldienst.html">a
5011 good recipe on how to use the service</a> over at the University of
5012 Greifswald.</p>
5013
5014 <p><a href="http://www.openssl.org/">The OpenSSL library</a> contain
5015 both server and tools to use and set up your own signing service.  See
5016 the ts(1SSL), tsget(1SSL) manual pages for more details.  The
5017 following shell script demonstrate how to extract a signed timestamp
5018 for any file on the disk in a Debian environment:</p>
5019
5020 <p><blockquote><pre>
5021 #!/bin/sh
5022 set -e
5023 url="http://zeitstempel.dfn.de"
5024 caurl="https://pki.pca.dfn.de/global-services-ca/pub/cacert/chain.txt"
5025 reqfile=$(mktemp -t tmp.XXXXXXXXXX.tsq)
5026 resfile=$(mktemp -t tmp.XXXXXXXXXX.tsr)
5027 cafile=chain.txt
5028 if [ ! -f $cafile ] ; then
5029     wget -O $cafile "$caurl"
5030 fi
5031 openssl ts -query -data "$1" -cert | tee "$reqfile" \
5032     | /usr/lib/ssl/misc/tsget -h "$url" -o "$resfile"
5033 openssl ts -reply -in "$resfile" -text 1>&2
5034 openssl ts -verify -data "$1" -in "$resfile" -CAfile "$cafile" 1>&2
5035 base64 < "$resfile"
5036 rm "$reqfile" "$resfile"
5037 </pre></blockquote></p>
5038
5039 <p>The argument to the script is the file to timestamp, and the output
5040 is a base64 encoded version of the signature to STDOUT and details
5041 about the signature to STDERR.  Note that due to
5042 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=742553">a bug
5043 in the tsget script</a>, you might need to modify the included script
5044 and remove the last line.  Or just write your own HTTP uploader using
5045 curl. :) Now you too can prove and verify that files have not been
5046 changed.</p>
5047
5048 <p>But the Internet need more public trusted timestamp services.
5049 Perhaps something for <a href="http://www.uninett.no/">Uninett</a> or
5050 my work place the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a>
5051 to set up?</p>
5052
5053       </div>
5054       <div class="tags">
5055
5056
5057         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
5058
5059
5060       </div>
5061     </div>
5062     <div class="padding"></div>
5063
5064     <div class="entry">
5065       <div class="title">
5066         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Video_DVD_reader_library___python_dvdvideo___nice_free_software.html">Video DVD reader library / python-dvdvideo - nice free software</a>
5067       </div>
5068       <div class="date">
5069         21st March 2014
5070       </div>
5071       <div class="body">
5072         <p>Keeping your DVD collection safe from scratches and curious
5073 children fingers while still having it available when you want to see a
5074 movie is not straight forward.  My preferred method at the moment is
5075 to store a full copy of the ISO on a hard drive, and use VLC, Popcorn
5076 Hour or other useful players to view the resulting file.  This way the
5077 subtitles and bonus material are still available and using the ISO is
5078 just like inserting the original DVD record in the DVD player.</p>
5079
5080 <p>Earlier I used dd for taking security copies, but it do not handle
5081 DVDs giving read errors (which are quite a few of them).  I've also
5082 tried using
5083 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ripping_problematic_DVDs_using_dvdbackup_and_genisoimage.html">dvdbackup
5084 and genisoimage</a>, but these days I use the marvellous python library
5085 and program
5086 <a href="http://bblank.thinkmo.de/blog/new-software-python-dvdvideo">python-dvdvideo</a>
5087 written by Bastian Blank.  It is
5088 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/python-dvdvideo.html">in Debian
5089 already</a> and the binary package name is python3-dvdvideo. Instead
5090 of trying to read every block from the DVD, it parses the file
5091 structure and figure out which block on the DVD is actually in used,
5092 and only read those blocks from the DVD.  This work surprisingly well,
5093 and I have been able to almost backup my entire DVD collection using
5094 this method.</p>
5095
5096 <p>So far, python-dvdvideo have failed on between 10 and
5097 20 DVDs, which is a small fraction of my collection.  The most common
5098 problem is
5099 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=720831">DVDs
5100 using UTF-16 instead of UTF-8 characters</a>, which according to
5101 Bastian is against the DVD specification (and seem to cause some
5102 players to fail too).  A rarer problem is what seem to be inconsistent
5103 DVD structures, as the python library
5104 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=723079">claim
5105 there is a overlap between objects</a>.  An equally rare problem claim
5106 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=741878">some
5107 value is out of range</a>.  No idea what is going on there.  I wish I
5108 knew enough about the DVD format to fix these, to ensure my movie
5109 collection will stay with me in the future.</p>
5110
5111 <p>So, if you need to keep your DVDs safe, back them up using
5112 python-dvdvideo. :)</p>
5113
5114       </div>
5115       <div class="tags">
5116
5117
5118         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/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
5119
5120
5121       </div>
5122     </div>
5123     <div class="padding"></div>
5124
5125     <div class="entry">
5126       <div class="title">
5127         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Freedombox_on_Dreamplug__Raspberry_Pi_and_virtual_x86_machine.html">Freedombox on Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and virtual x86 machine</a>
5128       </div>
5129       <div class="date">
5130         14th March 2014
5131       </div>
5132       <div class="body">
5133         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
5134 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware for
5135 making it easy for non-technical people to host their data and
5136 communication at home, and being able to communicate with their
5137 friends and family encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It has been
5138 going on for a while, and is slowly progressing towards a new test
5139 release (0.2).</p>
5140
5141 <p>And what day could be better than the Pi day to announce that the
5142 new version will provide "hard drive" / SD card / USB stick images for
5143 Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and VirtualBox (or any other virtualization
5144 system), and can also be installed using a Debian installer preseed
5145 file.  The Debian based Freedombox is now based on Debian Jessie,
5146 where most of the needed packages used are already present.  Only one,
5147 the freedombox-setup package, is missing.  To try to build your own
5148 boot image to test the current status, fetch the freedom-maker scripts
5149 and build using
5150 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/vmdebootstrap">vmdebootstrap</a>
5151 with a user with sudo access to become root:
5152
5153 <pre>
5154 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
5155   freedom-maker
5156 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
5157   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
5158   u-boot-tools
5159 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
5160 </pre>
5161
5162 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
5163 devices.  See the README for more details on the build. If you do not
5164 want all three images, trim the make line.  But note that thanks to <a
5165 href="https://bugs.debian.org/741407">a race condition in
5166 vmdebootstrap</a>, the build might fail without the patch to the
5167 kpartx call.</p>
5168
5169 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
5170 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
5171 the preseed values:</p>
5172
5173 <pre>
5174 url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
5175 </pre>
5176
5177 <p>But note that due to <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/740673">a
5178 recently introduced bug in apt in Jessie</a>, the installer will
5179 currently hang while setting up APT sources.  Killing the
5180 '<tt>apt-cdrom ident</tt>' process when it hang a few times during the
5181 installation will get the installation going.  This affect all
5182 installations in Jessie, and I expect it will be fixed soon.</p>
5183
5184 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
5185 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
5186 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
5187 irc.debian.org)</a> and
5188 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
5189 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
5190
5191       </div>
5192       <div class="tags">
5193
5194
5195         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
5196
5197
5198       </div>
5199     </div>
5200     <div class="padding"></div>
5201
5202     <div class="entry">
5203       <div class="title">
5204         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_add_extra_storage_servers_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux.html">How to add extra storage servers in Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
5205       </div>
5206       <div class="date">
5207         12th March 2014
5208       </div>
5209       <div class="body">
5210         <p>On larger sites, it is useful to use a dedicated storage server for
5211 storing user home directories and data.  The design for handling this
5212 in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>, is
5213 to update the automount rules in LDAP and let the automount daemon on
5214 the clients take care of the rest.  I was reminded about the need to
5215 document this better when one of the customers of
5216 <a href="http://www.slxdrift.no/">Skolelinux Drift AS</a>, where I am
5217 on the board of directors, asked about how to do this.  The steps to
5218 get this working are the following:</p>
5219
5220 <p><ol>
5221
5222 <li>Add new storage server in DNS.  I use nas-server.intern as the
5223 example host here.</li>
5224
5225 <li>Add automoun LDAP information about this server in LDAP, to allow
5226 all clients to automatically mount it on reqeust.</li>
5227
5228 <li>Add the relevant entries in tjener.intern:/etc/fstab, because
5229 tjener.intern do not use automount to avoid mounting loops.</li>
5230
5231 </ol></p>
5232
5233 <p>DNS entries are added in GOsa², and not described here.  Follow the
5234 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/GettingStarted">instructions
5235 in the manual</a> (Machine Management with GOsa² in section Getting
5236 started).</p>
5237
5238 <p>Ensure that the NFS export points on the server are exported to the
5239 relevant subnets or machines:</p>
5240
5241 <p><blockquote><pre>
5242 root@tjener:~# showmount -e nas-server
5243 Export list for nas-server:
5244 /storage         10.0.0.0/8
5245 root@tjener:~#
5246 </pre></blockquote></p>
5247
5248 <p>Here everything on the backbone network is granted access to the
5249 /storage export.  With NFSv3 it is slightly better to limit it to
5250 netgroup membership or single IP addresses to have some limits on the
5251 NFS access.</p>
5252
5253 <p>The next step is to update LDAP.  This can not be done using GOsa²,
5254 because it lack a module for automount.  Instead, use ldapvi and add
5255 the required LDAP objects using an editor.</p>
5256
5257 <p><blockquote><pre>
5258 ldapvi --ldap-conf -ZD '(cn=admin)' -b ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
5259 </pre></blockquote></p>
5260
5261 <p>When the editor show up, add the following LDAP objects at the
5262 bottom of the document.  The "/&" part in the last LDAP object is a
5263 wild card matching everything the nas-server exports, removing the
5264 need to list individual mount points in LDAP.</p>
5265
5266 <p><blockquote><pre>
5267 add cn=nas-server,ou=auto.skole,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
5268 objectClass: automount
5269 cn: nas-server
5270 automountInformation: -fstype=autofs --timeout=60 ldap:ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
5271
5272 add ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
5273 objectClass: top
5274 objectClass: automountMap
5275 ou: auto.nas-server
5276
5277 add cn=/,ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
5278 objectClass: automount
5279 cn: /
5280 automountInformation: -fstype=nfs,tcp,rsize=32768,wsize=32768,rw,intr,hard,nodev,nosuid,noatime nas-server.intern:/&
5281 </pre></blockquote></p>
5282
5283 <p>The last step to remember is to mount the relevant mount points in
5284 tjener.intern by adding them to /etc/fstab, creating the mount
5285 directories using mkdir and running "mount -a" to mount them.</p>
5286
5287 <p>When this is done, your users should be able to access the files on
5288 the storage server directly by just visiting the
5289 /tjener/nas-server/storage/ directory using any application on any
5290 workstation, LTSP client or LTSP server.</p>
5291
5292       </div>
5293       <div class="tags">
5294
5295
5296         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>.
5297
5298
5299       </div>
5300     </div>
5301     <div class="padding"></div>
5302
5303     <div class="entry">
5304       <div class="title">
5305         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_home_and_release_1_0_for_netgroup_and_innetgr__aka_ng_utils_.html">New home and release 1.0 for netgroup and innetgr (aka ng-utils)</a>
5306       </div>
5307       <div class="date">
5308         22nd February 2014
5309       </div>
5310       <div class="body">
5311         <p>Many years ago, I wrote a GPL licensed version of the netgroup and
5312 innetgr tools, because I needed them in
5313 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>.  I called the project
5314 ng-utils, and it has served me well.  I placed the project under the
5315 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/">Hungry Programmer</a> umbrella, and it was maintained in our CVS
5316 repository.  But many years ago, the CVS repository was dropped (lost,
5317 not migrated to new hardware, not sure), and the project have lacked a
5318 proper home since then.</p>
5319
5320 <p>Last summer, I had a look at the package and made a new release
5321 fixing a irritating crash bug, but was unable to store the changes in
5322 a proper source control system.  I applied for a project on
5323 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/">Alioth</a>, but did not have time
5324 to follow up on it.  Until today. :)</p>
5325
5326 <p>After many hours of cleaning and migration, the ng-utils project
5327 now have a new home, and a git repository with the highlight of the
5328 history of the project.  I published all release tarballs and imported
5329 them into the git repository.  As the project is really stable and not
5330 expected to gain new features any time soon, I decided to make a new
5331 release and call it 1.0.  Visit the new project home on
5332 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/">https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/</a>
5333 if you want to check it out.  The new version is also uploaded into
5334 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/ng-utils.html">Debian Unstable</a>.</p>
5335
5336       </div>
5337       <div class="tags">
5338
5339
5340         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>.
5341
5342
5343       </div>
5344     </div>
5345     <div class="padding"></div>
5346
5347     <div class="entry">
5348       <div class="title">
5349         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_sysvinit_from_experimental_in_Debian_Hurd.html">Testing sysvinit from experimental in Debian Hurd</a>
5350       </div>
5351       <div class="date">
5352          3rd February 2014
5353       </div>
5354       <div class="body">
5355         <p>A few days ago I decided to try to help the Hurd people to get
5356 their changes into sysvinit, to allow them to use the normal sysvinit
5357 boot system instead of their old one.  This follow up on the
5358 <a href="https://teythoon.cryptobitch.de//categories/gsoc.html">great
5359 Google Summer of Code work</a> done last summer by Justus Winter to
5360 get Debian on Hurd working more like Debian on Linux.  To get started,
5361 I downloaded a prebuilt hard disk image from
5362 <a href="http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian-cd/hurd-i386/current/debian-hurd.img.tar.gz">http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian-cd/hurd-i386/current/debian-hurd.img.tar.gz</a>,
5363 and started it using virt-manager.</p>
5364
5365 <p>The first think I had to do after logging in (root without any
5366 password) was to get the network operational.  I followed
5367 <a href="https://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/hurd-install">the
5368 instructions on the Debian GNU/Hurd ports page</a> and ran these
5369 commands as root to get the machine to accept a IP address from the
5370 kvm internal DHCP server:</p>
5371
5372 <p><blockquote><pre>
5373 settrans -fgap /dev/netdde /hurd/netdde
5374 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[p]finet/ { print $2}')
5375 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[d]evnode/ { print $2}')
5376 dhclient /dev/eth0
5377 </pre></blockquote></p>
5378
5379 <p>After this, the machine had internet connectivity, and I could
5380 upgrade it and install the sysvinit packages from experimental and
5381 enable it as the default boot system in Hurd.</p>
5382
5383 <p>But before I did that, I set a password on the root user, as ssh is
5384 running on the machine it for ssh login to work a password need to be
5385 set.  Also, note that a bug somewhere in openssh on Hurd block
5386 compression from working.  Remember to turn that off on the client
5387 side.</p>
5388
5389 <p>Run these commands as root to upgrade and test the new sysvinit
5390 stuff:</p>
5391
5392 <p><blockquote><pre>
5393 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/experimental.list &lt;&lt;EOF
5394 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ experimental main
5395 EOF
5396 apt-get update
5397 apt-get dist-upgrade
5398 apt-get install -t experimental initscripts sysv-rc sysvinit \
5399     sysvinit-core sysvinit-utils
5400 update-alternatives --config runsystem
5401 </pre></blockquote></p>
5402
5403 <p>To reboot after switching boot system, you have to use
5404 <tt>reboot-hurd</tt> instead of just <tt>reboot</tt>, as there is not
5405 yet a sysvinit process able to receive the signals from the normal
5406 'reboot' command.  After switching to sysvinit as the boot system,
5407 upgrading every package and rebooting, the network come up with DHCP
5408 after boot as it should, and the settrans/pkill hack mentioned at the
5409 start is no longer needed.  But for some strange reason, there are no
5410 longer any login prompt in the virtual console, so I logged in using
5411 ssh instead.
5412
5413 <p>Note that there are some race conditions in Hurd making the boot
5414 fail some times.  No idea what the cause is, but hope the Hurd porters
5415 figure it out.  At least Justus said on IRC (#debian-hurd on
5416 irc.debian.org) that they are aware of the problem.  A way to reduce
5417 the impact is to upgrade to the Hurd packages built by Justus by
5418 adding this repository to the machine:</p>
5419
5420 <p><blockquote><pre>
5421 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hurd-ci.list &lt;&lt;EOF
5422 deb http://darnassus.sceen.net/~teythoon/hurd-ci/ sid main
5423 EOF
5424 </pre></blockquote></p>
5425
5426 <p>At the moment the prebuilt virtual machine get some packages from
5427 http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian, because some of the packages in
5428 unstable do not yet include the required patches that are lingering in
5429 BTS.  This is the completely list of "unofficial" packages installed:</p>
5430
5431 <p><blockquote><pre>
5432 # aptitude search '?narrow(?version(CURRENT),?origin(Debian Ports))'
5433 i   emacs                   - GNU Emacs editor (metapackage)
5434 i   gdb                     - GNU Debugger
5435 i   hurd-recommended        - Miscellaneous translators
5436 i   isc-dhcp-client         - ISC DHCP client
5437 i   isc-dhcp-common         - common files used by all the isc-dhcp* packages
5438 i   libc-bin                - Embedded GNU C Library: Binaries
5439 i   libc-dev-bin            - Embedded GNU C Library: Development binaries
5440 i   libc0.3                 - Embedded GNU C Library: Shared libraries
5441 i A libc0.3-dbg             - Embedded GNU C Library: detached debugging symbols
5442 i   libc0.3-dev             - Embedded GNU C Library: Development Libraries and Hea
5443 i   multiarch-support       - Transitional package to ensure multiarch compatibilit
5444 i A x11-common              - X Window System (X.Org) infrastructure
5445 i   xorg                    - X.Org X Window System
5446 i A xserver-xorg            - X.Org X server
5447 i A xserver-xorg-input-all  - X.Org X server -- input driver metapackage
5448 #
5449 </pre></blockquote></p>
5450
5451 <p>All in all, testing hurd has been an interesting experience. :)
5452 X.org did not work out of the box and I never took the time to follow
5453 the porters instructions to fix it.  This time I was interested in the
5454 command line stuff.<p>
5455
5456       </div>
5457       <div class="tags">
5458
5459
5460         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>.
5461
5462
5463       </div>
5464     </div>
5465     <div class="padding"></div>
5466
5467     <div class="entry">
5468       <div class="title">
5469         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_fist_full_of_non_anonymous_Bitcoins.html">A fist full of non-anonymous Bitcoins</a>
5470       </div>
5471       <div class="date">
5472         29th January 2014
5473       </div>
5474       <div class="body">
5475         <p>Bitcoin is a incredible use of peer to peer communication and
5476 encryption, allowing direct and immediate money transfer without any
5477 central control.  It is sometimes claimed to be ideal for illegal
5478 activity, which I believe is quite a long way from the truth.  At least
5479 I would not conduct illegal money transfers using a system where the
5480 details of every transaction are kept forever.  This point is
5481 investigated in
5482 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login">USENIX ;login:</a>
5483 from December 2013, in the article
5484 "<a href="https://www.usenix.org/system/files/login/articles/03_meiklejohn-online.pdf">A
5485 Fistful of Bitcoins - Characterizing Payments Among Men with No
5486 Names</a>" by Sarah Meiklejohn, Marjori Pomarole,Grant Jordan, Kirill
5487 Levchenko, Damon McCoy, Geoffrey M. Voelker, and Stefan Savage.  They
5488 analyse the transaction log in the Bitcoin system, using it to find
5489 addresses belong to individuals and organisations and follow the flow
5490 of money from both Bitcoin theft and trades on Silk Road to where the
5491 money end up.  This is how they wrap up their article:</p>
5492
5493 <p><blockquote>
5494 <p>"To demonstrate the usefulness of this type of analysis, we turned
5495 our attention to criminal activity. In the Bitcoin economy, criminal
5496 activity can appear in a number of forms, such as dealing drugs on
5497 Silk Road or simply stealing someone else’s bitcoins. We followed the
5498 flow of bitcoins out of Silk Road (in particular, from one notorious
5499 address) and from a number of highly publicized thefts to see whether
5500 we could track the bitcoins to known services. Although some of the
5501 thieves attempted to use sophisticated mixing techniques (or possibly
5502 mix services) to obscure the flow of bitcoins, for the most part
5503 tracking the bitcoins was quite straightforward, and we ultimately saw
5504 large quantities of bitcoins flow to a variety of exchanges directly
5505 from the point of theft (or the withdrawal from Silk Road).</p>
5506
5507 <p>As acknowledged above, following stolen bitcoins to the point at
5508 which they are deposited into an exchange does not in itself identify
5509 the thief; however, it does enable further de-anonymization in the
5510 case in which certain agencies can determine (through, for example,
5511 subpoena power) the real-world owner of the account into which the
5512 stolen bitcoins were deposited.  Because such exchanges seem to serve
5513 as chokepoints into and out of the Bitcoin economy (i.e., there are
5514 few alternative ways to cash out), we conclude that using Bitcoin for
5515 money laundering or other illicit purposes does not (at least at
5516 present) seem to be particularly attractive."</p>
5517 </blockquote><p>
5518
5519 <p>These researches are not the first to analyse the Bitcoin
5520 transaction log.  The 2011 paper
5521 "<a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/1107.4524">An Analysis of Anonymity in
5522 the Bitcoin System</A>" by Fergal Reid and Martin Harrigan is
5523 summarized like this:</p>
5524
5525 <p><blockquote>
5526 "Anonymity in Bitcoin, a peer-to-peer electronic currency system, is a
5527 complicated issue. Within the system, users are identified by
5528 public-keys only. An attacker wishing to de-anonymize its users will
5529 attempt to construct the one-to-many mapping between users and
5530 public-keys and associate information external to the system with the
5531 users. Bitcoin tries to prevent this attack by storing the mapping of
5532 a user to his or her public-keys on that user's node only and by
5533 allowing each user to generate as many public-keys as required. In
5534 this chapter we consider the topological structure of two networks
5535 derived from Bitcoin's public transaction history. We show that the
5536 two networks have a non-trivial topological structure, provide
5537 complementary views of the Bitcoin system and have implications for
5538 anonymity. We combine these structures with external information and
5539 techniques such as context discovery and flow analysis to investigate
5540 an alleged theft of Bitcoins, which, at the time of the theft, had a
5541 market value of approximately half a million U.S. dollars."
5542 </blockquote></p>
5543
5544 <p>I hope these references can help kill the urban myth that Bitcoin
5545 is anonymous.  It isn't really a good fit for illegal activites.  Use
5546 cash if you need to stay anonymous, at least until regular DNA
5547 sampling of notes and coins become the norm. :)</p>
5548
5549 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
5550 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
5551 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
5552
5553       </div>
5554       <div class="tags">
5555
5556
5557         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>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/usenix">usenix</a>.
5558
5559
5560       </div>
5561     </div>
5562     <div class="padding"></div>
5563
5564     <div class="entry">
5565       <div class="title">
5566         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_16.html">New chrpath release 0.16</a>
5567       </div>
5568       <div class="date">
5569         14th January 2014
5570       </div>
5571       <div class="body">
5572         <p><a href="http://www.coverity.com/">Coverity</a> is a nice tool to
5573 find problems in C, C++ and Java code using static source code
5574 analysis.  It can detect a lot of different problems, and is very
5575 useful to find memory and locking bugs in the error handling part of
5576 the source.  The company behind it provide
5577 <a href="https://scan.coverity.com/">check of free software projects as
5578 a community service</a>, and many hundred free software projects are
5579 already checked.  A few days ago I decided to have a closer look at
5580 the Coverity system, and discovered that the
5581 <a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/">gnash</a> and
5582 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/ipmitool/">ipmitool</a>
5583 projects I am involved with was already registered.  But these are
5584 fairly big, and I would also like to have a small and easy project to
5585 check, and decided to <a href="http://scan.coverity.com/projects/1179">request
5586 checking of the chrpath project</a>.  It was
5587 added to the checker and discovered seven potential defects.  Six of
5588 these were real, mostly resource "leak" when the program detected an
5589 error.  Nothing serious, as the resources would be released a fraction
5590 of a second later when the program exited because of the error, but it
5591 is nice to do it right in case the source of the program some time in
5592 the future end up in a library.  Having fixed all defects and added
5593 <a href="https://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/chrpath-devel">a
5594 mailing list for the chrpath developers</a>, I decided it was time to
5595 publish a new release.  These are the release notes:</p>
5596
5597 <p>New in 0.16 released 2014-01-14:</p>
5598
5599 <ul>
5600
5601   <li>Fixed all minor bugs discovered by Coverity.</li>
5602   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project.</li>
5603   <li>Mention new project mailing list in the documentation.</li>
5604
5605 </ul>
5606
5607 <p>You can
5608 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
5609 new version 0.16 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
5610 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
5611 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
5612 include a test suite check.</p>
5613
5614       </div>
5615       <div class="tags">
5616
5617
5618         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5619
5620
5621       </div>
5622     </div>
5623     <div class="padding"></div>
5624
5625     <div class="entry">
5626       <div class="title">
5627         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Dominik_George.html">Debian Edu interview: Dominik George</a>
5628       </div>
5629       <div class="date">
5630         25th December 2013
5631       </div>
5632       <div class="body">
5633         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
5634 project</a> consist of both newcomers and old timers, and this time I
5635 was able to get an interview with a newcomer in the project who showed
5636 up on the IRC channel a few weeks ago to let us know about his
5637 successful installation of Debian Edu Wheezy in his School.  Say hello
5638 to <a href="https://www.ohloh.net/accounts/Natureshadow">Dominik
5639 George</a>.</p>
5640
5641 <!-- http://www.dominik-george.de/images/foto.jpg -->
5642
5643 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
5644
5645 <p>I am a 23 year-old student from Germany who has spent half of his
5646 life with open source. In "real life", I am, as already mentioned, a
5647 student in the fields of Computer Science, Electrical Engineering,
5648 Information Technologies and Anglistics. Due to my (only partially
5649 voluntary) huge engagement in the open source world, these things are
5650 a bit vacant right now however.</p>
5651
5652 <p>I also have been working as a project teacher at a Gymasnium
5653 (public school) for various years now. I took up that work some time
5654 around 2005 when still attending that school myself and have continued
5655 it until today. I also had been running the (kind of very advanced)
5656 network of that school together with a team of very interested and
5657 talented students in the age of 11 to 15 years, who took the chance to
5658 learn a lot about open source and networking before I left the school
5659 to help building another school's informational education concept from
5660 scratch.</p>
5661
5662 <p>That said, one might see me as a kind of "glue" between school kids
5663 and the elderly of teachers as well as between the open source
5664 ecosystem and the (even more complex) educational ecosystem.</p>
5665
5666 <p>When I am not busy with open source or education, I like Geocaching
5667 and cycling.</p>
5668
5669 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
5670 project?</strong></p>
5671
5672 <p>I think that happened some time around 2009 when I first attended
5673 <a href="http://www.froscon.org">FrOSCon</a> and visited the project
5674 booth. I think I wasn't too interested back then because I used to
5675 have an attitude of disliking software that does too much stuff on its
5676 own. Maybe I was too inexperienced to realise the upsides of an
5677 "out-of-the-box" solution ;).</p>
5678
5679 <p>The first time I actively talked to Skolelinux people was at
5680 <a href="http://www.openrheinruhr.de">OpenRheinRuhr</a> 2011 when the
5681 BiscuIT project, a home-grewn software used by my school for various
5682 really cool things from timetables and class contact lists to lunch
5683 ordering, student ID card printing and project elections first got to
5684 a stage where it could have been published. I asked the Skolelinux
5685 guys running the booth if the project were interested in it and gave a
5686 small demonstration, but there wasn't any real feedback and the guys
5687 seemed rather uninterested.</p>
5688
5689 <p>After I left the school where I developed the software, it got
5690 mostly lost, but I am now reimplementing it for my new school. I have
5691 reusability and compatibility in mind, and I hop there will be a new
5692 basis for contributing it to the Skolelinux project ;)!</p>
5693
5694 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
5695 Edu?</strong></p>
5696
5697 <p>The most important advantage seems to be that it "just
5698 works". After overcoming some minor (but still very annoying) glitches
5699 in the installer, I got a fully functional, working school network,
5700 without the month-long hassle I experienced when setting all that up
5701 from scratch in earlier years. And above that, it rocked - I didn't
5702 have any real hardware at hand, because the school was just founded
5703 and has no money whatsoever, so I installed a combined server (main
5704 server, terminal services and workstation) in a VM on my personal
5705 notebook, bridging the LTSP network interface to the ethernet port,
5706 and then PXE-booted the Windows notebooks that were lying around from
5707 it. I could use 8 clients without any performance issues, by using a
5708 tiny little VM on a tiny little notebook. I think that's enough to say
5709 that it rocks!</p>
5710
5711 <p>Secondly, there are marketing reasons. Life's bad, and so no
5712 politician will ever permit a setup described as "Debian, an universal
5713 operating system, with some really cool educational tools" while they
5714 will be jsut fine with "Skolelinux, a single-purpose solution for your
5715 school network", even if both turn out to be the very same thing (yes,
5716 this is unfair towards the Skolelinux project, and must not be taken
5717 too seriously - you get the idea, anyway).</p>
5718
5719 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
5720 Edu?</strong></p>
5721
5722 <p>I have not been involved with Skolelinux long enough to really
5723 answer this question in a fair way. Thus, please allow me to put it in
5724 other words: "What do you expect from Skolelinux to keep liking it?" I
5725 can list a few points about that:</p>
5726
5727 <ul>
5728
5729  <li>always strive to get all things integrated into Debian upstream
5730  <li>be open to discussion about changes and the like, even with newcomers
5731  <li>be helpful at being helpful ;)
5732
5733 </ul>
5734
5735 <p>I'm really sorry I cannot say much more about that :(!</p>
5736
5737 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
5738
5739 <p>First of all, all software I use is free and open. I have abandoned
5740 all non-free software (except for firmware on my darned phone) this
5741 year.</p>
5742
5743 <p>I run Debian GNU/Linux on all PC systems I use. On that, I mostly
5744 run text tools. I use
5745 <a href="https://www.mirbsd.org/mksh.htm">mksh</a> as shell,
5746 <a href="https://www.mirbsd.org/jupp.htm">jupp</a> as very advanced
5747 text editor (I even got the developer to help me write a script/macro
5748 based full-featured student management software with the two),
5749 <a href="http://mcabber.com/">mcabber</a> for XMPP and
5750 <a href="http://www.irssi.org/">irssi</a> for IRC. For that overly
5751 coloured world called the WWW, I use
5752 <a href="https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/">Iceweasel
5753 (Firefox)</a>. Oh, and <a href="http://www.mutt.org/">mutt</a> for
5754 e-mail.</p>
5755
5756 <p>However, while I am personally aware of the fact that text tools
5757 are more efficient and powerful than anything else, I also use (or at
5758 least operate) some tools that are suitable to bring open source to
5759 kids. One of these things is <a href="http://jappix.org/">Jappix</a>,
5760 which I already introduced to some kids even before they got aware of
5761 Facebook, making them see for themselves that they do not need
5762 Facebook now ;).</p>
5763
5764 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
5765 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
5766
5767 <p>Well, that's a two-sided thing. One side is what I believe, and one
5768 side is what I have experienced.</p>
5769
5770 <p>I believe that the right strategy is showing them the benefits. But
5771 that won't work out as long as the acceptance of free alternatives
5772 grows globally. What I mean is that if all the kids are almost forced
5773 to use Windows, Facebook, Skype, you name it at home, they will not
5774 see why they would want to use alternatives at school. I have seen
5775 students take seat in front of a fully-functional, modern Debian
5776 desktop that could do anything their Windows at home could do, and
5777 they jsut refused to use it because "Linux sucks". It is something
5778 that makes the council of our city spend around 600000 € to buy
5779 software - not including hardware, mind you - for operating school
5780 networks, and for installing a system that, as has been proved, does
5781 not work. For those of you readers who are good at maths, have you
5782 already found out how many lives could have been saved with that money
5783 if we had instead used it to bring education to parts of the world
5784 that need it? I have, and found it to be nothing less dramatic than
5785 plain criminal.</p>
5786
5787 <p>That said, the only feasible way appears to be the bottom up
5788 method. We have to bring free software to kids and parents. I have
5789 founded an association named
5790 <a href="https://www.teckids.org">Teckids</a> here in Germany that does
5791 just that. We organise several events for kids and adolescents in the
5792 area of free and open source software, for example the
5793 <a href="http://kids.froscon.org">FrogLabs</a>, which share staff with
5794 Teckids and are the youth programme of
5795 <a href="http://www.froscon.org">the Free and Open Source Software
5796 Conference (FrOSCon)</a>. We do a lot more than most other conferences
5797 - this year, we first offered the FrogLabs as a holiday camp for kids
5798 aged 10 to 16. It was a huge success, with approx. 30 kids taking part
5799 and learning with and about free software through a whole weekend. All
5800 of us had a lot of fun, and the results were really exciting.</p>
5801
5802 <p>Apart from that, we are preparing a campaign that is supposed to bring
5803 the message of free alternatives to stuff kids use every day to them and
5804 their parents, e.g. the use of Jabber / Jappix instead of Facebook and
5805 Skype. To make that possible, we are planning to get together a team of
5806 clever kids who understand very well what their peers need and can bring
5807 it across to them. So we will have a peer-driven network of adolescents
5808 who teach each other and collect feedback from the community of minors.
5809 We then take that feedback and our own experience to work closely with
5810 open source projects, such as Skolelinux or Jappix, at improving their
5811 software in a way that makes it more and more attractive for the target
5812 group. At least I hope that we will have good cooperation with
5813 Skolelinux in the future ;)!</p>
5814
5815 <p>So in conclusion, what I believe is that, if it weren't for the world
5816 being so bad, it should be very clear to the political decision makers
5817 that the only way to go nowadays is free software for various reasons,
5818 but I have learnt that the only way that seems to work is bottom up.</p>
5819
5820 <!--
5821
5822 >  * Who should be interviewed with this questions in the future?
5823
5824 That's probably the hardest question of them all, as I do not know the
5825 community. However, I would be willing to do the following:
5826
5827  <li>Run an interview with a German headteacher who is very open to
5828    free software, and also prefers it, but cannot really use it because
5829    of the decision makers above;
5830  <li>Run interviews with some kids, both with and without previous
5831    knowledge about free software
5832
5833 If that is wanted, just let me know ;).
5834
5835 -->
5836
5837       </div>
5838       <div class="tags">
5839
5840
5841         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>.
5842
5843
5844       </div>
5845     </div>
5846     <div class="padding"></div>
5847
5848     <div class="entry">
5849       <div class="title">
5850         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Klaus_Knopper.html">Debian Edu interview: Klaus Knopper</a>
5851       </div>
5852       <div class="date">
5853          6th December 2013
5854       </div>
5855       <div class="body">
5856         <p>It has been a while since I managed to publish the last interview,
5857 but the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
5858 Skolelinux</a> community is still going strong, and yesterday we even
5859 had a new school administrator show up on
5860 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/#debian-edu">#debian-edu</a> to share
5861 his success story with installing Debian Edu at their school.  This
5862 time I have been able to get some helpful comments from the creator of
5863 Knoppix, Klaus Knopper, who was involved in a Skolelinux project in
5864 Germany a few years ago.</p>
5865
5866 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
5867
5868 <p>I am Klaus Knopper.  I have a master degree in electrical
5869 engineering, and is currently professor in information management at
5870 the university of applied sciences Kaiserslautern / Germany and
5871 freelance Open Source software developer and consultant.</p>
5872
5873 <p>All of this is pretty much of the work I spend my days with. Apart
5874 from teaching, I'm also conducting some more or less experimental
5875 projects like the <a href="http://www.knoppix.org">Knoppix GNU/Linux live
5876 system</a> (Debian-based like Skolelinux),
5877 <a href="http://www.knopper.net/knoppix-adriane/index-en.html">ADRIANE</a>
5878 (a blind-friendly talking desktop system) and
5879 <a href="http://www.knopper.net/linbo/index-en.html">LINBO</a>
5880 (Linux-based network boot console, a fast remote install and repair
5881 system supporting various operating systems).</p>
5882
5883 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
5884 project?</strong></p>
5885
5886 <p>The credit for this have to go to Kurt Gramlich, who is the German
5887 coordinator for Skolelinux.  We were looking for an all-in-one open
5888 source community-supported distribution for schools, and Kurt
5889 introduced us to Skolelinux for this purpose.</p>
5890
5891 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
5892 Edu?</strong></p>
5893
5894 <ul>
5895   <li>Quick installation,</li>
5896   <li>works (almost) out of the box,</li>
5897   <li>contains many useful software packages for teaching and learning,</li>
5898   <li>is a purely community-based distro and not controlled by a
5899     single company,</li>
5900   <li>has a large number of supporters and teachers who share their
5901     experience and problem solutions.</li>
5902 </ul>
5903
5904 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
5905 Edu?</strong></p>
5906
5907 <ul>
5908   <li>Skolelinux is - as we had to learn - not easily upgradable to
5909   the next version.  Opposed to its genuine Debian base, upgrading to
5910   a new version means a full new installation from scratch to get it
5911   working again reliably.
5912
5913   <li>Skolelinux is based on Debian/stable, and therefore always a
5914   little outdated in terms of program versions compared to Edubuntu or
5915   similar educational Linux distros, which rather use Debian/testing
5916   as their base.
5917
5918   <li>Skolelinux has some very self-opinionated and stubborn default
5919   configuration which in my opinion adds unnecessary complexity and is
5920   not always suitable for a schools needs, the preset network
5921   configuration is actually a core definition feature of Skolelinux
5922   and not easy to change, so schools sometimes have to change their
5923   network configuration to make it "Skolelinux-compatible".
5924
5925   <li>Some proposed extensions, which were made available as
5926   contribution, like secure examination mode and lecture material
5927   distribution and collection, were not accepted into the mainline
5928   Skolelinux development and are now not easy to maintain in the
5929   future because of Skolelinux somewhat undeterministic update
5930   schemes.</li>
5931
5932   <li>Skolelinux has only a very tiny number of base developers
5933   compared to Debian.</li>
5934
5935 </ul>
5936
5937 <p>For these reasons and experience from our project, I would now
5938 rather consider using plain Debian for schools next time, until
5939 Skolelinux is more closely integrated into Debian and becomes
5940 upgradeable without reinstallation.</p>
5941
5942 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
5943
5944 <p>GNU/Linux with LXDE desktop, bash for interactive dialog and
5945 programming, texlive for documentation and correspondence,
5946 occasionally LibreOffice for document format conversion. Various
5947 programming languages for teaching.</p>
5948
5949 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
5950 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
5951
5952 <p>Strong arguments are</p>
5953
5954 <ul>
5955
5956   <li>Knowledge is free, and so should be methods and tools for
5957     teaching and learning.</li>
5958
5959   <li>Students can learn with and use the same software at school, at
5960     home, and at their working place without running into license or
5961     conversion problems.</li>
5962
5963   <li>Closed source or proprietary software hides knowledge rather
5964     than exposing it, and proprietary software vendors try to bind
5965     customers to certain products.  But teachers need to teach
5966     science, not products.</li>
5967
5968   <li>If you have everything you for daily work as open source, what
5969     would you need proprietary software for?</li>
5970
5971 </ul>
5972
5973       </div>
5974       <div class="tags">
5975
5976
5977         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>.
5978
5979
5980       </div>
5981     </div>
5982     <div class="padding"></div>
5983
5984     <div class="entry">
5985       <div class="title">
5986         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnadsnett_for_alle__a_wireless_community_network_in_Oslo__take_shape.html">Dugnadsnett for alle, a wireless community network in Oslo, take shape</a>
5987       </div>
5988       <div class="date">
5989         30th November 2013
5990       </div>
5991       <div class="body">
5992         <p>If you want the ability to electronically communicate directly with
5993 your neighbors and friends using a network controlled by your peers in
5994 stead of centrally controlled by a few corporations, or would like to
5995 experiment with interesting network technology, the
5996 <a href="http://www.dugnadsnett.no/">Dugnasnett for alle i Oslo</a>
5997 might be project for you.  39 mesh nodes are currently being planned,
5998 in the freshly started initiative from NUUG and Hackeriet to create a
5999 wireless community network.  The work is inspired by
6000 <a href="http://freifunk.net/">Freifunk</a>,
6001 <a href="http://www.awmn.net/">Athens Wireless Metropolitan
6002 Network</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roofnet">Roofnet</a>
6003 and other successful mesh networks around the globe.  Two days ago we
6004 held a workshop to try to get people started on setting up their own
6005 mesh node, and there we decided to create a new mailing list
6006 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/dugnadsnett">dugnadsnett
6007 (at) nuug.no</a> and IRC channel
6008 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#dugnadsnett.no">#dugnadsnett.no</a> to
6009 coordinate the work.  See also the NUUG blog post
6010 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/E_postliste_og_IRC_kanal_for_Dugnadsnett_for_alle_i_Oslo.shtml">announcing
6011 the mailing list and IRC channel</a>.</p>
6012
6013       </div>
6014       <div class="tags">
6015
6016
6017         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
6018
6019
6020       </div>
6021     </div>
6022     <div class="padding"></div>
6023
6024     <div class="entry">
6025       <div class="title">
6026         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_15.html">New chrpath release 0.15</a>
6027       </div>
6028       <div class="date">
6029         24th November 2013
6030       </div>
6031       <div class="body">
6032         <p>After many years break from the package and a vain hope that
6033 development would be continued by someone else, I finally pulled my
6034 acts together this morning and wrapped up a new release of chrpath,
6035 the command line tool to modify the rpath and runpath of already
6036 compiled ELF programs.  The update was triggered by the persistence of
6037 Isha Vishnoi at IBM, which needed a new config.guess file to get
6038 support for the ppc64le architecture (powerpc 64-bit Little Endian) he
6039 is working on.  I checked the
6040 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/chrpath">Debian</a>,
6041 <a href="https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/chrpath">Ubuntu</a> and
6042 <a href="https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/acls/name/chrpath">Fedora</a>
6043 packages for interesting patches (failed to find the source from
6044 OpenSUSE and Mandriva packages), and found quite a few nice fixes.
6045 These are the release notes:</p>
6046
6047 <p>New in 0.15 released 2013-11-24:</p>
6048
6049 <ul>
6050
6051   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project to work
6052    with newer architectures.  Thanks to isha vishnoi for the heads
6053    up.</li>
6054
6055   <li>Updated README with current URLs.</li>
6056
6057   <li>Added byteswap fix found in Ubuntu, credited Jeremy Kerr and
6058    Matthias Klose.</li>
6059
6060   <li>Added missing help for -k|--keepgoing option, using patch by
6061    Petr Machata found in Fedora.</li>
6062
6063   <li>Rewrite removal of RPATH/RUNPATH to make sure the entry in
6064    .dynamic is a NULL terminated string.  Based on patch found in
6065    Fedora credited Axel Thimm and Christian Krause.</li>
6066
6067 </ul>
6068
6069 <p>You can
6070 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
6071 new version 0.15 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
6072 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
6073 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
6074 include a testsuite check.</p>
6075
6076       </div>
6077       <div class="tags">
6078
6079
6080         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6081
6082
6083       </div>
6084     </div>
6085     <div class="padding"></div>
6086
6087     <div class="entry">
6088       <div class="title">
6089         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/All_drones_should_be_radio_marked_with_what_they_do_and_who_they_belong_to.html">All drones should be radio marked with what they do and who they belong to</a>
6090       </div>
6091       <div class="date">
6092         21st November 2013
6093       </div>
6094       <div class="body">
6095         <p>Drones, flying robots, are getting more and more popular.  The most
6096 know ones are the killer drones used by some government to murder
6097 people they do not like without giving them the chance of a fair
6098 trial, but the technology have many good uses too, from mapping and
6099 forest maintenance to photography and search and rescue.  I am sure it
6100 is just a question of time before "bad drones" are in the hands of
6101 private enterprises and not only state criminals but petty criminals
6102 too.  The drone technology is very useful and very dangerous.  To have
6103 some control over the use of drones, I agree with Daniel Suarez in his
6104 TED talk
6105 "<a href="https://archive.org/details/DanielSuarez_2013G">The kill
6106 decision shouldn't belong to a robot</a>", where he suggested this
6107 little gem to keep the good while limiting the bad use of drones:</p>
6108
6109 <blockquote>
6110
6111 <p>Each robot and drone should have a cryptographically signed
6112 I.D. burned in at the factory that can be used to track its movement
6113 through public spaces. We have license plates on cars, tail numbers on
6114 aircraft. This is no different. And every citizen should be able to
6115 download an app that shows the population of drones and autonomous
6116 vehicles moving through public spaces around them, both right now and
6117 historically. And civic leaders should deploy sensors and civic drones
6118 to detect rogue drones, and instead of sending killer drones of their
6119 own up to shoot them down, they should notify humans to their
6120 presence. And in certain very high-security areas, perhaps civic
6121 drones would snare them and drag them off to a bomb disposal facility.</p>
6122
6123 <p>But notice, this is more an immune system than a weapons system. It
6124 would allow us to avail ourselves of the use of autonomous vehicles
6125 and drones while still preserving our open, civil society.</p>
6126
6127 </blockquote>
6128
6129 <p>The key is that <em>every citizen</em> should be able to read the
6130 radio beacons sent from the drones in the area, to be able to check
6131 both the government and others use of drones.  For such control to be
6132 effective, everyone must be able to do it.  What should such beacon
6133 contain?  At least formal owner, purpose, contact information and GPS
6134 location.  Probably also the origin and target position of the current
6135 flight.  And perhaps some registration number to be able to look up
6136 the drone in a central database tracking their movement.  Robots
6137 should not have privacy.  It is people who need privacy.</p>
6138
6139       </div>
6140       <div class="tags">
6141
6142
6143         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</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>.
6144
6145
6146       </div>
6147     </div>
6148     <div class="padding"></div>
6149
6150     <div class="entry">
6151       <div class="title">
6152         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_a_wireless_community_network_in_Oslo_.html">Lets make a wireless community network in Oslo!</a>
6153       </div>
6154       <div class="date">
6155         13th November 2013
6156       </div>
6157       <div class="body">
6158         <p>Today NUUG and Hackeriet announced
6159 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Bli_med___bygge_dugnadsnett_for_alle_i_Oslo.shtml">our
6160 plans to join forces and create a wireless community network in
6161 Oslo</a>.  The workshop to help people get started will take place
6162 Thursday 2013-11-28, but we already are collecting the geolocation of
6163 people joining forces to make this happen.  We have
6164 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/blob/master/oslo-nodes.geojson">9
6165 locations plotted on the map</a>, but we will need more before we have
6166 a connected mesh spread across Oslo.  If this sound interesting to
6167 you, please join us at the workshop.  If you are too impatient to wait
6168 15 days, please join us on the IRC channel
6169 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23nuug">#nuug on irc.freenode.net</a>
6170 right away. :)</p>
6171
6172       </div>
6173       <div class="tags">
6174
6175
6176         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
6177
6178
6179       </div>
6180     </div>
6181     <div class="padding"></div>
6182
6183     <div class="entry">
6184       <div class="title">
6185         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Running_TP_Link_MR3040_as_a_batman_adv_mesh_node_using_openwrt.html">Running TP-Link MR3040 as a batman-adv mesh node using openwrt</a>
6186       </div>
6187       <div class="date">
6188         10th November 2013
6189       </div>
6190       <div class="body">
6191         <p>Continuing my research into mesh networking, I was recommended to
6192 use TP-Link 3040 and 3600 access points as mesh nodes, and the pair I
6193 bought arrived on Friday.  Here are my notes on how to set up the
6194 MR3040 as a mesh node using
6195 <a href="http://www.openwrt.org/">OpenWrt</a>.</p>
6196
6197 <p>I started by following the instructions on the OpenWRT wiki for
6198 <a href="http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/tl-mr3040">TL-MR3040</a>,
6199 and downloaded
6200 <a href="http://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/trunk/ar71xx/openwrt-ar71xx-generic-tl-mr3040-v2-squashfs-factory.bin">the
6201 recommended firmware image</a>
6202 (openwrt-ar71xx-generic-tl-mr3040-v2-squashfs-factory.bin) and
6203 uploaded it into the original web interface.  The flashing went fine,
6204 and the machine was available via telnet on the ethernet port.  After
6205 logging in and setting the root password, ssh was available and I
6206 could start to set it up as a batman-adv mesh node.</p>
6207
6208 <p>I started off by reading the instructions from
6209 <a href="http://wirelessafrica.meraka.org.za/wiki/index.php?title=Antoine's_Research">Wireless
6210 Africa</a>, which had quite a lot of useful information, but
6211 eventually I followed the recipe from the Open Mesh wiki for
6212 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki/Batman-adv-openwrt-config">using
6213 batman-adv on OpenWrt</a>.  A small snag was the fact that the
6214 <tt>opkg install kmod-batman-adv</tt> command did not work as it
6215 should.  The batman-adv kernel module would fail to load because its
6216 dependency crc16 was not already loaded.  I
6217 <a href="https://dev.openwrt.org/ticket/14452">reported the bug</a> to
6218 the openwrt project and hope it will be fixed soon.  But the problem
6219 only seem to affect initial testing of batman-adv, as configuration
6220 seem to work when booting from scratch.</p>
6221
6222 <p>The setup is done using files in /etc/config/.  I did not bridge
6223 the Ethernet and mesh interfaces this time, to be able to hook up the
6224 box on my local network and log into it for configuration updates.
6225 The following files were changed and look like this after modifying
6226 them:</p>
6227
6228 <p><tt>/etc/config/network</tt></p>
6229
6230 <pre>
6231
6232 config interface 'loopback'
6233         option ifname 'lo'
6234         option proto 'static'
6235         option ipaddr '127.0.0.1'
6236         option netmask '255.0.0.0'
6237
6238 config globals 'globals'
6239         option ula_prefix 'fdbf:4c12:3fed::/48'
6240
6241 config interface 'lan'
6242         option ifname 'eth0'
6243         option type 'bridge'
6244         option proto 'dhcp'
6245         option ipaddr '192.168.1.1'
6246         option netmask '255.255.255.0'
6247         option hostname 'tl-mr3040'
6248         option ip6assign '60'
6249
6250 config interface 'mesh'
6251         option ifname 'adhoc0'
6252         option mtu '1528'
6253         option proto 'batadv'
6254         option mesh 'bat0'
6255 </pre>
6256
6257 <p><tt>/etc/config/wireless</tt></p>
6258 <pre>
6259
6260 config wifi-device 'radio0'
6261         option type 'mac80211'
6262         option channel '11'
6263         option hwmode '11ng'
6264         option path 'platform/ar933x_wmac'
6265         option htmode 'HT20'
6266         list ht_capab 'SHORT-GI-20'
6267         list ht_capab 'SHORT-GI-40'
6268         list ht_capab 'RX-STBC1'
6269         list ht_capab 'DSSS_CCK-40'
6270         option disabled '0'
6271
6272 config wifi-iface 'wmesh'
6273         option device 'radio0'
6274         option ifname 'adhoc0'
6275         option network 'mesh'
6276         option encryption 'none'
6277         option mode 'adhoc'
6278         option bssid '02:BA:00:00:00:01'
6279         option ssid 'meshfx@hackeriet'
6280 </pre>
6281 <p><tt>/etc/config/batman-adv</tt></p>
6282 <pre>
6283
6284 config 'mesh' 'bat0'
6285         option interfaces 'adhoc0'
6286         option 'aggregated_ogms'
6287         option 'ap_isolation'
6288         option 'bonding'
6289         option 'fragmentation'
6290         option 'gw_bandwidth'
6291         option 'gw_mode'
6292         option 'gw_sel_class'
6293         option 'log_level'
6294         option 'orig_interval'
6295         option 'vis_mode'
6296         option 'bridge_loop_avoidance'
6297         option 'distributed_arp_table'
6298         option 'network_coding'
6299         option 'hop_penalty'
6300
6301 # yet another batX instance
6302 # config 'mesh' 'bat5'
6303 #       option 'interfaces' 'second_mesh'
6304 </pre>
6305
6306 <p>The mesh node is now operational.  I have yet to test its range,
6307 but I hope it is good.  I have not yet tested the TP-Link 3600 box
6308 still wrapped up in plastic.</p>
6309
6310       </div>
6311       <div class="tags">
6312
6313
6314         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
6315
6316
6317       </div>
6318     </div>
6319     <div class="padding"></div>
6320
6321     <div class="entry">
6322       <div class="title">
6323         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_init_d_boot_script_example_for_rsyslog.html">Debian init.d boot script example for rsyslog</a>
6324       </div>
6325       <div class="date">
6326          2nd November 2013
6327       </div>
6328       <div class="body">
6329         <p>If one of the points of switching to a new init system in Debian is
6330 <a href="http://thomas.goirand.fr/blog/?p=147">to get rid of huge
6331 init.d scripts</a>, I doubt we need to switch away from sysvinit and
6332 init.d scripts at all.  Here is an example init.d script, ie a rewrite
6333 of /etc/init.d/rsyslog:</p>
6334
6335 <p><pre>
6336 #!/lib/init/init-d-script
6337 ### BEGIN INIT INFO
6338 # Provides:          rsyslog
6339 # Required-Start:    $remote_fs $time
6340 # Required-Stop:     umountnfs $time
6341 # X-Stop-After:      sendsigs
6342 # Default-Start:     2 3 4 5
6343 # Default-Stop:      0 1 6
6344 # Short-Description: enhanced syslogd
6345 # Description:       Rsyslog is an enhanced multi-threaded syslogd.
6346 #                    It is quite compatible to stock sysklogd and can be
6347 #                    used as a drop-in replacement.
6348 ### END INIT INFO
6349 DESC="enhanced syslogd"
6350 DAEMON=/usr/sbin/rsyslogd
6351 </pre></p>
6352
6353 <p>Pretty minimalistic to me... For the record, the original sysv-rc
6354 script was 137 lines, and the above is just 15 lines, most of it meta
6355 info/comments.</p>
6356
6357 <p>How to do this, you ask?  Well, one create a new script
6358 /lib/init/init-d-script looking something like this:
6359
6360 <p><pre>
6361 #!/bin/sh
6362
6363 # Define LSB log_* functions.
6364 # Depend on lsb-base (>= 3.2-14) to ensure that this file is present
6365 # and status_of_proc is working.
6366 . /lib/lsb/init-functions
6367
6368 #
6369 # Function that starts the daemon/service
6370
6371 #
6372 do_start()
6373 {
6374         # Return
6375         #   0 if daemon has been started
6376         #   1 if daemon was already running
6377         #   2 if daemon could not be started
6378         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON --test > /dev/null \
6379                 || return 1
6380         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON -- \
6381                 $DAEMON_ARGS \
6382                 || return 2
6383         # Add code here, if necessary, that waits for the process to be ready
6384         # to handle requests from services started subsequently which depend
6385         # on this one.  As a last resort, sleep for some time.
6386 }
6387
6388 #
6389 # Function that stops the daemon/service
6390 #
6391 do_stop()
6392 {
6393         # Return
6394         #   0 if daemon has been stopped
6395         #   1 if daemon was already stopped
6396         #   2 if daemon could not be stopped
6397         #   other if a failure occurred
6398         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --retry=TERM/30/KILL/5 --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
6399         RETVAL="$?"
6400         [ "$RETVAL" = 2 ] && return 2
6401         # Wait for children to finish too if this is a daemon that forks
6402         # and if the daemon is only ever run from this initscript.
6403         # If the above conditions are not satisfied then add some other code
6404         # that waits for the process to drop all resources that could be
6405         # needed by services started subsequently.  A last resort is to
6406         # sleep for some time.
6407         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --oknodo --retry=0/30/KILL/5 --exec $DAEMON
6408         [ "$?" = 2 ] && return 2
6409         # Many daemons don't delete their pidfiles when they exit.
6410         rm -f $PIDFILE
6411         return "$RETVAL"
6412 }
6413
6414 #
6415 # Function that sends a SIGHUP to the daemon/service
6416 #
6417 do_reload() {
6418         #
6419         # If the daemon can reload its configuration without
6420         # restarting (for example, when it is sent a SIGHUP),
6421         # then implement that here.
6422         #
6423         start-stop-daemon --stop --signal 1 --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
6424         return 0
6425 }
6426
6427 SCRIPTNAME=$1
6428 scriptbasename="$(basename $1)"
6429 echo "SN: $scriptbasename"
6430 if [ "$scriptbasename" != "init-d-library" ] ; then
6431     script="$1"
6432     shift
6433     . $script
6434 else
6435     exit 0
6436 fi
6437
6438 NAME=$(basename $DAEMON)
6439 PIDFILE=/var/run/$NAME.pid
6440
6441 # Exit if the package is not installed
6442 #[ -x "$DAEMON" ] || exit 0
6443
6444 # Read configuration variable file if it is present
6445 [ -r /etc/default/$NAME ] && . /etc/default/$NAME
6446
6447 # Load the VERBOSE setting and other rcS variables
6448 . /lib/init/vars.sh
6449
6450 case "$1" in
6451   start)
6452         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Starting $DESC" "$NAME"
6453         do_start
6454         case "$?" in
6455                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
6456                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
6457         esac
6458         ;;
6459   stop)
6460         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Stopping $DESC" "$NAME"
6461         do_stop
6462         case "$?" in
6463                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
6464                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
6465         esac
6466         ;;
6467   status)
6468         status_of_proc "$DAEMON" "$NAME" && exit 0 || exit $?
6469         ;;
6470   #reload|force-reload)
6471         #
6472         # If do_reload() is not implemented then leave this commented out
6473         # and leave 'force-reload' as an alias for 'restart'.
6474         #
6475         #log_daemon_msg "Reloading $DESC" "$NAME"
6476         #do_reload
6477         #log_end_msg $?
6478         #;;
6479   restart|force-reload)
6480         #
6481         # If the "reload" option is implemented then remove the
6482         # 'force-reload' alias
6483         #
6484         log_daemon_msg "Restarting $DESC" "$NAME"
6485         do_stop
6486         case "$?" in
6487           0|1)
6488                 do_start
6489                 case "$?" in
6490                         0) log_end_msg 0 ;;
6491                         1) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Old process is still running
6492                         *) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Failed to start
6493                 esac
6494                 ;;
6495           *)
6496                 # Failed to stop
6497                 log_end_msg 1
6498                 ;;
6499         esac
6500         ;;
6501   *)
6502         echo "Usage: $SCRIPTNAME {start|stop|status|restart|force-reload}" >&2
6503         exit 3
6504         ;;
6505 esac
6506
6507 :
6508 </pre></p>
6509
6510 <p>It is based on /etc/init.d/skeleton, and could be improved quite a
6511 lot.  I did not really polish the approach, so it might not always
6512 work out of the box, but you get the idea.  I did not try very hard to
6513 optimize it nor make it more robust either.</p>
6514
6515 <p>A better argument for switching init system in Debian than reducing
6516 the size of init scripts (which is a good thing to do anyway), is to
6517 get boot system that is able to handle the kernel events sensibly and
6518 robustly, and do not depend on the boot to run sequentially.  The boot
6519 and the kernel have not behaved sequentially in years.</p>
6520
6521       </div>
6522       <div class="tags">
6523
6524
6525         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>.
6526
6527
6528       </div>
6529     </div>
6530     <div class="padding"></div>
6531
6532     <div class="entry">
6533       <div class="title">
6534         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Browser_plugin_for_SPICE__spice_xpi__uploaded_to_Debian.html">Browser plugin for SPICE (spice-xpi) uploaded to Debian</a>
6535       </div>
6536       <div class="date">
6537          1st November 2013
6538       </div>
6539       <div class="body">
6540         <p><a href="http://www.spice-space.org/">The SPICE protocol</a> for
6541 remote display access is the preferred solution with oVirt and RedHat
6542 Enterprise Virtualization, and I was sad to discover the other day
6543 that the browser plugin needed to use these systems seamlessly was
6544 missing in Debian.  The <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/668284">request
6545 for a package</a> was from 2012-04-10 with no progress since
6546 2013-04-01, so I decided to wrap up a package based on the great work
6547 from Cajus Pollmeier and put it in a collab-maint maintained git
6548 repository to get a package I could use.  I would very much like
6549 others to help me maintain the package (or just take over, I do not
6550 mind), but as no-one had volunteered so far, I just uploaded it to
6551 NEW.  I hope it will be available in Debian in a few days.</p>
6552
6553 <p>The source is now available from
6554 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/spice-xpi.git;a=summary">http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/spice-xpi.git;a=summary</a>.</p>
6555
6556       </div>
6557       <div class="tags">
6558
6559
6560         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>.
6561
6562
6563       </div>
6564     </div>
6565     <div class="padding"></div>
6566
6567     <div class="entry">
6568       <div class="title">
6569         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Teaching_vmdebootstrap_to_create_Raspberry_Pi_SD_card_images.html">Teaching vmdebootstrap to create Raspberry Pi SD card images</a>
6570       </div>
6571       <div class="date">
6572         27th October 2013
6573       </div>
6574       <div class="body">
6575         <p>The
6576 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/v/vmdebootstrap.html">vmdebootstrap</a>
6577 program is a a very nice system to create virtual machine images.  It
6578 create a image file, add a partition table, mount it and run
6579 debootstrap in the mounted directory to create a Debian system on a
6580 stick.  Yesterday, I decided to try to teach it how to make images for
6581 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi">Raspberry Pi</a>, as part
6582 of a plan to simplify the build system for
6583 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the FreedomBox
6584 project</a>.  The FreedomBox project already uses vmdebootstrap for
6585 the virtualbox images, but its current build system made multistrap
6586 based system for Dreamplug images, and it is lacking support for
6587 Raspberry Pi.</p>
6588
6589 <p>Armed with the knowledge on how to build "foreign" (aka non-native
6590 architecture) chroots for Raspberry Pi, I dived into the vmdebootstrap
6591 code and adjusted it to be able to build armel images on my amd64
6592 Debian laptop.  I ended up giving vmdebootstrap five new options,
6593 allowing me to replicate the image creation process I use to make
6594 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html">Debian
6595 Jessie based mesh node images for the Raspberry Pi</a>.  First, the
6596 <tt>--foreign /path/to/binfm_handler</tt> option tell vmdebootstrap to
6597 call debootstrap with --foreign and to copy the handler into the
6598 generated chroot before running the second stage.  This allow
6599 vmdebootstrap to create armel images on an amd64 host.  Next I added
6600 two new options <tt>--bootsize size</tt> and <tt>--boottype
6601 fstype</tt> to teach it to create a separate /boot/ partition with the
6602 given file system type, allowing me to create an image with a vfat
6603 partition for the /boot/ stuff.  I also added a <tt>--variant
6604 variant</tt> option to allow me to create smaller images without the
6605 Debian base system packages installed.  Finally, I added an option
6606 <tt>--no-extlinux</tt> to tell vmdebootstrap to not install extlinux
6607 as a boot loader.  It is not needed on the Raspberry Pi and probably
6608 most other non-x86 architectures.  The changes were accepted by the
6609 upstream author of vmdebootstrap yesterday and today, and is now
6610 available from
6611 <a href="http://git.liw.fi/cgi-bin/cgit/cgit.cgi/vmdebootstrap/">the
6612 upstream project page</a>.</p>
6613
6614 <p>To use it to build a Raspberry Pi image using Debian Jessie, first
6615 create a small script (the customize script) to add the non-free
6616 binary blob needed to boot the Raspberry Pi and the APT source
6617 list:</p>
6618
6619 <p><pre>
6620 #!/bin/sh
6621 set -e # Exit on first error
6622 rootdir="$1"
6623 cd "$rootdir"
6624 cat &lt;&lt;EOF > etc/apt/sources.list
6625 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ jessie main contrib non-free
6626 EOF
6627 # Install non-free binary blob needed to boot Raspberry Pi.  This
6628 # install a kernel somewhere too.
6629 wget https://raw.github.com/Hexxeh/rpi-update/master/rpi-update \
6630     -O $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
6631 chmod a+x $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
6632 mkdir -p $rootdir/lib/modules
6633 touch $rootdir/boot/start.elf
6634 chroot $rootdir rpi-update
6635 </pre></p>
6636
6637 <p>Next, fetch the latest vmdebootstrap script and call it like this
6638 to build the image:</p>
6639
6640 <pre>
6641 sudo ./vmdebootstrap \
6642     --variant minbase \
6643     --arch armel \
6644     --distribution jessie \
6645     --mirror http://http.debian.net/debian \
6646     --image test.img \
6647     --size 600M \
6648     --bootsize 64M \
6649     --boottype vfat \
6650     --log-level debug \
6651     --verbose \
6652     --no-kernel \
6653     --no-extlinux \
6654     --root-password raspberry \
6655     --hostname raspberrypi \
6656     --foreign /usr/bin/qemu-arm-static \
6657     --customize `pwd`/customize \
6658     --package netbase \
6659     --package git-core \
6660     --package binutils \
6661     --package ca-certificates \
6662     --package wget \
6663     --package kmod
6664 </pre></p>
6665
6666 <p>The list of packages being installed are the ones needed by
6667 rpi-update to make the image bootable on the Raspberry Pi, with the
6668 exception of netbase, which is needed by debootstrap to find
6669 /etc/hosts with the minbase variant.  I really wish there was a way to
6670 set up an Raspberry Pi using only packages in the Debian archive, but
6671 that is not possible as far as I know, because it boots from the GPU
6672 using a non-free binary blob.</p>
6673
6674 <p>The build host need debootstrap, kpartx and qemu-user-static and
6675 probably a few others installed.  I have not checked the complete
6676 build dependency list.</p>
6677
6678 <p>The resulting image will not use the hardware floating point unit
6679 on the Raspberry PI, because the armel architecture in Debian is not
6680 optimized for that use.  So the images created will be a bit slower
6681 than <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/">Raspbian</a> based images.</p>
6682
6683       </div>
6684       <div class="tags">
6685
6686
6687         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>.
6688
6689
6690       </div>
6691     </div>
6692     <div class="padding"></div>
6693
6694     <div class="entry">
6695       <div class="title">
6696         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html">A Raspberry Pi based batman-adv Mesh network node</a>
6697       </div>
6698       <div class="date">
6699         21st October 2013
6700       </div>
6701       <div class="body">
6702         <p>The last few days I have been experimenting with
6703 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki">the
6704 batman-adv mesh technology</a>.  I want to gain some experience to see
6705 if it will fit <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the
6706 Freedombox project</a>, and together with my neighbors try to build a
6707 mesh network around the park where I live.  Batman-adv is a layer 2
6708 mesh system ("ethernet" in other words), where the mesh network appear
6709 as if all the mesh clients are connected to the same switch.</p>
6710
6711 <p>My hardware of choice was the Linksys WRT54GL routers I had lying
6712 around, but I've been unable to get them working with batman-adv.  So
6713 instead, I started playing with a
6714 <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org/">Raspberry Pi</a>, and tried to
6715 get it working as a mesh node.  My idea is to use it to create a mesh
6716 node which function as a switch port, where everything connected to
6717 the Raspberry Pi ethernet plug is connected (bridged) to the mesh
6718 network.  This allow me to hook a wifi base station like the Linksys
6719 WRT54GL to the mesh by plugging it into a Raspberry Pi, and allow
6720 non-mesh clients to hook up to the mesh.  This in turn is useful for
6721 Android phones using <a href="http://servalproject.org/">the Serval
6722 Project</a> voip client, allowing every one around the playground to
6723 phone and message each other for free.  The reason is that Android
6724 phones do not see ad-hoc wifi networks (they are filtered away from
6725 the GUI view), and can not join the mesh without being rooted.  But if
6726 they are connected using a normal wifi base station, they can talk to
6727 every client on the local network.</p>
6728
6729 <p>To get this working, I've created a debian package
6730 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node">meshfx-node</a>
6731 and a script
6732 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/blob/master/build-rpi-mesh-node">build-rpi-mesh-node</a>
6733 to create the Raspberry Pi boot image.  I'm using Debian Jessie (and
6734 not Raspbian), to get more control over the packages available.
6735 Unfortunately a huge binary blob need to be inserted into the boot
6736 image to get it booting, but I'll ignore that for now.  Also, as
6737 Debian lack support for the CPU features available in the Raspberry
6738 Pi, the system do not use the hardware floating point unit.  I hope
6739 the routing performance isn't affected by the lack of hardware FPU
6740 support.</p>
6741
6742 <p>To create an image, run the following with a sudo enabled user
6743 after inserting the target SD card into the build machine:</p>
6744
6745 <p><pre>
6746 % wget -O build-rpi-mesh-node \
6747     https://raw.github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/master/build-rpi-mesh-node
6748 % sudo bash -x ./build-rpi-mesh-node > build.log 2>&1
6749 % dd if=/root/rpi/rpi_basic_jessie_$(date +%Y%m%d).img of=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=1M
6750 %
6751 </pre></p>
6752
6753 <p>Booting with the resulting SD card on a Raspberry PI with a USB
6754 wifi card inserted should give you a mesh node.  At least it does for
6755 me with a the wifi card I am using. The default mesh settings are the
6756 ones used by the Oslo mesh project at Hackeriet, as I mentioned in
6757 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Oslo_community_mesh_network___with_NUUG_and_Hackeriet_at_Hausmania.html">an
6758 earlier blog post about this mesh testing</a>.</p>
6759
6760 <p>The mesh node was not horribly expensive either.  I bought
6761 everything over the counter in shops nearby.  If I had ordered online
6762 from the lowest bidder, the price should be significantly lower:</p>
6763
6764 <p><table>
6765
6766 <tr><th>Supplier</th><th>Model</th><th>NOK</th></tr>
6767 <tr><td>Teknikkmagasinet</td><td>Raspberry Pi model B</td><td>349.90</td></tr>
6768 <tr><td>Teknikkmagasinet</td><td>Raspberry Pi type B case</td><td>99.90</td></tr>
6769 <tr><td>Lefdal</td><td>Jensen Air:Link 25150</td><td>295.-</td></tr>
6770 <tr><td>Clas Ohlson</td><td>Kingston 16 GB SD card</td><td>199.-</td></tr>
6771 <tr><td>Total cost</td><td></td><td>943.80</td></tr>
6772
6773 </table></p>
6774
6775 <p>Now my mesh network at home consist of one laptop in the basement
6776 connected to my production network, one Raspberry Pi node on the 1th
6777 floor that can be seen by my neighbor across the park, and one
6778 play-node I use to develop the image building script.  And some times
6779 I hook up my work horse laptop to the mesh to test it.  I look forward
6780 to figuring out what kind of latency the batman-adv setup will give,
6781 and how much packet loss we will experience around the park. :)</p>
6782
6783       </div>
6784       <div class="tags">
6785
6786
6787         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
6788
6789
6790       </div>
6791     </div>
6792     <div class="padding"></div>
6793
6794     <div class="entry">
6795       <div class="title">
6796         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Perl_library_to_control_the_Spykee_robot_moved_to_github.html">Perl library to control the Spykee robot moved to github</a>
6797       </div>
6798       <div class="date">
6799         19th October 2013
6800       </div>
6801       <div class="body">
6802         <p>Back in 2010, I created a Perl library to talk to
6803 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spykee">the Spykee robot</a>
6804 (with two belts, wifi, USB and Linux) and made it available from my
6805 web page.  Today I concluded that it should move to a site that is
6806 easier to use to cooperate with others, and moved it to github.  If
6807 you got a Spykee robot, you might want to check out
6808 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/libspykee-perl">the
6809 libspykee-perl github repository</a>.</p>
6810
6811       </div>
6812       <div class="tags">
6813
6814
6815         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>.
6816
6817
6818       </div>
6819     </div>
6820     <div class="padding"></div>
6821
6822     <div class="entry">
6823       <div class="title">
6824         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Good_causes__Debian_Outreach_Program_for_Women__EFF_documenting_the_spying_and_Open_access_in_Norway.html">Good causes: Debian Outreach Program for Women, EFF documenting the spying and Open access in Norway</a>
6825       </div>
6826       <div class="date">
6827         15th October 2013
6828       </div>
6829       <div class="body">
6830         <p>The last few days I came across a few good causes that should get
6831 wider attention.  I recommend signing and donating to each one of
6832 these. :)</p>
6833
6834 <p>Via <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2013/18/">Debian
6835 Project News for 2013-10-14</a> I came across the Outreach Program for
6836 Women program which is a Google Summer of Code like initiative to get
6837 more women involved in free software.  One debian sponsor has offered
6838 to match <a href="http://debian.ch/opw2013">any donation done to Debian
6839 earmarked</a> for this initiative.  I donated a few minutes ago, and
6840 hope you will to. :)</p>
6841
6842 <p>And the Electronic Frontier Foundation just announced plans to
6843 create <a href="https://supporters.eff.org/donate/nsa-videos">video
6844 documentaries about the excessive spying</a> on every Internet user that
6845 take place these days, and their need to fund the work.  I've already
6846 donated.  Are you next?</p>
6847
6848 <p>For my Norwegian audience, the organisation Studentenes og
6849 Akademikernes Internasjonale Hjelpefond is collecting signatures for a
6850 statement under the heading
6851 <a href="http://saih.no/Bloggers_United/">Bloggers United for Open
6852 Access</a> for those of us asking for more focus on open access in the
6853 Norwegian government.  So far 499 signatures.  I hope you will sign it
6854 too.</p>
6855
6856       </div>
6857       <div class="tags">
6858
6859
6860         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
6861
6862
6863       </div>
6864     </div>
6865     <div class="padding"></div>
6866
6867     <div class="entry">
6868       <div class="title">
6869         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Oslo_community_mesh_network___with_NUUG_and_Hackeriet_at_Hausmania.html">Oslo community mesh network - with NUUG and Hackeriet at Hausmania</a>
6870       </div>
6871       <div class="date">
6872         11th October 2013
6873       </div>
6874       <div class="body">
6875         <p>Wireless mesh networks are self organising and self healing
6876 networks that can be used to connect computers across small and large
6877 areas, depending on the radio technology used.  Normal wifi equipment
6878 can be used to create home made radio networks, and there are several
6879 successful examples like
6880 <a href="http://www.freifunk.net/">Freifunk</a> and
6881 <a href="http://www.awmn.net/">Athens Wireless Metropolitan Network</a>
6882 (see
6883 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wireless_community_networks_by_region#Greece">wikipedia
6884 for a large list</a>) around the globe.  To give you an idea how it
6885 work, check out the nice overview of the Kiel Freifunk community which
6886 can be seen from their
6887 <a href="http://freifunk.in-kiel.de/ffmap/nodes.html">dynamically
6888 updated node graph and map</a>, where one can see how the mesh nodes
6889 automatically handle routing and recover from nodes disappearing.
6890 There is also a small community mesh network group in Oslo, Norway,
6891 and that is the main topic of this blog post.</p>
6892
6893 <p>I've wanted to check out mesh networks for a while now, and hoped
6894 to do it as part of my involvement with the <a
6895 href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG member organisation</a> community, and
6896 my recent involvement in
6897 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the Freedombox project</a>
6898 finally lead me to give mesh networks some priority, as I suspect a
6899 Freedombox should use mesh networks to connect neighbours and family
6900 when possible, given that most communication between people are
6901 between those nearby (as shown for example by research on Facebook
6902 communication patterns).  It also allow people to communicate without
6903 any central hub to tap into for those that want to listen in on the
6904 private communication of citizens, which have become more and more
6905 important over the years.</p>
6906
6907 <p>So far I have only been able to find one group of people in Oslo
6908 working on community mesh networks, over at the hack space
6909 <a href="http://hackeriet.no/">Hackeriet</a> at Husmania.  They seem to
6910 have started with some Freifunk based effort using OLSR, called
6911 <a href="http://oslo.freifunk.net/index.php?title=Main_Page">the Oslo
6912 Freifunk project</a>, but that effort is now dead and the people
6913 behind it have moved on to a batman-adv based system called
6914 <a href="http://meshfx.org/trac">meshfx</a>.  Unfortunately the wiki
6915 site for the Oslo Freifunk project is no longer possible to update to
6916 reflect this fact, so the old project page can't be updated to point to
6917 the new project.  A while back, the people at Hackeriet invited people
6918 from the Freifunk community to Oslo to talk about mesh networks.  I
6919 came across this video where Hans Jørgen Lysglimt interview the
6920 speakers about this talk (from
6921 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2Kd7CLkhSY">youtube</a>):</p>
6922
6923 <p><iframe width="420" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/N2Kd7CLkhSY" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
6924
6925 <p>I mentioned OLSR and batman-adv, which are mesh routing protocols.
6926 There are heaps of different protocols, and I am still struggling to
6927 figure out which one would be "best" for some definitions of best, but
6928 given that the community mesh group in Oslo is so small, I believe it
6929 is best to hook up with the existing one instead of trying to create a
6930 completely different setup, and thus I have decided to focus on
6931 batman-adv for now.  It sure help me to  know that the very cool
6932 <a href="http://www.servalproject.org/">Serval project in Australia</a>
6933 is using batman-adv as their meshing technology when it create a self
6934 organizing and self healing telephony system for disaster areas and
6935 less industrialized communities.  Check out this cool video presenting
6936 that project (from
6937 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30qNfzJCQOA">youtube</a>):</p>
6938
6939 <p><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/30qNfzJCQOA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
6940
6941 <p>According to the wikipedia page on
6942 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_mesh_network">Wireless
6943 mesh network</a> there are around 70 competing schemes for routing
6944 packets across mesh networks, and OLSR, B.A.T.M.A.N. and
6945 B.A.T.M.A.N. advanced are protocols used by several free software
6946 based community mesh networks.</p>
6947
6948 <p>The batman-adv protocol is a bit special, as it provide layer 2
6949 (as in ethernet ) routing, allowing ipv4 and ipv6 to work on the same
6950 network.  One way to think about it is that it provide a mesh based
6951 vlan you can bridge to or handle like any other vlan connected to your
6952 computer.  The required drivers are already in the Linux kernel at
6953 least since Debian Wheezy, and it is fairly easy to set up.  A
6954 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki/Quick-start-guide">good
6955 introduction</a> is available from the Open Mesh project.  These are
6956 the key settings needed to join the Oslo meshfx network:</p>
6957
6958 <p><table>
6959 <tr><th>Setting</th><th>Value</th></tr>
6960 <tr><td>Protocol / kernel module</td><td>batman-adv</td></tr>
6961 <tr><td>ESSID</td><td>meshfx@hackeriet</td></tr>
6962 <td>Channel / Frequency</td><td>11 / 2462</td></tr>
6963 <td>Cell ID</td><td>02:BA:00:00:00:01</td>
6964 </table></p>
6965
6966 <p>The reason for setting ad-hoc wifi Cell ID is to work around bugs
6967 in firmware used in wifi card and wifi drivers.  (See a nice post from
6968 VillageTelco about
6969 "<a href="http://tiebing.blogspot.no/2009/12/ad-hoc-cell-splitting-re-post-original.html">Information
6970 about cell-id splitting, stuck beacons, and failed IBSS merges!</a>
6971 for details.)  When these settings are activated and you have some
6972 other mesh node nearby, your computer will be connected to the mesh
6973 network and can communicate with any mesh node that is connected to
6974 any of the nodes in your network of nodes. :)</p>
6975
6976 <p>My initial plan was to reuse my old Linksys WRT54GL as a mesh node,
6977 but that seem to be very hard, as I have not been able to locate a
6978 firmware supporting batman-adv.  If anyone know how to use that old
6979 wifi access point with batman-adv these days, please let me know.</p>
6980
6981 <p>If you find this project interesting and want to join, please join
6982 us on IRC, either channel
6983 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#oslohackerspace">#oslohackerspace</a>
6984 or <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#nuug">#nuug</a> on
6985 irc.freenode.net.</p>
6986
6987 <p>While investigating mesh networks in Oslo, I came across an old
6988 research paper from the university of Stavanger and Telenor Research
6989 and Innovation called
6990 <a href="http://folk.uio.no/paalee/publications/netrel-egeland-iswcs-2008.pdf">The
6991 reliability of wireless backhaul mesh networks</a> and elsewhere
6992 learned that Telenor have been experimenting with mesh networks at
6993 Grünerløkka in Oslo.  So mesh networks are also interesting for
6994 commercial companies, even though Telenor discovered that it was hard
6995 to figure out a good business plan for mesh networking and as far as I
6996 know have closed down the experiment.  Perhaps Telenor or others would
6997 be interested in a cooperation?</p>
6998
6999 <p><strong>Update 2013-10-12</strong>: I was just
7000 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2013-October/005900.html">told
7001 by the Serval project developers</a> that they no longer use
7002 batman-adv (but are compatible with it), but their own crypto based
7003 mesh system.</p>
7004
7005       </div>
7006       <div class="tags">
7007
7008
7009         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
7010
7011
7012       </div>
7013     </div>
7014     <div class="padding"></div>
7015
7016     <div class="entry">
7017       <div class="title">
7018         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_7_1_install_and_overview_video_from_Marcelo_Salvador.html">Skolelinux / Debian Edu 7.1 install and overview video from Marcelo Salvador</a>
7019       </div>
7020       <div class="date">
7021          8th October 2013
7022       </div>
7023       <div class="body">
7024         <p>The other day I was pleased and surprised to discover that Marcelo
7025 Salvador had published a
7026 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-GgpdqgLFc">video on
7027 Youtube</a> showing how to install the standalone Debian Edu /
7028 Skolelinux profile.  This is the profile intended for use at home or
7029 on laptops that should not be integrated into the provided network
7030 services (no central home directory, no Kerberos / LDAP directory etc,
7031 in other word a single user machine).  The result is 11 minutes long,
7032 and show some user applications (seem to be rather randomly picked).
7033 Missed a few of my favorites like celestia, planets and chromium
7034 showing the <a href="http://www.zygotebody.com/">Zygote Body 3D model
7035 of the human body</a>, but I guess he did not know about those or find
7036 other programs more interesting. :) And the video do not show the
7037 advantages I believe is one of the most valuable featuers in Debian
7038 Edu, its central school server making it possible to run hundreds of
7039 computers without hard drives by installing one central
7040 <a href="http://www.ltsp.org/">LTSP server</a>.</p>
7041
7042 <p>Anyway, check out the video, embedded below and linked to above:</p>
7043
7044 <iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/w-GgpdqgLFc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
7045
7046 <p>Are there other nice videos demonstrating Skolelinux?  Please let
7047 me know. :)</p>
7048
7049       </div>
7050       <div class="tags">
7051
7052
7053         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>.
7054
7055
7056       </div>
7057     </div>
7058     <div class="padding"></div>
7059
7060     <div class="entry">
7061       <div class="title">
7062         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Finally__Debian_Edu_Wheezy_is_released_today_.html">Finally, Debian Edu Wheezy is released today!</a>
7063       </div>
7064       <div class="date">
7065         29th September 2013
7066       </div>
7067       <div class="body">
7068         <p>A few hours ago, the announcement for the first stable release of
7069 Debian Edu Wheezy went out from the Debian publicity team.  The
7070 complete announcement text can be found at
7071 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130928">the Debian News
7072 section</a>, translated to several languages.  Please check it out.</p>
7073
7074 <p>There is one minor known problem that we will fix very soon.  One
7075 can not install a amd64 Thin Client Server using PXE, as the /var/
7076 partition is too small.  A workaround is to extend the partition (use
7077 lvresize + resize2fs in tty 2 while installing).</p>
7078
7079       </div>
7080       <div class="tags">
7081
7082
7083         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>.
7084
7085
7086       </div>
7087     </div>
7088     <div class="padding"></div>
7089
7090     <div class="entry">
7091       <div class="title">
7092         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Videos_about_the_Freedombox_project___for_inspiration_and_learning.html">Videos about the Freedombox project - for inspiration and learning</a>
7093       </div>
7094       <div class="date">
7095         27th September 2013
7096       </div>
7097       <div class="body">
7098         <p>The <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox
7099 project</a> have been going on for a while, and have presented the
7100 vision, ideas and solution several places.  Here is a little
7101 collection of videos of talks and presentation of the project.</p>
7102
7103 <ul>
7104
7105 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukvUz5taxvA">FreedomBox -
7106 2,5 minute marketing film</a> (Youtube)</li>
7107
7108 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzW25QTVWsE">Eben Moglen
7109 discusses the Freedombox on CBS news 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
7110
7111 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae8SZbxfE0g">Eben Moglen -
7112 Freedom in the Cloud - Software Freedom, Privacy and and Security for
7113 Web 2.0 and Cloud computing at ISOC-NY Public Meeting 2010</a>
7114 (Youtube)</li>
7115
7116 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNaIji_3xBE">Fosdem 2011
7117 Keynote by Eben Moglen presenting the Freedombox</a> (Youtube)</li>
7118
7119 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bDDUyJSQ9s">Presentation of
7120 the Freedombox by James Vasile at Elevate in Gratz 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
7121
7122 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQTmnk27g9s"> Freedombox -
7123 Discovery, Identity, and Trust by Nick Daly at Freedombox Hackfest New
7124 York City in 2012</a> (Youtube)</li>
7125
7126 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkbSB4Ba7Ck">Introduction
7127 to the Freedombox at Freedombox Hackfest New York City in 2012</a>
7128 (Youtube)</li>
7129
7130 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-P2Jaeg0aQ">Freedom, Out
7131 of the Box! by Bdale Garbee at linux.conf.au Ballarat, 2012</a> (Youtube) </li>
7132
7133 <li><a href="https://archive.fosdem.org/2013/schedule/event/freedombox/">Freedombox
7134 1.0 by Eben Moglen and Bdale Garbee at Fosdem 2013</a> (FOSDEM) </li>
7135
7136 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1LpYX2zVYg">What is the
7137 FreedomBox today by Bdale Garbee at Debconf13 in Vaumarcus
7138 2013</a> (Youtube)</li>
7139
7140 </ul>
7141
7142 <p>A larger list is available from
7143 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/TalksAndPresentations">the
7144 Freedombox Wiki</a>.</p>
7145
7146 <p>On other news, I am happy to report that Freedombox based on Debian
7147 Jessie is coming along quite well, and soon both Owncloud and using
7148 Tor should be available for testers of the Freedombox solution. :) In
7149 a few weeks I hope everything needed to test it is included in Debian.
7150 The withsqlite package is already in Debian, and the plinth package is
7151 pending in NEW.  The third and vital part of that puzzle is the
7152 metapackage/setup framework, which is still pending an upload.  Join
7153 us on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC
7154 (#freedombox on irc.debian.org)</a> and
7155 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
7156 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
7157
7158       </div>
7159       <div class="tags">
7160
7161
7162         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
7163
7164
7165       </div>
7166     </div>
7167     <div class="padding"></div>
7168
7169     <div class="entry">
7170       <div class="title">
7171         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_and_probably_last_beta_release_of_Debian_Edu_Wheezy.html">Third and probably last beta release of Debian Edu Wheezy</a>
7172       </div>
7173       <div class="date">
7174         16th September 2013
7175       </div>
7176       <div class="body">
7177         <p>The third wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
7178 today.  This is the release announcement from Holger Levsen:</p>
7179
7180 <blockquote>
7181 <p>Hi,</p>
7182
7183 <p>it is my pleasure to announce the third beta release (beta 2 for
7184 short) of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
7185 Skolelinux</a> based on Debian Wheezy!</p>
7186
7187 <p>Please test these images extensivly, if no new problems are found
7188 we plan to do this final Debian Edu Wheezy release this coming
7189 weekend.  We are not aware of any major problems or blockers in beta2,
7190 if you find something, please notify us immediately!</p>
7191
7192 <p>(More about the remaining steps for the Edu Wheezy release in
7193 another mail to the edu list tonight or tomorrow...)</p>
7194
7195 <p>Noteworthy changes and software updates for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b2
7196 compared to beta1:</p>
7197
7198 <ul>
7199
7200 <li>The KDE proxy setup has been adjusted to use the provided wpad.dat. This
7201 also gets Chromium to use this proxy.</li>
7202 <li>Install kdepim-groupware with KDE desktops to make sure korganizer
7203 understand ical/dav sources.</li>
7204 <li>Increased default maximum size of /var/spool/squid and /skole/backup on the
7205 main server.</li>
7206 <li>A source DVD image containing all source packages is now available as well.</li>
7207 <li>Updates for chromium (29.0.1547.57-1~deb7u1), imagemagick
7208 (6.7.7.10-5+deb7u2), php5 (5.4.4-14+deb7u4), libmodplug
7209 (0.8.8.4-3+deb7u1+git20130828), tiff (4.0.2-6+deb7u2), linux-image
7210 (3.2.0-4-486_3.2.46-1+deb7u1).</li>
7211
7212 </ul>
7213
7214 <p>Where to get it:</p>
7215
7216 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
7217
7218 <ul>
7219 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso</a></li>
7220 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso</a></li>
7221 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso .</li>
7222 </ul>
7223
7224 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is:  3a1c89f4666df80eebcd46c5bf5fedb866f9472f</p>
7225
7226 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use
7227 <ul>
7228 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso</a></li>
7229 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso</a></li>
7230 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso .</li>
7231 </ul>
7232
7233 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 702d1718548f401c74bfa6df9f032cc3ee16597e</p>
7234
7235 <p>The Source DVD image has the filename
7236 debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-source-DVD.iso and the SHA1SUM
7237 089eed8b3f962db47aae1f6a9685e9bb2fa30ca5 and is available the same way
7238 as the other isos.</p>
7239
7240 <p>How to report bugs</p>
7241
7242 <p>For information how to report bugs please see
7243 <br><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
7244
7245
7246 <p>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</p>
7247
7248 <p>Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based
7249 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
7250 configured school network. Immediately after installation a school
7251 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
7252 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
7253 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
7254 initial installation of the main server from CD or USB stick all other
7255 machines can be installed via the network. The provided school server
7256 provides LDAP database and Kerberos authentication service,
7257 centralized home directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other
7258 services.  The desktop contains more than 60 educational software
7259 packages and more are available from the Debian archive, and schools
7260 can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
7261
7262 <p>This is the seventh test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
7263 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
7264 Squeeze release.</p>
7265
7266 <p>Notes for upgrades from Alpha Prereleases</p>
7267
7268 <p>Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
7269 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
7270 release. Both alpha and beta0 based installations should reinstall or
7271 deal with gosa.conf manually; there are two options: (1) Keep
7272 gosa.conf and edit this file as outlined on the mailing list. (2)
7273 Accept the new version of gosa.conf and replace both contained admin
7274 password placeholders with the password hashes found in the old one
7275 (backup copy!). In both cases all users need to change their password
7276 to make sure a password is set for CIFS access to their home
7277 directory.</p>
7278
7279
7280 <p>cheers,
7281 <br>        Holger</p>
7282 </blockquote>
7283
7284       </div>
7285       <div class="tags">
7286
7287
7288         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>.
7289
7290
7291       </div>
7292     </div>
7293     <div class="padding"></div>
7294
7295     <div class="entry">
7296       <div class="title">
7297         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Recipe_to_test_the_Freedombox_project_on_amd64_or_Raspberry_Pi.html">Recipe to test the Freedombox project on amd64 or Raspberry Pi</a>
7298       </div>
7299       <div class="date">
7300         10th September 2013
7301       </div>
7302       <div class="body">
7303         <p>I was introduced to the
7304 <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox project</a>
7305 in 2010, when Eben Moglen presented his vision about serving the need
7306 of non-technical people to keep their personal information private and
7307 within the legal protection of their own homes.  The idea is to give
7308 people back the power over their network and machines, and return
7309 Internet back to its intended peer-to-peer architecture.  Instead of
7310 depending on a central service, the Freedombox will give everyone
7311 control over their own basic infrastructure.</p>
7312
7313 <p>I've intended to join the effort since then, but other tasks have
7314 taken priority.  But this summers nasty news about the misuse of trust
7315 and privilege exercised by the "western" intelligence gathering
7316 communities increased my eagerness to contribute to a point where I
7317 actually started working on the project a while back.</p>
7318
7319 <p>The <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/freedombox/">initial
7320 Debian initiative</a> based on the vision from Eben Moglen, is to
7321 create a simple and cheap Debian based appliance that anyone can hook
7322 up in their home and get access to secure and private services and
7323 communication.  The initial deployment platform have been the
7324 <a href="http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/t-dreamplugdetails.aspx">Dreamplug</a>,
7325 which is a piece of hardware I do not own.  So to be able to test what
7326 the current Freedombox setup look like, I had to come up with a way to install
7327 it on some hardware I do have access to.  I have rewritten the
7328 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedom-maker">freedom-maker</a>
7329 image build framework to use .deb packages instead of only copying
7330 setup into the boot images, and thanks to this rewrite I am able to
7331 set up any machine supported by Debian Wheezy as a Freedombox, using
7332 the previously mentioned deb (and a few support debs for packages
7333 missing in Debian).</p>
7334
7335 <p>The current Freedombox setup consist of a set of bootstrapping
7336 scripts
7337 (<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>),
7338 and a administrative web interface
7339 (<a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/Plinth">plinth</a> + exmachina +
7340 withsqlite), as well as a privacy enhancing proxy based on
7341 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>
7342 (freedombox-privoxy).  There is also a web/javascript based XMPP
7343 client (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/jwchat">jwchat</a>)
7344 trying (unsuccessfully so far) to talk to the XMPP server
7345 (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/ejabberd">ejabberd</a>).  The
7346 web interface is pluggable, and the goal is to use it to enable OpenID
7347 services, mesh network connectivity, use of TOR, etc, etc.  Not much of
7348 this is really working yet, see
7349 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedombox-todos/blob/master/TODO">the
7350 project TODO</a> for links to GIT repositories.  Most of the code is
7351 on github at the moment.  The HTTP proxy is operational out of the
7352 box, and the admin web interface can be used to add/remove plinth
7353 users.  I've not been able to do anything else with it so far, but
7354 know there are several branches spread around github and other places
7355 with lots of half baked features.</p>
7356
7357 <p>Anyway, if you want to have a look at the current state, the
7358 following recipes should work to give you a test machine to poke
7359 at.</p>
7360
7361 <p><strong>Debian Wheezy amd64</strong></p>
7362
7363 <ol>
7364
7365 <li>Fetch normal Debian Wheezy installation ISO.</li>
7366 <li>Boot from it, either as CD or USB stick.</li>
7367 <li><p>Press [tab] on the boot prompt and add this as a boot argument
7368 to the Debian installer:<p>
7369 <pre>url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat</a></pre></li>
7370
7371 <li>Answer the few language/region/password questions and pick disk to
7372 install on.</li>
7373
7374 <li>When the installation is finished and the machine have rebooted a
7375 few times, your Freedombox is ready for testing.</li>
7376
7377 </ol>
7378
7379 <p><strong>Raspberry Pi Raspbian</strong></p>
7380
7381 <ol>
7382
7383 <li>Fetch a Raspbian SD card image, create SD card.</li>
7384 <li>Boot from SD card, extend file system to fill the card completely.</li>
7385 <li><p>Log in and add this to /etc/sources.list:</p>
7386 <pre>
7387 deb <a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox</a> wheezy main
7388 </pre></li>
7389 <li><p>Run this as root:</p>
7390 <pre>
7391 wget -O - http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/BE1A583D.asc | \
7392    apt-key add -
7393 apt-get update
7394 apt-get install freedombox-setup
7395 /usr/lib/freedombox/setup
7396 </pre></li>
7397 <li>Reboot into your freshly created Freedombox.</li>
7398
7399 </ol>
7400
7401 <p>You can test it on other architectures too, but because the
7402 freedombox-privoxy package is binary, it will only work as intended on
7403 the architectures where I have had time to build the binary and put it
7404 in my APT repository.  But do not let this stop you.  It is only a
7405 short "<tt>apt-get source -b freedombox-privoxy</tt>" away. :)</p>
7406
7407 <p>Note that by default Freedombox is a DHCP server on the
7408 192.168.1.0/24 subnet, so if this is your subnet be careful and turn
7409 off the DHCP server by running "<tt>update-rc.d isc-dhcp-server
7410 disable</tt>" as root.</p>
7411
7412 <p>Please let me know if this works for you, or if you have any
7413 problems.  We gather on the IRC channel
7414 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">#freedombox</a> on
7415 irc.debian.org and the
7416 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">project
7417 mailing list</a>.</p>
7418
7419 <p>Once you get your freedombox operational, you can visit
7420 <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/</tt> to see the state of the plint
7421 welcome screen (dead end - do not be surprised if you are unable to
7422 get past it), and next visit <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/help/</tt>
7423 to look at the rest of plinth.  The default user is 'admin' and the
7424 default password is 'secret'.</p>
7425
7426       </div>
7427       <div class="tags">
7428
7429
7430         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
7431
7432
7433       </div>
7434     </div>
7435     <div class="padding"></div>
7436
7437     <div class="entry">
7438       <div class="title">
7439         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_beta_release__beta_1__of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Second beta release (beta 1) of Debian Edu/Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
7440       </div>
7441       <div class="date">
7442         22nd August 2013
7443       </div>
7444       <div class="body">
7445         <p>The second wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
7446 today, slightly delayed because of some bugs in the initial Windows
7447 integration fixes .  This is the release announcement:</p>
7448
7449 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b1 released 2013-08-22</strong></p>
7450
7451 <p>These are the release notes for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
7452 7.1+edu0~b1, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
7453
7454 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
7455
7456 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
7457 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
7458 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
7459 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
7460 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
7461 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
7462 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
7463 the main server from CD or USB stick all other machines can be
7464 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
7465 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
7466 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
7467 desktop contains
7468 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
7469 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
7470 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
7471 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
7472
7473 <p>This is the sixth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically this
7474 is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the Squeeze
7475 release.</p>
7476
7477 <p>ALERT: Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
7478 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
7479 release. Both alpha and beta0 based installations should reinstall or
7480 deal with gosa.conf manually; there are two options: (1) Keep
7481 gosa.conf and edit this file as outlined
7482 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/08/msg00127.html">on
7483 the mailing list</a>. (2) Accept the new version of gosa.conf and
7484 replace both contained admin password placeholders with the password
7485 hashes found in the old one (backup copy!). In both cases every user
7486 need to change their their password to make sure a password is set for
7487 CIFS access to their home directory.</p>
7488
7489 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
7490
7491 <ul>
7492
7493 <li>Added ssh askpass packages to default installation, to ensure ssh
7494     work also without a attached tty.</li>
7495 <li>Add the command-not-found package to the default installation to
7496     make it easier to figure out where to find missing command line
7497     tools. Please note, that the command 'update-command-not-found'
7498     has to be run as root to actually make it useful (internet access
7499     required).</li>
7500
7501 </ul>
7502
7503 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
7504
7505 <ul>
7506
7507 <li>Adjusted the USB stick ISO image build to include every tool
7508 needed for desktop=xfce installations.</li>
7509 <li>Adjust thin-client-server task to work when installing from USB
7510 stick ISO image.</li>
7511 <li>Made new grub artwork (changed png from indexed to RGB format).</li>
7512 <li>Minor cleanup in the CUPS setup.</li>
7513 <li>Make sure that bootstrapping of the Samba domain really happens
7514     during installation of the main server and adjust SID handling to
7515     cope with this.</li>
7516 <li>Make Samba passwords changeable (again) via GOsa².</li>
7517 <li>Fix generation of LM and NT password hashes via GOsa² to avoid
7518     empty password hashes.</li>
7519 <li>Adapted Samba machine domain joining to latest change in the
7520     smbldap-tools Perl package, fixing bugs blocking Windows machines
7521     from joining the Samba domain.</li>
7522
7523 </ul>
7524
7525 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
7526
7527 <ul>
7528
7529 <li>KDE fails to understand the wpad.dat file provided, causing it to
7530     not use the http proxy as it should.</li>
7531 <li>Chromium also fails to use the proxy when using the KDE desktop
7532     (using the KDE configuration).</li>
7533
7534 </ul>
7535
7536 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
7537
7538 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
7539
7540 <ul>
7541
7542 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso</a></li>
7543
7544 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso</a></li>
7545
7546 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso .</li>
7547
7548 </ul>
7549
7550 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 1e357f80b55e703523f2254adde6d78b
7551 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 7157f9be5fd27c7694d713c6ecfed61c3edda3b2</p>
7552
7553 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
7554
7555 <ul>
7556
7557 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso</a></li>
7558 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso</a></li>
7559 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso .</li>
7560
7561 </ul>
7562
7563 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 7a8408ead59cf7e3cef25afb6e91590b
7564 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: f1817c031f02790d5edb3bfa0dcf8451088ad119</p>
7565
7566
7567 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
7568
7569 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
7570
7571       </div>
7572       <div class="tags">
7573
7574
7575         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>.
7576
7577
7578       </div>
7579     </div>
7580     <div class="padding"></div>
7581
7582     <div class="entry">
7583       <div class="title">
7584         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_180_SSD_disk_with_Lenovo_firmware_can_not_use_Intel_firmware.html">Intel 180 SSD disk with Lenovo firmware can not use Intel firmware</a>
7585       </div>
7586       <div class="date">
7587         18th August 2013
7588       </div>
7589       <div class="body">
7590         <p>Earlier, I reported about
7591 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html">my
7592 problems using an Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB disk</a>.  Friday I was
7593 told by IBM that the original disk should be thrown away.  And as
7594 there no longer was a problem if I bricked the firmware, I decided
7595 today to try to install Intel firmware to replace the Lenovo firmware
7596 currently on the disk.</p>
7597
7598 <p>I searched the Intel site for firmware, and found
7599 <a href="https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&ProdId=3472&DwnldID=18363&ProductFamily=Solid-State+Drives+and+Caching&ProductLine=Intel%c2%ae+High+Performance+Solid-State+Drive&ProductProduct=Intel%c2%ae+SSD+520+Series+(180GB%2c+2.5in+SATA+6Gb%2fs%2c+25nm%2c+MLC)&lang=eng">issdfut_2.0.4.iso</a>
7600 (aka Intel SATA Solid-State Drive Firmware Update Tool) which
7601 according to the site should contain the latest firmware for SSD
7602 disks.  I inserted the broken disk in one of my spare laptops and
7603 booted the ISO from a USB stick.  The disk was recognized, but the
7604 program claimed the newest firmware already were installed and refused
7605 to insert any Intel firmware.  So no change, and the disk is still
7606 unable to handle write load. :( I guess the only way to get them
7607 working would be if Lenovo releases new firmware.  No idea how likely
7608 that is.  Anyway, just blogging about this test for completeness.  I
7609 got a working Samsung disk, and see no point in spending more time on
7610 the broken disks.</p>
7611
7612       </div>
7613       <div class="tags">
7614
7615
7616         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>.
7617
7618
7619       </div>
7620     </div>
7621     <div class="padding"></div>
7622
7623     <div class="entry">
7624       <div class="title">
7625         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/90_percent_done_with_the_Norwegian_draft_translation_of_Free_Culture.html">90 percent done with the Norwegian draft translation of Free Culture</a>
7626       </div>
7627       <div class="date">
7628          2nd August 2013
7629       </div>
7630       <div class="body">
7631         <p>It has been a while since my last update.  Since last summer, I
7632 have worked on a Norwegian
7633 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
7634 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
7635 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with the copyright
7636 law.  Yesterday, I finally broken the 90% mark, when counting the
7637 number of strings to translate.  Due to real life constraints, I have
7638 not had time to work on it since March, but when the summer broke out,
7639 I found time to work on it again.  Still lots of work left, but the
7640 first draft is nearing completion.  I created a graph to show the
7641 progress of the translation:</p>
7642
7643 <p><img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png"></p>
7644
7645 <p>When the first draft is done, the translated text need to be
7646 proof read, and the remaining formatting problems with images and SVG
7647 drawings need to be fixed.  There are probably also some index entries
7648 missing that need to be added.  This can be done by comparing the
7649 index entries listed in the SiSU version of the book, or comparing the
7650 English docbook version with the paper version.  Last, the colophon
7651 page with ISBN numbers etc need to be wrapped up before the release is
7652 done.  I should also figure out how to get correct Norwegian sorting
7653 of the index pages.  All docbook tools I have tried so far (xmlto,
7654 docbook-xsl, dblatex) get the order of symbols and the special
7655 Norwegian letters ÆØÅ wrong.</p>
7656
7657 <p>There is still need for translators and people with docbook
7658 knowledge, to be able to get a good looking book (I still struggle
7659 with dblatex, xmlto and docbook-xsl) as well as to do the draft
7660 translation and proof reading.  And I would like the figures to be
7661 redrawn as SVGs to make it easy to translate them.  Any SVG master
7662 around?  There are also some legal terms that are unfamiliar to me.
7663 If you want to help, please get in touch with me, and check out the
7664 project files currently available from
7665 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
7666
7667 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
7668 the updated
7669 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
7670 and
7671 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
7672 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
7673 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
7674 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
7675
7676       </div>
7677       <div class="tags">
7678
7679
7680         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>.
7681
7682
7683       </div>
7684     </div>
7685     <div class="padding"></div>
7686
7687     <div class="entry">
7688       <div class="title">
7689         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_beta_release_of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">First beta release of Debian Edu/Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
7690       </div>
7691       <div class="date">
7692         27th July 2013
7693       </div>
7694       <div class="body">
7695         <p>The first wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
7696 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
7697
7698 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b0 released
7699 2013-07-27</strong></p>
7700
7701 <p>These are the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
7702 7.1+edu0~b0, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
7703
7704 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
7705
7706 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
7707 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
7708 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
7709 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
7710 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
7711 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
7712 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
7713 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
7714 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
7715 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
7716 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
7717 desktop contains
7718 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
7719 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
7720 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
7721 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
7722
7723 <p>This is the fifth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
7724 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
7725 Squeeze release.</p>
7726
7727 <p>ALERT: Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
7728 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
7729 release.</p>
7730
7731 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
7732
7733 <ul>
7734
7735 <li>Switched roaming workstation profiles from wicd to network-manager
7736    for network configuration, as wicd didn't work any more.</li>
7737 <li>Changed version numbers of patched gosa and libpam-mklocaluser
7738    packages to make sure our locally patched versions will be replaced
7739    by the official packages when they are released from Debian. Those
7740    installing alpha version need to reinstall or manually downgrade gosa
7741    and libpam-mklocaluser.</li>
7742 <li>Added bluetooth tools to the default desktop (bluedevil, blueman).</li>
7743 <li>Added tools for sharing the desktop on KDE (krdc, krfb).</li>
7744 <li>Added valgrind to the default installation for easier debugging of
7745    crash bugs.</li>
7746
7747 </ul>
7748
7749 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
7750
7751 <ul>
7752
7753 <li>Fixed artwork package to work with gnome, no longer break
7754    desktop=gnome installations.</li>
7755 <li>Adjusted installer to now work when forced to use a proxy with the
7756    netinst CD.</li>
7757 <li>Fixed code detecting and setting/loading hardware specific
7758    setup/firmware to work more robust out of the box.</li>
7759 <li>Adjusted Kerberos setup to detect realm and server settings at
7760    install time instead of dynamically at run time. This avoid a crash
7761    with krb5-auth-dialog on diskless workstations without a DNS name.</li>
7762 <li>Worked around misfeature in network-manager not calling the dhclient
7763    exit hooks, causing automatic proxy configuration and automatic host
7764    name setting at run time to work again.</li>
7765 <li>Fixed feature setting the default Iceweasel start page from URL
7766    fetched from LDAP, to allow schools to set the global default by
7767    updating the dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no LDAP object.</li>
7768 <li>Changed default host name on all networked machines to be unique
7769    (generated from MAC or reverse DNS) after boot.</li>
7770 <li>Adjusted partition sizes to make sure they are big enough.</li>
7771
7772 </ul>
7773
7774 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
7775
7776 <ul>
7777
7778 <li>Grub is missing the new artwork.</li>
7779 <li>KDE fail to understand the wpad.dat file provided, causing it to
7780     not use the http proxy as it should.</li>
7781 <li>Chromium also fail to use the proxy.</li>
7782
7783 </ul>
7784
7785 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
7786
7787 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
7788
7789 <ul>
7790
7791 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso</a></li>
7792
7793 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso</a></li>
7794
7795 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso .</li>
7796
7797 </ul>
7798
7799 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 55d5de9765b6dccd5d9ec33cf1a07109
7800 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 996a1d9517740e4d627d100de2d12b23dd545a3f</p>
7801
7802 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
7803
7804 <ul>
7805
7806 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso</a></li>
7807 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso</a></li>
7808 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso .</li>
7809
7810 </ul>
7811
7812 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: d8f0818c51a78d357de794066f289f69
7813 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 49185ca354e8d0543240423746924f76a6cee733</p>
7814
7815
7816 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
7817
7818 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
7819
7820       </div>
7821       <div class="tags">
7822
7823
7824         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>.
7825
7826
7827       </div>
7828     </div>
7829     <div class="padding"></div>
7830
7831     <div class="entry">
7832       <div class="title">
7833         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html">How to fix a Thinkpad X230 with a broken 180 GB SSD disk</a>
7834       </div>
7835       <div class="date">
7836         17th July 2013
7837       </div>
7838       <div class="body">
7839         <p>Today I switched to
7840 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">my
7841 new laptop</a>.  I've previously written about the problems I had with
7842 my new Thinkpad X230, which was delivered with an
7843 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_SSD_520_Series_180_GB_with_Lenovo_firmware_still_lock_up_from_sustained_writes.html">180
7844 GB Intel SSD disk with Lenovo firmware</a> that did not handle
7845 sustained writes.  My hardware supplier have been very forthcoming in
7846 trying to find a solution, and after first trying with another
7847 identical 180 GB disks they decided to send me a 256 GB Samsung SSD
7848 disk instead to fix it once and for all.  The Samsung disk survived
7849 the installation of Debian with encrypted disks (filling the disk with
7850 random data during installation killed the first two), and I thus
7851 decided to trust it with my data.  I have installed it as a Debian Edu
7852 Wheezy roaming workstation hooked up with my Debian Edu Squeeze main
7853 server at home using Kerberos and LDAP, and will use it as my work
7854 station from now on.</p>
7855
7856 <p>As this is a solid state disk with no moving parts, I believe the
7857 Debian Wheezy default installation need to be tuned a bit to increase
7858 performance and increase life time of the disk.  The Linux kernel and
7859 user space applications do not yet adjust automatically to such
7860 environment.  To make it easier for my self, I created a draft Debian
7861 package <tt>ssd-setup</tt> to handle this tuning.  The
7862 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/ssd-setup.git">source
7863 for the ssd-setup package</a> is available from collab-maint, and it
7864 is set up to adjust the setup of the machine by just installing the
7865 package.  If there is any non-SSD disk in the machine, the package
7866 will refuse to install, as I did not try to write any logic to sort
7867 file systems in SSD and non-SSD file systems.</p>
7868
7869 <p>I consider the package a draft, as I am a bit unsure how to best
7870 set up Debian Wheezy with an SSD.  It is adjusted to my use case,
7871 where I set up the machine with one large encrypted partition (in
7872 addition to /boot), put LVM on top of this and set up partitions on
7873 top of this again.  See the README file in the package source for the
7874 references I used to pick the settings.  At the moment these
7875 parameters are tuned:</p>
7876
7877 <ul>
7878
7879 <li>Set up cryptsetup to pass TRIM commands to the physical disk
7880     (adding discard to /etc/crypttab)</li>
7881
7882 <li>Set up LVM to pass on TRIM commands to the underlying device (in
7883     this case a cryptsetup partition) by changing issue_discards from
7884     0 to 1 in /etc/lvm/lvm.conf.</li>
7885
7886 <li>Set relatime as a file system option for ext3 and ext4 file
7887     systems.</li>
7888
7889 <li>Tell swap to use TRIM commands by adding 'discard' to
7890     /etc/fstab.</li>
7891
7892 <li>Change I/O scheduler from cfq to deadline using a udev rule.</li>
7893
7894 <li>Run fstrim on every ext3 and ext4 file system every night (from
7895     cron.daily).</li>
7896
7897 <li>Adjust sysctl values vm.swappiness to 1 and vm.vfs_cache_pressure
7898     to 50 to reduce the kernel eagerness to swap out processes.</li>
7899
7900 </ul>
7901
7902 <p>During installation, I cancelled the part where the installer fill
7903 the disk with random data, as this would kill the SSD performance for
7904 little gain.  My goal with the encrypted file system is to ensure
7905 those stealing my laptop end up with a brick and not a working
7906 computer.  I have no hope in keeping the really resourceful people
7907 from getting the data on the disk (see
7908 <a href="http://xkcd.com/538/">XKCD #538</a> for an explanation why).
7909 Thus I concluded that adding the discard option to crypttab is the
7910 right thing to do.</p>
7911
7912 <p>I considered using the noop I/O scheduler, as several recommended
7913 it for SSD, but others recommended deadline and a benchmark I found
7914 indicated that deadline might be better for interactive use.</p>
7915
7916 <p>I also considered using the 'discard' file system option for ext3
7917 and ext4, but read that it would give a performance hit ever time a
7918 file is removed, and thought it best to that that slowdown once a day
7919 instead of during my work.</p>
7920
7921 <p>My package do not set up tmpfs on /var/run, /var/lock and /tmp, as
7922 this is already done by Debian Edu.</p>
7923
7924 <p>I have not yet started on the user space tuning.  I expect
7925 iceweasel need some tuning, and perhaps other applications too, but
7926 have not yet had time to investigate those parts.</p>
7927
7928 <p>The package should work on Ubuntu too, but I have not yet tested it
7929 there.</p>
7930
7931 <p>As for the answer to the question in the title of this blog post,
7932 as far as I know, the only solution I know about is to replace the
7933 disk.  It might be possible to flash it with Intel firmware instead of
7934 the Lenovo firmware.  But I have not tried and did not want to do so
7935 without approval from Lenovo as I wanted to keep the warranty on the
7936 disk until a solution was found and they wanted the broken disks
7937 back.</p>
7938
7939       </div>
7940       <div class="tags">
7941
7942
7943         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>.
7944
7945
7946       </div>
7947     </div>
7948     <div class="padding"></div>
7949
7950     <div class="entry">
7951       <div class="title">
7952         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_SSD_520_Series_180_GB_with_Lenovo_firmware_still_lock_up_from_sustained_writes.html">Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB with Lenovo firmware still lock up from sustained writes</a>
7953       </div>
7954       <div class="date">
7955         10th July 2013
7956       </div>
7957       <div class="body">
7958         <p>A few days ago, I wrote about
7959 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">the
7960 problems I experienced with my new X230 and its SSD disk</a>, which
7961 was dying during installation because it is unable to cope with
7962 sustained write.  My supplier is in contact with
7963 <a href="http://www.lenovo.com/">Lenovo</a>, and they wanted to send a
7964 replacement disk to try to fix the problem.  They decided to send an
7965 identical model, so my hopes for a permanent fix was slim.</p>
7966
7967 <p>Anyway, today I got the replacement disk and tried to install
7968 Debian Edu Wheezy with encrypted disk on it.  The new disk have the
7969 same firmware version as the original.  This time my hope raised
7970 slightly as the installation progressed, as the original disk used to
7971 die after 4-7% of the disk was written to, while this time it kept
7972 going past 10%, 20%, 40% and even past 50%.  But around 60%, the disk
7973 died again and I was back on square one.  I still do not have a new
7974 laptop with a disk I can trust.  I can not live with a disk that might
7975 lock up when I download a new
7976 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ISO or
7977 other large files.  I look forward to hearing from my supplier with
7978 the next proposal from Lenovo.</p>
7979
7980 <p>The original disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
7981 11S0C38722Z1ZNME35X1TR, ISN: CVCV321407HB180EGN, SA: G57560302, FW:
7982 LF1i, 29MAY2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
7983 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40002756C4, Model:
7984 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
7985 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
7986
7987 <p>The replacement disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
7988 11S0C38722Z1ZNDE34N0L0, ISN: CVCV315306RK180EGN, SA: G57560-302, FW:
7989 LF1i, 22APR2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
7990 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40000AB69E, Model:
7991 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
7992 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
7993
7994 <p>The only difference is in the first number (serial number?), ISN,
7995 SA, date and WNPP values.  Mentioning all the details here in case
7996 someone is able to use the information to find a way to identify the
7997 failing disk among working ones (if any such working disk actually
7998 exist).</p>
7999
8000       </div>
8001       <div class="tags">
8002
8003
8004         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>.
8005
8006
8007       </div>
8008     </div>
8009     <div class="padding"></div>
8010
8011     <div class="entry">
8012       <div class="title">
8013         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/July_13th__Debian_Ubuntu_BSP_and_Skolelinux_Debian_Edu_developer_gathering_in_Oslo.html">July 13th: Debian/Ubuntu BSP and Skolelinux/Debian Edu developer gathering in Oslo</a>
8014       </div>
8015       <div class="date">
8016          9th July 2013
8017       </div>
8018       <div class="body">
8019         <p>The upcoming Saturday, 2013-07-13, we are organising a combined
8020 Debian Edu developer gathering and Debian and Ubuntu bug squashing
8021 party in Oslo.  It is organised by <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the
8022 member assosiation NUUG</a> and
8023 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
8024 project</a> together with <a href="http://bitraf.no/">the hack space
8025 Bitraf</a>.</p>
8026
8027 <p>It starts 10:00 and continue until late evening.  Everyone is
8028 welcome, and there is no fee to participate.  There is on the other
8029 hand limited space, and only room for 30 people.  Please put your name
8030 on <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2013/07/13/no/Oslo">the event
8031 wiki page</a> if you plan to join us.</p>
8032
8033       </div>
8034       <div class="tags">
8035
8036
8037         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>.
8038
8039
8040       </div>
8041     </div>
8042     <div class="padding"></div>
8043
8044     <div class="entry">
8045       <div class="title">
8046         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">The Thinkpad is dead, long live the Thinkpad X230?</a>
8047       </div>
8048       <div class="date">
8049          5th July 2013
8050       </div>
8051       <div class="body">
8052         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a
8053 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">replacement
8054 for my trusty old Thinkpad X41</a>.  Unfortunately I did not have much
8055 time to spend on it, and it took a while to find a model I believe
8056 will do the job, but two days ago the replacement finally arrived.  I
8057 ended up picking a
8058 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad X230</a>
8059 with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu Wheezy as
8060 a roaming workstation, and it seemed to work flawlessly.  But my
8061 second installation with encrypted disk was not as successful.  More
8062 on that below.</p>
8063
8064 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
8065 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
8066 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
8067 feature at <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
8068 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
8069 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks according
8070 to that search interface, so I had to drop specifying the number of
8071 disks from my search parameters.  I also asked around among friends to
8072 get their impression on keyboards and robustness.</p>
8073
8074 <p>So the new laptop arrived, and it is quite a lot wider than the
8075 X41.  I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is
8076 significantly wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my
8077 hand a lot more to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly
8078 good and the individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope
8079 I will get used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really
8080 needed a new laptop now. :)</p>
8081
8082 <p>Turning off the touch pad was simple.  All it took was a quick
8083 visit to the BIOS during boot it disable it.</p>
8084
8085 <p>But there is a fatal problem with the laptop.  The 180 GB SSD disk
8086 lock up during load.  And this happen when installing Debian Wheezy
8087 with encrypted disk, while the disk is being filled with random data.
8088 I also tested to install Ubuntu Raring, and it happen there too if I
8089 reenable the code to fill the disk with random data (it is disabled by
8090 default in Ubuntu).  And the bug with is already known.  It was
8091 reported to Debian as <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/691427">BTS
8092 report #691427 2012-10-25</a> (journal commit I/O error on brand-new
8093 Thinkpad T430s ext4 on lvm on SSD).  It is also reported to the Linux
8094 kernel developers as
8095 <a href="https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51861">Kernel bugzilla
8096 report #51861 2012-12-20</a> (Intel SSD 520 stops working under load
8097 (SSDSC2BW180A3L in Lenovo ThinkPad T430s)). It is also reported on the
8098 Lenovo forums, both for
8099 <a href="http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-and-newer-T-series/T430s-Intel-SSD-520-180GB-issue/m-p/1070549">T430
8100 2012-11-10</a> and for
8101 <a href="http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/X-Series-ThinkPad-Laptops/x230-SATA-errors-with-180GB-Intel-520-SSD-under-heavy-write-load/m-p/1068147">X230
8102 03-20-2013</a>.  The problem do not only affect installation.  The
8103 reports state that the disk lock up during use if many writes are done
8104 on the disk, so it is much no use to work around the installation
8105 problem and end up with a computer that can lock up at any moment.
8106 There is even a
8107 <a href="https://git.efficios.com/?p=test-ssd.git">small C program
8108 available</a> that will lock up the hard drive after running a few
8109 minutes by writing to a file.</p>
8110
8111 <p>I've contacted my supplier and asked how to handle this, and after
8112 contacting PCHELP Norway (request 01D1FDP) which handle support
8113 requests for Lenovo, his first suggestion was to upgrade the disk
8114 firmware.  Unfortunately there is no newer firmware available from
8115 Lenovo, as my disk already have the most recent one (version LF1i).  I
8116 hope to hear more from him today and hope the problem can be
8117 fixed. :)</p>
8118
8119       </div>
8120       <div class="tags">
8121
8122
8123         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>.
8124
8125
8126       </div>
8127     </div>
8128     <div class="padding"></div>
8129
8130     <div class="entry">
8131       <div class="title">
8132         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230.html">The Thinkpad is dead, long live the Thinkpad X230</a>
8133       </div>
8134       <div class="date">
8135          4th July 2013
8136       </div>
8137       <div class="body">
8138         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a replacement for my
8139 trusty old Thinkpad X41.  Unfortunately I did not have much time to
8140 spend on it, but today the replacement finally arrived.  I ended up
8141 picking a <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad
8142 X230</a> with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu
8143 Wheezy as a roaming workstation, and it worked flawlessly.  As I write
8144 this, it is installing what I hope will be a more final installation,
8145 with a encrypted hard drive to ensure any dope head stealing it end up
8146 with an expencive door stop.</p>
8147
8148 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
8149 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
8150 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
8151 feature at <ahref="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
8152 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
8153 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks, so I had
8154 to drop number of disks from my search parameters.</p>
8155
8156 <p>I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is significantly
8157 wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my hand a lot more
8158 to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly good and the
8159 individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope I will get
8160 used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really needed a
8161 new laptop now. :)</p>
8162
8163 <p>I look forward to figuring out how to turn off the touch pad.</p>
8164
8165       </div>
8166       <div class="tags">
8167
8168
8169         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>.
8170
8171
8172       </div>
8173     </div>
8174     <div class="padding"></div>
8175
8176     <div class="entry">
8177       <div class="title">
8178         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fourth_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Fourth alpha release of Debian Edu/Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
8179       </div>
8180       <div class="date">
8181          3rd July 2013
8182       </div>
8183       <div class="body">
8184         <p>The fourth wheezy based alpha release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
8185 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
8186
8187 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~alpha3 released
8188 2013-07-03</strong></p>
8189
8190 <p>These are the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
8191 7.1+edu0~alpha3, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
8192
8193 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
8194
8195 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
8196 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
8197 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
8198 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
8199 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
8200 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
8201 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
8202 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
8203 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
8204 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
8205 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
8206 desktop contains
8207 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
8208 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
8209 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
8210 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
8211
8212 <p>This is the fourth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
8213 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
8214 Squeeze release.</p>
8215
8216 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
8217 <ul>
8218   <li>Dropped ispell dictionaries from our default installation.</li>
8219   <li>Dropped menu-xdg from the KDE desktop option, to drop the Debian
8220     submenu.  It was not included with Gnome, LXDE or Xfce, so this
8221     brings KDE in line with the others.</li>
8222   <li>Dropped xdrawchem, xjig and xsok from our default installation as
8223     they don't have a desktop menu entry and thus won't show up in the
8224     menu now that menu-xdg was removed.</li>
8225   <li>Removed the killer system to kill left behind processes on
8226     multi-user machines, as it was no longer able to understand when a
8227     X display was in use and killed the processes of the active users
8228     too.</li>
8229   <li>Dropped the golearn (from goplay) package as the debtags in wheezy
8230     are too few to make the package useful.</li>
8231 </ul>
8232 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
8233 <ul>
8234   <li>Updated artwork matching http://wiki.debian.org/DebianArt/Themes/Joy
8235   <li>Multi-arch i386/amd64 USB stick ISO available.</li>
8236   <li>Got rid of ispell/wordlist related debconf questions that showed
8237     up for some language options.</li>
8238   <li>Switched to using http.debian.net as APT source by default.</li>
8239   <li>Fixed proxy configuration on Main Server installations.</li>
8240   <li>Changed LTSP setup to ask dpkg to use force-unsafe-io the same way
8241     d-i is doing it.</li>
8242   <li>Made sure root and user passwords were not left behind in the
8243     debconf database after installation on Main Server installations.</li>
8244   <li>Made Roaming Workstation dynamic setup more robust and added draft
8245     script setup-ad-client to hook a Roaming Workstation up to a
8246     Active Directory server instead of a Debian Edu Main Server.</li>
8247   <li>Update system to install needed firmware packages during
8248     installation, to work properly in Wheezy.</li>
8249   <li>Update system to handle hardware quirks (debian-edu-hwsetup).</li>
8250   <li>Corrected PXE installation setup to properly pass selected desktop
8251     and keymap settings to PXE installation clients.</li>
8252   <li>LTSP diskless workstations use sshfs by default, allowing them to
8253     work without adding them to DNS and NIS netgroups for NFS access.</li>
8254 </ul>
8255 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
8256 <ul>
8257   <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
8258     available yet (698840).</li>
8259   <li>Artwork not enabled for all desktops.</li>
8260 </ul>
8261 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
8262
8263 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
8264 <ul>
8265   <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso</a></li>
8266   <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso</a></li>
8267   <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso .</li>
8268 </ul>
8269
8270 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 2b161a99d2a848c376d8d04e3854e30c
8271 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 498922e9c508c0a7ee9dbe1dfe5bf830d779c3c8</p>
8272
8273 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
8274 <ul>
8275   <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso</a></li>
8276   <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso</a></li>
8277   <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso .</li>
8278 </ul>
8279
8280 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 25e808e403a4c15dbef1d13c37d572ac
8281 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 15ecfc93eb6b4f453b7eb0bc04b6a279262d9721</p>
8282
8283 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
8284
8285 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
8286
8287       </div>
8288       <div class="tags">
8289
8290
8291         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>.
8292
8293
8294       </div>
8295     </div>
8296     <div class="padding"></div>
8297
8298     <div class="entry">
8299       <div class="title">
8300         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_locate_and_install_required_firmware_packages_on_Debian__Isenkram_0_4_.html">Automatically locate and install required firmware packages on Debian (Isenkram 0.4)</a>
8301       </div>
8302       <div class="date">
8303         25th June 2013
8304       </div>
8305       <div class="body">
8306         <p>It annoys me when the computer fail to do automatically what it is
8307 perfectly capable of, and I have to do it manually to get things
8308 working.  One such task is to find out what firmware packages are
8309 needed to get the hardware on my computer working.  Most often this
8310 affect the wifi card, but some times it even affect the RAID
8311 controller or the ethernet card.  Today I pushed version 0.4 of the
8312 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram package</a>
8313 including a new script isenkram-autoinstall-firmware handling the
8314 process of asking all the loaded kernel modules what firmware files
8315 they want, find debian packages providing these files and install the
8316 debian packages.  Here is a test run on my laptop:</p>
8317
8318 <p><pre>
8319 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
8320 info: kernel drivers requested extra firmware: ipw2200-bss.fw ipw2200-ibss.fw ipw2200-sniffer.fw
8321 info: fetching http://http.debian.net/debian/dists/squeeze/Contents-i386.gz
8322 info: locating packages with the requested firmware files
8323 info: Updating APT sources after adding non-free APT source
8324 info: trying to install firmware-ipw2x00
8325 firmware-ipw2x00
8326 firmware-ipw2x00
8327 Preconfiguring packages ...
8328 Selecting previously deselected package firmware-ipw2x00.
8329 (Reading database ... 259727 files and directories currently installed.)
8330 Unpacking firmware-ipw2x00 (from .../firmware-ipw2x00_0.28+squeeze1_all.deb) ...
8331 Setting up firmware-ipw2x00 (0.28+squeeze1) ...
8332 #
8333 </pre></p>
8334
8335 <p>When all the requested firmware is present, a simple message is
8336 printed instead:</p>
8337
8338 <p><pre>
8339 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
8340 info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules.  exiting
8341 #
8342 </pre></p>
8343
8344 <p>It could use some polish, but it is already working well and saving
8345 me some time when setting up new machines. :)</p>
8346
8347 <p>So, how does it work?  It look at the set of currently loaded
8348 kernel modules, and look up each one of them using modinfo, to find
8349 the firmware files listed in the module meta-information.  Next, it
8350 download the Contents file from a nearby APT mirror, and search for
8351 the firmware files in this file to locate the package with the
8352 requested firmware file.  If the package is in the non-free section, a
8353 non-free APT source is added and the package is installed using
8354 <tt>apt-get install</tt>.  The end result is a slightly better working
8355 machine.</p>
8356
8357 <p>I hope someone find time to implement a more polished version of
8358 this script as part of the hw-detect debian-installer module, to
8359 finally fix <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">BTS report
8360 #655507</a>.  There really is no need to insert USB sticks with
8361 firmware during a PXE install when the packages already are available
8362 from the nearby Debian mirror.</p>
8363
8364       </div>
8365       <div class="tags">
8366
8367
8368         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>.
8369
8370
8371       </div>
8372     </div>
8373     <div class="padding"></div>
8374
8375     <div class="entry">
8376       <div class="title">
8377         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_value_of_a_good_distro_wide_test_suite___.html">The value of a good distro wide test suite...</a>
8378       </div>
8379       <div class="date">
8380         22nd June 2013
8381       </div>
8382       <div class="body">
8383         <p>In the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
8384 Skolelinux</a> project, we include a post-installation test suite,
8385 which check that services are running, working, and return the
8386 expected results.  It runs automatically just after the first boot on
8387 test installations (using test ISOs), but not on production
8388 installations (using non-test ISOs).  It test that the LDAP service is
8389 operating, Kerberos is responding, DNS is replying, file systems are
8390 online resizable, etc, etc.  And it check that the PXE service is
8391 configured, which is the topic of this post.</p>
8392
8393 <p>The last week I've fixed the DVD and USB stick ISOs for our Debian
8394 Edu Wheezy release.  These ISOs are supposed to be able to install a
8395 complete system without any Internet connection, but for that to
8396 happen all the needed packages need to be on them.  Thanks to our test
8397 suite, I discovered that we had forgotten to adjust our PXE setup to
8398 cope with the new names and paths used by the netboot d-i packages.
8399 When Internet connectivity was available, the installer fall back to
8400 using wget to fetch d-i boot images, but when offline it require
8401 working packages to get it working.  And the packages changed name
8402 from debian-installer-6.0-netboot-$arch to
8403 debian-installer-7.0-netboot-$arch, we no longer pulled in the
8404 packages during installation.  Without our test suite, I suspect we
8405 would never have discovered this before release.  Now it is fixed
8406 right after we got the ISOs operational.</p>
8407
8408 <p>Another by-product of the test suite is that we can ask system
8409 administrators with problems getting Debian Edu to work, to run the
8410 test suite using <tt>/usr/sbin/debian-edu-test-install</tt> and see if
8411 any errors are detected.  This usually pinpoint the subsystem causing
8412 the problem.</p>
8413
8414 <p>If you want to help us help kids learn how to share and create,
8415 please join us on
8416 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu on
8417 irc.debian.org</a> and the
8418 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">debian-edu@</a> mailing
8419 list.</p>
8420
8421       </div>
8422       <div class="tags">
8423
8424
8425         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>.
8426
8427
8428       </div>
8429     </div>
8430     <div class="padding"></div>
8431
8432     <div class="entry">
8433       <div class="title">
8434         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Victor_Ni_u.html">Debian Edu interview: Victor Nițu</a>
8435       </div>
8436       <div class="date">
8437         17th June 2013
8438       </div>
8439       <div class="body">
8440         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
8441 Skolelinux</a> distribution have users and contributors all around the
8442 globe.  And a while back, an enterprising young man showed up on
8443 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">our IRC channel
8444 #debian-edu</a> and started asking questions about how Debian Edu
8445 worked.  We answered as good as we could, and even convinced him to
8446 help us with translations.  And today I managed to get an interview
8447 with him, to learn more about him.</p>
8448
8449 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
8450
8451 <p>I'm a 25 year old free software enthusiast, living in Romania,
8452 which is also my country of origin. Back in 2009, at a New Year's Eve
8453 party, I had a very nice <strike>beer</strike> discussion with a
8454 friend, when we realized we have no organised Debian community in our
8455 country. A few days later, we put together the infrastructure for such
8456 community and even gathered a nice Debian-ish crowd. Since then, I
8457 began my quest as a free software hacker and activist and I am
8458 constantly trying to cover as much ground as possible on that
8459 field.</p>
8460
8461 <p>A few years ago I founded a small web development company, which
8462 provided me the flexible schedule I needed so much for my
8463 activities. For the last 13 months, I have been the Technical Director
8464 of <a href="http://ceata.org/">Fundația Ceata</a>, which is a free
8465 software activist organisation endorsed by the FSF and the FSFE, and
8466 the only one we have in our country.</p>
8467
8468 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
8469 project?</strong></p>
8470
8471 <p>The idea of participating in the Debian Edu project was a surprise
8472 even to me, since I never used it before I began getting involved in
8473 it. This year I had a great opportunity to deliver a talk on
8474 educational software, and I knew immediately where to look. It was a
8475 love at first sight, since I was previously involved with some of the
8476 technologies the project incorporates, and I rapidly found a lot of
8477 ways to contribute.</p>
8478
8479 <p>My first contributions consisted in translating the installer and
8480 configuration dialogs, then I found some bugs to squash (I still
8481 haven't fixed them yet though), and I even got my eyes on some other
8482 areas where I can prove myself helpful. Since the appetite for free
8483 software in my country is pretty low, I'll be happy to be the first
8484 one around here advocating for the project's adoption in educational
8485 environments, and maybe even get my hands dirty in creating a flavour
8486 for our own needs. I am not used to make very advanced plannings, so
8487 from now on, time will tell what I'll be doing next, but I think I
8488 have a pretty consistent starting point.</p>
8489
8490 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
8491 Edu?</strong></p>
8492
8493 <p>Not a long time ago, I was in the position of configuring and
8494 maintaining a LDAP server on some Debian derivative, and I must say it
8495 took me a while. A long time ago, I was maintaining a bigger
8496 Samba-powered infrastructure, and I must say I spent quite a lot of
8497 time on it. I have similar stories about many of the services included
8498 with Skolelinux, and the main advantage I see about it is the
8499 out-of-the box availability of them, making it quite competitive when
8500 it comes to managing a school's network, for example.</p>
8501
8502 <p>Of course, there is more to say about Skolelinux than the
8503 availability of the software included, its flexibility in various
8504 scenarios is something I can't wait to experiment "into the wild" (I
8505 only played with virtual machines so far). And I am sure there is a
8506 lot more I haven't discovered yet about it, being so new within the
8507 project.</p>
8508
8509 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
8510 Edu?</strong></p>
8511
8512 <p>As usual, when it comes to Debian Blends, I see as the biggest
8513 disadvantage the lack of a numerous team dedicated to the
8514 project. Every day I see the same names in the changelogs, and I have
8515 a constantly fear of the bus factor in this story.  I'd like to see
8516 Debian Edu advertised more as an entry point into the Debian
8517 ecosystem, especially amongst newcomers and students. IMHO there are a
8518 lot low-hanging fruits in terms of bug squashing, and enough
8519 opportunities to get the feeling of the Debian Project's dynamics. Not
8520 to mention it's a very fun blend to work on!</p>
8521
8522 <p>Derived from the previous statement, is the delay in catching up
8523 with the main Debian release and documentation. This is common though
8524 to all blends and derivatives, but it's an issue we can all work
8525 on.</p>
8526
8527 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
8528
8529 <p>I can hardly imagine myself spending a day without Vim, since my
8530 daily routine covers writing code and hacking configuration files. I
8531 am a fan of the Awesome window manager (but I also like the
8532 Enlightenment project a lot!),
8533 <a href="http://www.claws-mail.org/‎">Claws Mail</a> due to its ease of
8534 use and very configurable behaviour. Recently I fell in love with
8535 <a href="https://launchpad.net/redshift">Redshift</a>, which helps me
8536 get through the night without headaches. Of course, there is much more
8537 stuff in this bag, but I'll need a blog on my own for doing this!</p>
8538
8539 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
8540 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
8541
8542 <p>Well, on this field, I cannot do much more than experiment right
8543 now. So, being far from having a recipe for success, I can only assume
8544 that:</p>
8545
8546 <ul>
8547
8548 <li>schools would like to get rid of proprietary software</li>
8549
8550 <li>students will love the openness of the system, and will want to
8551     experiment with it - maybe we need to harvest the native curiosity
8552     of teenagers more?</li>
8553
8554 <li>there is no "right one" when it comes to strategies, but it would
8555     be useful to have some success stories published somewhere, so
8556     other can get some inspiration from them (I know I'd promote
8557     them!)</li>
8558
8559 <li>more active promotion - talks, conferences, even small school
8560     lectures can do magical things if they encounter at least one
8561     person interested. Who knows who that person might be? ;-)</li>
8562
8563 </ul>
8564
8565 <p>I also see some problems in getting Skolelinux into schools; for
8566 example, in our country we have a great deal of corruption issues, so
8567 it might be hard(er) to fight against proprietary solutions. Also,
8568 people who relied on commercial software for all their lives, would be
8569 very hard to convert against their will.</p>
8570
8571       </div>
8572       <div class="tags">
8573
8574
8575         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>.
8576
8577
8578       </div>
8579     </div>
8580     <div class="padding"></div>
8581
8582     <div class="entry">
8583       <div class="title">
8584         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Jonathan_Carter.html">Debian Edu interview: Jonathan Carter</a>
8585       </div>
8586       <div class="date">
8587         12th June 2013
8588       </div>
8589       <div class="body">
8590         <p>There is a certain cross-over between the
8591 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
8592 project</a> and <a href="http://www.edubuntu.org/">the Edubuntu
8593 project</a>, and for example the LTSP packages in Debian are a joint
8594 effort between the projects.  One person with a foot in both camps is
8595 Jonathan Carter, which I am now happy to present to you.</p>
8596
8597 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
8598
8599 <p>I'm a South-African free software geek who lives in Cape Town. My
8600 days vary quite a bit since I'm involved in too many things. As I'm
8601 getting older I'm learning how to focus a bit more :)</p>
8602
8603 <p>I'm also an Edubuntu contributor and I love when there are
8604 opportunities for the Edubuntu and Debian Edu projects to benefit from
8605 each other.</p>
8606
8607 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
8608 project?</strong></p>
8609
8610 <p>I've been somewhat familiar with the project before, but I think my
8611 first direct exposure to the project was when I met Petter
8612 [Reinholdtsen] and Knut [Yrvin] at the Edubuntu summit in 2005 in
8613 London. They provided great feedback that helped the bootstrapping of
8614 Edubuntu. Back then Edubuntu (and even Ubuntu) was still very new and
8615 it was great getting input from people who have been around longer. I
8616 was also still very excitable and said yes to everything and to this
8617 day I have a big todo list backlog that I'm catching up with. I think
8618 over the years the relationship between Edubuntu and Debian-Edu has
8619 been gradually improving, although I think there's a lot that we could
8620 still improve on in terms of working together on packages. I'm sure
8621 we'll get there one day.</p>
8622
8623 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
8624 Edu?</strong></p>
8625
8626 <p>Debian itself already has so many advantages. I could go on about
8627 it for pages, but in essence I love that it's a very honest project
8628 that puts its users first with no hidden agendas and also produces
8629 very high quality work.</p>
8630
8631 <p>I think the advantage of Debian Edu is that it makes many common
8632 set-up tasks simpler so that administrators can get up and running
8633 with a lot less effort and frustration. At the same time I think it
8634 helps to standardise installations in schools so that it's easier for
8635 community members and commercial suppliers to support.</p>
8636
8637 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
8638 Edu?</strong></p>
8639
8640 <p>I had to re-type this one a few times because I'm trying to
8641 separate "disadvantages" from "areas that need improvement" (which is
8642 what I originally rambled on about)</p>
8643
8644 <p>The biggest disadvantage I can think of is lack of manpower. The
8645 project could do so much more if there were more good contributors. I
8646 think some of the problems are external too. Free software and free
8647 content in education is a no-brainer but it takes some time to catch
8648 on. When you've been working with the same proprietary eco-system for
8649 years and have gotten used to it, it can be hard to adjust to some
8650 concepts in the free software world. It would be nice if there were
8651 more Debian Edu consultants across the world. I'd love to be one
8652 myself but I'm already so over-committed that it's just not possible
8653 currently.</p>
8654
8655 <p>I think the best short-term solution to that large-scale problem is
8656 for schools to be pro-active and share their experiences and grow
8657 their skills in-house. I'm often saddened to see how much money
8658 educational institutions spend on 3rd party solutions that they don't
8659 have access to after the service has ended and they could've gotten so
8660 much more value otherwise by being more self-sustainable and
8661 autonomous.</p>
8662
8663 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
8664
8665 <p>My main laptop dual-boots between Debian and Windows 7. I was
8666 Windows free for years but started dual-booting again last year for
8667 some games which help me focus and relax (Starcraft II in
8668 particular). Gaming support on Linux is improving in leaps and bounds
8669 so I suppose I'll soon be able to regain that disk space :)</p>
8670
8671 <p>Besides that I rely on Icedove, Chromium, Terminator, Byobu, irssi,
8672 git, Tomboy, KVM, VLC and LibreOffice. Recently I've been torn on
8673 which desktop environment I like and I'm taking some refuge in Xfce
8674 while I figure that out. I like tools that keep things simple. I enjoy
8675 Python and shell scripting. I went to an Arduino workshop recently and
8676 it was awesome seeing how easy and simple the IDE software was to get
8677 up and running in Debian compared to the users running Windows and OS
8678 X.</p>
8679
8680 <p>I also use mc which some people frown upon slightly. I got used to
8681 using Norton Commander in the early 90's and it stuck (I think the
8682 people who sneer at it is just jealous that they don't know how to use
8683 it :p)
8684
8685 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
8686 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
8687
8688 <p>I think trying to force it is unproductive. I also think that in
8689 many cases it's appropriate for schools to use non-free systems and I
8690 don't think that there's any particular moral or ethical problem with
8691 that.</p>
8692
8693 <p>I do think though that free software can already solve so so many
8694 problems in educational institutions and it's just a shame not taking
8695 advantage of that.</p>
8696
8697 <p>I also think that some curricula need serious review. For example,
8698 some areas of the world rely heavily on very specific versions of MS
8699 Office, teaching students to parrot menu items instead of learning the
8700 general concepts. I think that's very unproductive because firstly, MS
8701 Office's interface changes drastically every few years and on top of
8702 that it also locks in a generation to a product that might not be the
8703 best solution for them.</p>
8704
8705 <p>To answer your question, I believe that the right strategy is to
8706 educate and inform, giving someone the information they require to
8707 make a decision that would work for them.</p>
8708
8709       </div>
8710       <div class="tags">
8711
8712
8713         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>.
8714
8715
8716       </div>
8717     </div>
8718     <div class="padding"></div>
8719
8720     <div class="entry">
8721       <div class="title">
8722         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fixing_the_Linux_black_screen_of_death_on_machines_with_Intel_HD_video.html">Fixing the Linux black screen of death on machines with Intel HD video</a>
8723       </div>
8724       <div class="date">
8725         11th June 2013
8726       </div>
8727       <div class="body">
8728         <p>When installing RedHat, Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu on some machines,
8729 the screen just turn black when Linux boot, either during installation
8730 or on first boot from the hard disk.  I've seen it once in a while the
8731 last few years, but only recently understood the cause.  I've seen it
8732 on HP laptops, and on my latest acquaintance the Packard Bell laptop.
8733 The reason seem to be in the wiring of some laptops.  The system to
8734 control the screen background light is inverted, so when Linux try to
8735 turn the brightness fully on, it end up turning it off instead.  I do
8736 not know which Linux drivers are affected, but this post is about the
8737 i915 driver used by the
8738 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
8739 EasyNote LV</a>, Thinkpad X40 and many other laptops.</p>
8740
8741 <p>The problem can be worked around two ways.  Either by adding
8742 i915.invert_brightness=1 as a kernel option, or by adding a file in
8743 /etc/modprobe.d/ to tell modprobe to add the invert_brightness=1
8744 option when it load the i915 kernel module.  On Debian and Ubuntu, it
8745 can be done by running these commands as root:</p>
8746
8747 <pre>
8748 echo options i915 invert_brightness=1 | tee /etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf
8749 update-initramfs -u -k all
8750 </pre>
8751
8752 <p>Since March 2012 there is
8753 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=4dca20efb1a9c2efefc28ad2867e5d6c3f5e1955">a
8754 mechanism in the Linux kernel</a> to tell the i915 driver which
8755 hardware have this problem, and get the driver to invert the
8756 brightness setting automatically.  To use it, one need to add a row in
8757 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c">the
8758 intel_quirks array</a> in the driver source
8759 <tt>drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c</tt> (look for "<tt>static
8760 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks</tt>"), specifying the PCI device
8761 number (vendor number 8086 is assumed) and subdevice vendor and device
8762 number.</p>
8763
8764 <p>My Packard Bell EasyNote LV got this output from <tt>lspci
8765 -vvnn</tt> for the video card in question:</p>
8766
8767 <p><pre>
8768 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation \
8769     3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller [8086:0156] \
8770     (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
8771  Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device [1025:0688]
8772  Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- \
8773     ParErr- Stepping- SE RR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
8774  Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- \
8775     <TAbort- <MAbort->SERR- <PERR- INTx-
8776  Latency: 0
8777  Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 42
8778  Region 0: Memory at c2000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
8779  Region 2: Memory at b0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
8780  Region 4: I/O ports at 4000 [size=64]
8781  Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled]
8782  Capabilities: <access denied>
8783  Kernel driver in use: i915
8784 </pre></p>
8785
8786 <p>The resulting intel_quirks entry would then look like this:</p>
8787
8788 <p><pre>
8789 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks[] = {
8790        ...
8791         /* Packard Bell EasyNote LV11HC needs invert brightness quirk */
8792         { 0x0156, 0x1025, 0x0688, quirk_invert_brightness },
8793        ...
8794 }
8795 </pre></p>
8796
8797 <p>According to the kernel module instructions (as seen using
8798 <tt>modinfo i915</tt>), information about hardware needing the
8799 invert_brightness flag should be sent to the
8800 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/dri-devel">dri-devel
8801 (at) lists.freedesktop.org</a> mailing list to reach the kernel
8802 developers.  But my email about the laptop sent 2013-06-03 have not
8803 yet shown up in
8804 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2013-June/thread.html">the
8805 web archive for the mailing list</a>, so I suspect they do not accept
8806 emails from non-subscribers.  Because of this, I sent my patch also to
8807 the Debian bug tracking system instead as
8808 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/710938">BTS report #710938</a>, to make
8809 sure the patch is not lost.</p>
8810
8811 <p>Unfortunately, it is not enough to fix the kernel to get Laptops
8812 with this problem working properly with Linux.  If you use Gnome, your
8813 worries should be over at this point.  But if you use KDE, there is
8814 something in KDE ignoring the invert_brightness setting and turning on
8815 the screen during login.  I've reported it to Debian as
8816 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/711237">BTS report #711237</a>, and
8817 have no idea yet how to figure out exactly what subsystem is doing
8818 this.  Perhaps you can help?  Perhaps you know what the Gnome
8819 developers did to handle this, and this can give a clue to the KDE
8820 developers?  Or you know where in KDE the screen brightness is changed
8821 during login?  If so, please update the BTS report (or get in touch if
8822 you do not know how to update BTS).</p>
8823
8824 <p>Update 2013-07-19: The correct fix for this machine seem to be
8825 acpi_backlight=vendor, to disable ACPI backlight support completely,
8826 as the ACPI information on the machine is trash and it is better to
8827 leave it to the intel video driver to control the screen
8828 backlight.</p>
8829
8830       </div>
8831       <div class="tags">
8832
8833
8834         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>.
8835
8836
8837       </div>
8838     </div>
8839     <div class="padding"></div>
8840
8841     <div class="entry">
8842       <div class="title">
8843         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Third alpha release of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
8844       </div>
8845       <div class="date">
8846         10th June 2013
8847       </div>
8848       <div class="body">
8849         <p>The third wheezy based alpha release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
8850 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
8851
8852 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.0.0 alpha2 released
8853 2013-06-10</strong></p>
8854
8855 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux 7.0.0 edu
8856 alpha2, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
8857
8858 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
8859
8860 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
8861 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
8862 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
8863 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
8864 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
8865 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
8866 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
8867 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
8868 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
8869 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
8870 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
8871 desktop contains
8872 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
8873 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
8874 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
8875 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
8876
8877 <p>This is the third test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
8878 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
8879 Squeeze release.</p>
8880
8881 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
8882
8883 <ul>
8884
8885 <li>Iceweasel was updated from 10 to 17. (DSA 2699-1)
8886 <li>Updated libxv (DSA-2674), libxvmc (DSA-2675), libxfixes (DSA-2676), libxrender (DSA-2677), mesa (DSA-2678), xserver-xorg-video-openchrome (DSA-2679), libxt (DSA-2680), libxcursor (DSA-2681), libxext (DSA-2682), libxi (DSA-2683), libxrandr (DSA-2684), libxp (DSA-2685), libxcb (DSA-2686), libfs (DSA-2687), libxres (DSA-2688), libxtst (DSA-2689), libxxf86dga (DSA-2690), libxinerama (DSA-2691), libxxf86vm (DSA-2692), libx11 (DSA-2693), chromium-browser (DSA-2695), gnutls26 (DSA-2697), wireshark (DSA-2700), krb5 (DSA-2701), telepathy-gabble (DSA-2702) and subversion (DSA-2703).
8887 <li>Switched xrdp on thin client servers to use tightvncserver instead of xvnc4.
8888 <li>Now install software oscilloscope xoscope by default.
8889 <li>Now install music tools gtick, lingot and pianobooster by default.
8890
8891 </ul>
8892
8893 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
8894
8895 <ul>
8896
8897 <li>The subnet-change script is now able to change all files needing a change on the main-server when changing the IP network used.
8898 <li>Updated translation of the installation.
8899 <li>New Romanian translation.
8900 <li>Fix security problem causing root and first user password to no longer show up in /var/cache/debconf/templates.dat.
8901 <li>Fix roaming workstation setup (Closed in libpam-mklocaluser/0.8, libpam-mklocaluser/0.8~deb7u1: #706753: libpam-mklocaluser: Fail to create local user during first login).
8902 <li>Made roaming workstation setup more robust in non-Debian Edu environments.
8903 <li>New script debian-edu-bless to transform a Debian installation to a Debian Edu profile.
8904 <li>Adjust Iceweasel setup to improve performance when $HOME is on NFS.
8905 <li>More testsuite tests.
8906 <li>Make automatic proxy configuration more robust.
8907 <li>Adjust GOsa² GUI configuration.
8908
8909 <li>Update thin client and diskless workstation setup to work with
8910 LTSP in Wheezy.</li>
8911
8912 <li>Diskless workstations now run out of the box -- no need to set
8913 them up with GOsa².</li>
8914
8915 <li>Update IMAP server setup. </li>
8916
8917 <li>Fix login into Skolelinux Backup Tool (Closed in
8918 slbackup-php/0.4.4-1: #700257: slbackup-php: Fails to submit correctly
8919 entered password). </li>
8920
8921 </ul>
8922
8923 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
8924
8925 <ul>
8926
8927 <li>DVD binary and source images are not yet ready.</li>
8928
8929 <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
8930 available yet (Open in gosa/2.7.4-4: #698840: gosa-plugin-ldapmanager:
8931 missing import feature).</li>
8932
8933 <li>Missing artwork for the KDE desktop (and probably a few others). </li>
8934
8935 <li>KDE Debian submenu lacks icons (Closed: #502192: menu-xdg: invents
8936 own icon names instead of using existing). This will remain
8937 unfixed.</li>
8938
8939 </ul>
8940
8941 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
8942
8943 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
8944
8945 <ul>
8946
8947 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso</a></li>
8948
8949 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso</a></li>
8950
8951 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso .</li>
8952
8953 </ul>
8954
8955 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 27bbcace407743382f3c42c08dbe8178
8956 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: e35f7d7908566cd3075375b3721fa10ee420d419</p>
8957
8958 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
8959
8960 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
8961
8962       </div>
8963       <div class="tags">
8964
8965
8966         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>.
8967
8968
8969       </div>
8970     </div>
8971     <div class="padding"></div>
8972
8973     <div class="entry">
8974       <div class="title">
8975         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_there_a_PHP_expert_in_the_building___Debian_Edu_need_help_.html">Is there a PHP expert in the building?  Debian Edu need help!</a>
8976       </div>
8977       <div class="date">
8978          5th June 2013
8979       </div>
8980       <div class="body">
8981         <p>Here is a call for help from the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project.
8982 We have two problems blocking the release of the Wheezy version we
8983 hope to get released soon.  The two problems require some with PHP
8984 skills, and we seem to lack anyone with both time and PHP skills in
8985 the project:
8986
8987 <ol>
8988
8989 <li>It is impossible to log into the slbackup web interface
8990   (slbackup-php) using the root user and password.  This is
8991   <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/700257">BTS report #700257</a>.
8992   This used to work, but stopped working some time since Squeeze.
8993   Perhaps some obsolete PHP feature was used?</li>
8994
8995 <li>It is not possible to "mass import" user lists in Gosa, neither
8996   using ldif nor using CSV files.  The feature was disabled after a
8997   major rewrite of Gosa, and need to be ported to the new system.
8998   This is <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698840">BTS report
8999   #698840</a>.</li>
9000
9001 </ol>
9002
9003 <p>If you can help us, please join us on IRC
9004 (<a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu on
9005 irc.debian.org</a>) and provide patches via the BTS.</p>
9006
9007       </div>
9008       <div class="tags">
9009
9010
9011         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>.
9012
9013
9014       </div>
9015     </div>
9016     <div class="padding"></div>
9017
9018     <div class="entry">
9019       <div class="title">
9020         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__C_dric_Boutillier.html">Debian Edu interview: Cédric Boutillier</a>
9021       </div>
9022       <div class="date">
9023          4th June 2013
9024       </div>
9025       <div class="body">
9026         <p>It has been a while since my last English
9027 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
9028 interview last November.  But the developers and translators are still
9029 pulling along to get the Wheezy based release out the door, and this
9030 time I managed to get an interview from one of the French translators
9031 in the project, Cédric Boutillier.</p>
9032
9033 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
9034
9035 <p>I am 34 year old. I live near Paris, France. I am an assistant
9036 professor in probability theory. I spend my daytime teaching
9037 mathematics at the university and doing fundamental research in
9038 probability in connexion with combinatorics and statistical physics.</p>
9039
9040 <p>I have been involved in the Debian project for a couple of years
9041 and became Debian Developer a few months ago. I am working on Ruby
9042 packaging, publicity and translation.</p>
9043
9044 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
9045 project?</strong></p>
9046
9047 <p>I came to the Debian Edu project after a call for translation of
9048 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Manuals">the
9049 Debian Edu manual</a> for the release of Debian Edu Squeeze. Since
9050 then, I have been working on updating the French translation of the
9051 manual.
9052
9053 <p>I had the opportunity to make an installation of Debian Edu in a
9054 virtual machine when I was preparing localised version of some screen
9055 shots for the manual. I was amazed to see it worked out of the box and
9056 how comprehensive the list of software installed by default was.</p>
9057
9058 <p>What amazed me was the complete network infrastructure directly
9059 ready to use, which can and the nice administration interface provided
9060 by <a href="https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/">GOsa²</a>.  What pleased
9061 me also was the fact that among the software installed by default,
9062 there were many "traditional" educative software to learn languages,
9063 to count, to program... but also software to develop creativity and
9064 artistic skills with music (<a href="http://ardour.org/">Ardour</a>,
9065 <a href="http://audacity.sourceforge.net/">Audacity</a>) and
9066 movies/animation (I was especially thinking of
9067 <a href="http://linuxstopmotion.sourceforge.net/">Stopmotion</a>).</p>
9068
9069 <p>I am following the development of Debian Edu and am hanging out on
9070 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu</a>.
9071 Unfortunately, I don't much time to get more involved in this
9072 beautiful project.</p>
9073
9074 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
9075 Edu?</strong></p>
9076
9077 <p>For me, the main advantages of Skolelinux/Debian Edu are its
9078 community of experts and its precise documentation, as well as the
9079 fact that it provides a solution ready to use.</p>
9080
9081 <p>I would add also the fact that it is based on the rock solid Debian
9082 distribution, which ensures stability and provides a huge collection
9083 of educational free software.</p>
9084
9085 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
9086 Edu?</strong></p>
9087
9088 <p>Maybe the lack of manpower to do lobbying on the
9089 project. Sometimes, people who need to take decisions concerning IT do
9090 not have all the elements to evaluate properly free software
9091 solutions. The fact that support by a company may be difficult to find
9092 is probably a problem if the school does not have IT personnel.</p>
9093
9094 <p>One can find support from a company by looking at
9095 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Help/ProfessionalHelp">the
9096 wiki dokumentation</a>, where some countries already have a number of
9097 companies providing support for Debian Edu, like Germany or
9098 Norway. This list is easy to find readily from the manual. However,
9099 for other countries, like France, the list is empty. I guess that
9100 consultants proposing support for Debian would be able to provide some
9101 support for Debian Edu as well.</p>
9102
9103 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
9104
9105 <p>I am using the KDE Plasma Desktop. But the pieces of software I use
9106 most runs in a terminal: Mutt and OfflineIMAP for emails, latex for
9107 scientific documents, mpd for music. VIM is my editor of choice.  I am
9108 also using the mathematical software
9109 <a href="http://www.scilab.org/en/scilab/about‎">Scilab</a> and
9110 <a href="http://www.sagemath.org/index.html‎">Sage</a> (built from
9111 source as not completely packaged for Debian, yet).
9112
9113 <p><strong>Do you have any suggestions for teachers interested in
9114 using the free software in Debian to teach mathematics and
9115 statistics?</strong></p>
9116
9117 <p>I do not have any "nice" recommendations for statistics. At our
9118 university, we use both <a href="http://www.r-project.org/‎">R</a> and
9119 Scilab to teach statistics and probabilistic simulations. For
9120 geometry, there are nice programs:</p>
9121
9122 <ul>
9123
9124 <li><a href="http://www.drgeo.eu/">drgeo</a> and
9125 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/applications/all/kig‎">kig</a> to do
9126 constructions in planar geometry
9127
9128 <li><a href="http://www.geom.uiuc.edu/software/download/kali.html">kali</a>
9129 to discover symmetry groups (the so-called wallpapers and frieze
9130 groups), although the interface looks a bit old.</li>
9131
9132 </ul>
9133
9134 <p>I like also
9135 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/applications/all/cantor">cantor</a>, which
9136 provides a uniform interface to SciLab, Sage,
9137 <a href="http://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Octave‎">Octave</a>, etc...</p>
9138
9139 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
9140 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
9141
9142 <p>My suggestions would be to</p>
9143
9144 <ul>
9145
9146 <li>advertise the reduction of costs when free software is used.</li>
9147
9148 <li>communicate about the quality of free software projects, using
9149     well known examples like Firefox, ThunderBird and
9150     OpenOffice.org/LibreOffice.</li>
9151
9152 <li>advertise the living and strong community around the project.</li>
9153
9154 <li>show that it is not more difficult to use than any other
9155     system.</li>
9156
9157 </ul>
9158
9159       </div>
9160       <div class="tags">
9161
9162
9163         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>.
9164
9165
9166       </div>
9167     </div>
9168     <div class="padding"></div>
9169
9170     <div class="entry">
9171       <div class="title">
9172         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">Educational applications included in Debian Edu / Skolelinux (the screenshot collection :-)</a>
9173       </div>
9174       <div class="date">
9175          1st June 2013
9176       </div>
9177       <div class="body">
9178         <p>Included in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
9179 Skolelinux</a>, there are quite a lot of educational software.
9180 Created to help teachers teach, and pupils learn.  We have tried to
9181 tag them all using debtags use::learning and role::program, and using
9182 the debtags I was happy to be able to create a collage of the
9183 educational software packages installed by default, sorted by the
9184 debtag field.  Here it is.  Click on a image to learn more about the
9185 program.</p>
9186
9187 <!-- for f in $(debtags tagcat|grep field::|awk '{print $2}'); do   echo; echo "<p><strong>$f</strong></p>"; echo "<p>";   (     for p in $(debtags search --names "use::learning && interface::x11 && role::program && $f"); do img="<img src='http://screenshots.debian.net/thumbnail/$p' alt='$p'>"; if dpkg -s $p > /dev/null 2>&1; then           echo "<a href='http://packages.qa.debian.org/$p'>$img</a>"; fi;     done;   ) | LANG=C sort; echo "</p>"; done -->
9188
9189 <p><strong>field::arts</strong></p>
9190 <p>
9191 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=audacity'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/audacity.png' alt='audacity'></a>
9192 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=childsplay'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/childsplay.png' alt='childsplay'></a>
9193 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=denemo'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/denemo.png' alt='denemo'></a>
9194 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=freebirth'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/freebirth.png' alt='freebirth'></a>
9195 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
9196 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gimp'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gimp.png' alt='gimp'></a>
9197 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=hydrogen'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/hydrogen.png' alt='hydrogen'></a>
9198 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=lilypond'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/lilypond.png' alt='lilypond'></a>
9199 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=lmms'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/lmms.png' alt='lmms'></a>
9200 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=rosegarden'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/rosegarden.png' alt='rosegarden'></a>
9201 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=scribus'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/scribus.png' alt='scribus'></a>
9202 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=solfege'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/solfege.png' alt='solfege'></a>
9203 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=stopmotion'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/stopmotion.png' alt='stopmotion'></a>
9204 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=tuxpaint'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/tuxpaint.png' alt='tuxpaint'></a>
9205 </p>
9206
9207 <p><strong>field::astronomy</strong></p>
9208 <p>
9209 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=celestia-gnome'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/celestia-gnome.png' alt='celestia-gnome'></a>
9210 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gpredict'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gpredict.png' alt='gpredict'></a>
9211 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kstars'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kstars.png' alt='kstars'></a>
9212 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=planets'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/planets.png' alt='planets'></a>
9213 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=stellarium'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/stellarium.png' alt='stellarium'></a>
9214 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xplanet'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xplanet.png' alt='xplanet'></a>
9215 </p>
9216
9217 <p><strong>field::biology:structural</strong></p>
9218 <p>
9219 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=pymol'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/pymol.png' alt='pymol'></a>
9220 </p>
9221
9222 <p><strong>field::chemistry</strong></p>
9223 <p>
9224 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=atomix'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/atomix.png' alt='atomix'></a>
9225 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=chemtool'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/chemtool.png' alt='chemtool'></a>
9226 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=easychem'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/easychem.png' alt='easychem'></a>
9227 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gchempaint'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gchempaint.png' alt='gchempaint'></a>
9228 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gdis'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gdis.png' alt='gdis'></a>
9229 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=ghemical'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/ghemical.png' alt='ghemical'></a>
9230 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gperiodic'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gperiodic.png' alt='gperiodic'></a>
9231 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kalzium'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kalzium.png' alt='kalzium'></a>
9232 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=pymol'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/pymol.png' alt='pymol'></a>
9233 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=viewmol'>[viewmol]</a>
9234 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xdrawchem'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xdrawchem.png' alt='xdrawchem'></a>
9235 </p>
9236
9237 <p><strong>field::electronics</strong></p>
9238 <p>
9239 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
9240 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gpsim'>[gpsim]</a>
9241 </p>
9242
9243 <p><strong>field::geography</strong></p>
9244 <p>
9245 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kgeography'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kgeography.png' alt='kgeography'></a>
9246 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=marble'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/marble.png' alt='marble'></a>
9247 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xplanet'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xplanet.png' alt='xplanet'></a>
9248 </p>
9249
9250 <p><strong>field::linguistics</strong></p>
9251 <p>
9252 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
9253 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kanagram'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kanagram.png' alt='kanagram'></a>
9254 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=khangman'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/khangman.png' alt='khangman'></a>
9255 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=klettres'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/klettres.png' alt='klettres'></a>
9256 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=parley'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/parley.png' alt='parley'></a>
9257 </p>
9258
9259 <p><strong>field::mathematics</strong></p>
9260 <p>
9261 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=childsplay'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/childsplay.png' alt='childsplay'></a>
9262 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=drgeo'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/drgeo.png' alt='drgeo'></a>
9263 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
9264 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=geogebra'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/geogebra.png' alt='geogebra'></a>
9265 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=geomview'>[geomview]</a>
9266 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=grace'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/grace.png' alt='grace'></a>
9267 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=graphmonkey'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/graphmonkey.png' alt='graphmonkey'></a>
9268 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=graphthing'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/graphthing.png' alt='graphthing'></a>
9269 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kalgebra'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kalgebra.png' alt='kalgebra'></a>
9270 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kbruch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kbruch.png' alt='kbruch'></a>
9271 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kig'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kig.png' alt='kig'></a>
9272 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kmplot'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kmplot.png' alt='kmplot'></a>
9273 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=mathwar'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/mathwar.png' alt='mathwar'></a>
9274 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=rocs'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/rocs.png' alt='rocs'></a>
9275 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=scratch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/scratch.png' alt='scratch'></a>
9276 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=tuxmath'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/tuxmath.png' alt='tuxmath'></a>
9277 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xabacus'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xabacus.png' alt='xabacus'></a>
9278 </p>
9279
9280 <p><strong>field::physics</strong></p>
9281 <p>
9282 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
9283 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=step'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/step.png' alt='step'></a>
9284 </p>
9285
9286 <p><strong>field::TODO</strong></p>
9287 <p>
9288 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=blinken'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/blinken.png' alt='blinken'></a>
9289 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=cgoban'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/cgoban.png' alt='cgoban'></a>
9290 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=childsplay'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/childsplay.png' alt='childsplay'></a>
9291 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
9292 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gnuchess'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gnuchess.png' alt='gnuchess'></a>
9293 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gnugo'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gnugo.png' alt='gnugo'></a>
9294 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gtans'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gtans.png' alt='gtans'></a>
9295 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=ktouch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/ktouch.png' alt='ktouch'></a>
9296 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=librecad'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/librecad.png' alt='librecad'></a>
9297 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=scratch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/scratch.png' alt='scratch'></a>
9298 </p>
9299
9300 <p>In total, 61 applications.  3 of them lacked screen shots on
9301 <a href="http://screenshot.debian.net">screenshot.debian.net</a>.  If
9302 you know of some packages we should install by default, please let us
9303 know on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">IRC, #debian-edu
9304 on irc.debian.org</a>, or our
9305 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">mailing list
9306 debian-edu@</a>.</p>
9307
9308       </div>
9309       <div class="tags">
9310
9311
9312         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>.
9313
9314
9315       </div>
9316     </div>
9317     <div class="padding"></div>
9318
9319     <div class="entry">
9320       <div class="title">
9321         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8.html">How to install Linux on a Packard Bell Easynote LV preinstalled with Windows 8</a>
9322       </div>
9323       <div class="date">
9324         27th May 2013
9325       </div>
9326       <div class="body">
9327         <p>Two days ago, I asked
9328 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_can_I_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8_.html">how
9329 I could install Linux on a Packard Bell EasyNote LV computer
9330 preinstalled with Windows 8</a>.  I found a solution, but am horrified
9331 with the obstacles put in the way of Linux users on a laptop with UEFI
9332 and Windows 8.</p>
9333
9334 <p>I never found out if the cause of my problems were the use of UEFI
9335 secure booting or fast boot.  I suspect fast boot was the problem,
9336 causing the firmware to boot directly from HD without considering any
9337 key presses and alternative devices, but do not know UEFI settings
9338 enough to tell.</p>
9339
9340 <p>There is no way to install Linux on the machine in question without
9341 opening the box and disconnecting the hard drive!  This is as far as I
9342 can tell, the only way to get access to the firmware setup menu
9343 without accepting the Windows 8 license agreement.  I am told (and
9344 found description on how to) that it is possible to configure the
9345 firmware setup once booted into Windows 8.  But as I believe the terms
9346 of that agreement are completely unacceptable, accepting the license
9347 was never an alternative.  I do not enter agreements I do not intend
9348 to follow.</p>
9349
9350 <p>I feared I had to return the laptops and ask for a refund, and
9351 waste many hours on this, but luckily there was a way to get it to
9352 work.  But I would not recommend it to anyone planning to run Linux on
9353 it, and I have become sceptical to Windows 8 certified laptops.  Is
9354 this the way Linux will be forced out of the market place, by making
9355 it close to impossible for "normal" users to install Linux without
9356 accepting the Microsoft Windows license terms?  Or at least not
9357 without risking to loose the warranty?</p>
9358
9359 <p>I've updated the
9360 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Linux Laptop
9361 wiki page for Packard Bell EasyNote LV</a>, to ensure the next person
9362 do not have to struggle as much as I did to get Linux into the
9363 machine.</p>
9364
9365 <p>Thanks to Bob Rosbag, Florian Weimer, Philipp Kern, Ben Hutching,
9366 Michael Tokarev and others for feedback and ideas.</p>
9367
9368       </div>
9369       <div class="tags">
9370
9371
9372         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>.
9373
9374
9375       </div>
9376     </div>
9377     <div class="padding"></div>
9378
9379     <div class="entry">
9380       <div class="title">
9381         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_can_I_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8_.html">How can I install Linux on a Packard Bell Easynote LV preinstalled with Windows 8?</a>
9382       </div>
9383       <div class="date">
9384         25th May 2013
9385       </div>
9386       <div class="body">
9387         <p>I've run into quite a problem the last few days.  I bought three
9388 new laptops for my parents and a few others.  I bought Packard Bell
9389 Easynote LV to run Kubuntu on and use as their home computer.  But I
9390 am completely unable to figure out how to install Linux on it.  The
9391 computer is preinstalled with Windows 8, and I suspect it uses UEFI
9392 instead of a BIOS to boot.</p>
9393
9394 <p>The problem is that I am unable to get it to PXE boot, and unable
9395 to get it to boot the Linux installer from my USB stick.  I have yet
9396 to try the DVD install, and still hope it will work.  when I turn on
9397 the computer, there is no information on what buttons to press to get
9398 the normal boot menu.  I expect to get some boot menu to select PXE or
9399 USB stick booting.  When booting, it first ask for the language to
9400 use, then for some regional settings, and finally if I will accept the
9401 Windows 8 terms of use.  As these terms are completely unacceptable to
9402 me, I have no other choice but to turn off the computer and try again
9403 to get it to boot the Linux installer.</p>
9404
9405 <p>I have gathered my findings so far on a Linlap page about the
9406 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
9407 EasyNote LV</a> model.  If you have any idea how to get Linux
9408 installed on this machine, please get in touch or update that wiki
9409 page.  If I can't find a way to install Linux, I will have to return
9410 the laptop to the seller and find another machine for my parents.</p>
9411
9412 <p>I wonder, is this the way Linux will be forced out of the market
9413 using UEFI and "secure boot" by making it impossible to install Linux
9414 on new Laptops?</p>
9415
9416       </div>
9417       <div class="tags">
9418
9419
9420         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>.
9421
9422
9423       </div>
9424     </div>
9425     <div class="padding"></div>
9426
9427     <div class="entry">
9428       <div class="title">
9429         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_transform_a_Debian_based_system_to_a_Debian_Edu_installation.html">How to transform a Debian based system to a Debian Edu installation</a>
9430       </div>
9431       <div class="date">
9432         17th May 2013
9433       </div>
9434       <div class="body">
9435         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is
9436 an operating system based on Debian intended for use in schools.  It
9437 contain a turn-key solution for the computer network provided to
9438 pupils in the primary schools.  It provide both the central server,
9439 network boot servers and desktop environments with heaps of
9440 educational software.  The project was founded almost 12 years ago,
9441 2001-07-02.  If you want to support the project, which is in need for
9442 cash to fund developer gatherings and other project related activity,
9443 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">please
9444 donate some money</a>.
9445
9446 <p>A topic that come up again and again on the Debian Edu mailing
9447 lists and elsewhere, is the question on how to transform a Debian or
9448 Ubuntu installation into a Debian Edu installation.  It isn't very
9449 hard, and last week I wrote a script to replicate the steps done by
9450 the Debian Edu installer.</p>
9451
9452 <p>The script,
9453 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/branches/wheezy/debian-edu-config/share/debian-edu-config/tools/debian-edu-bless?view=markup">debian-edu-bless<a/>
9454 in the debian-edu-config package, will go through these six steps and
9455 transform an existing Debian Wheezy or Ubuntu (untested) installation
9456 into a Debian Edu Workstation:</p>
9457
9458 <ol>
9459
9460 <li>Add skolelinux related APT sources.</li>
9461 <li>Create /etc/debian-edu/config with the wanted configuration.</li>
9462 <li>Install debian-edu-install to load preseeding values and pull in
9463     our configuration.</li>
9464 <li>Preseed debconf database with profile setup in
9465     /etc/debian-edu/config, and run tasksel to install packages
9466     according to the profile specified in the config above,
9467     overriding some of the Debian automation machinery.</li>
9468 <li>Run debian-edu-cfengine-D installation to configure everything
9469     that could not be done using preseeding.</li>
9470 <li>Ask for a reboot to enable all the configuration changes.</li>
9471
9472 </ol>
9473
9474 <p>There are some steps in the Debian Edu installation that can not be
9475 replicated like this.  Disk partitioning and LVM setup, for example.
9476 So this script just assume there is enough disk space to install all
9477 the needed packages.</p>
9478
9479 <p>The script was created to help a Debian Edu student working on
9480 setting up <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org">Raspberry Pi</a> as a
9481 Debian Edu client, and using it he can take the existing
9482 <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/FrontPage‎">Raspbian</a> installation and
9483 transform it into a fully functioning Debian Edu Workstation (or
9484 Roaming Workstation, or whatever :).</p>
9485
9486 <p>The default setting in the script is to create a KDE Workstation.
9487 If a LXDE based Roaming workstation is wanted instead, modify the
9488 PROFILE and DESKTOP values at the top to look like this instead:</p>
9489
9490 <p><pre>
9491 PROFILE="Roaming-Workstation"
9492 DESKTOP="lxde"
9493 </pre></p>
9494
9495 <p>The script could even become useful to set up Debian Edu servers in
9496 the cloud, by starting with a virtual Debian installation at some
9497 virtual hosting service and setting up all the services on first
9498 boot.</p>
9499
9500       </div>
9501       <div class="tags">
9502
9503
9504         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>.
9505
9506
9507       </div>
9508     </div>
9509     <div class="padding"></div>
9510
9511     <div class="entry">
9512       <div class="title">
9513         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Second alpha release of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
9514       </div>
9515       <div class="date">
9516         14th May 2013
9517       </div>
9518       <div class="body">
9519         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
9520 project</a> is making great progress and made its second Wheezy based
9521 release today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
9522
9523 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.0.0 alpha1 released
9524 2013-05-14</strong></p>
9525
9526 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux 7.0.0 edu
9527 alpha1, based on <a href="http://www.debian.org">Debian</a> with
9528 codename "Wheezy".</p>
9529
9530 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
9531
9532 <p>Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based
9533 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
9534 configured school network. Immediatly after installation a school
9535 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
9536 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
9537 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
9538 initial installation of the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all
9539 other machines can be installed via the network.</p>
9540
9541 <p>This is the first test release based on Wheezy (which currently is
9542 not released yet). Basically this is an updated and slightly improved
9543 version compared to the Squeeze release.</p>
9544
9545 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
9546 <ul>
9547   <li>Install freemind (0.9.0) by default, and stop installing vym by
9548     default.</li>
9549   <li>Install chromium (26.0.1410.43) by default.</li>
9550   <li>Install goplay (0.5-1.1) to make golearn available by default.</li>
9551   <li>Updated support for Japanese input methods, now based on
9552     ibus-anthy.</li>
9553 </ul>
9554
9555 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
9556 <ul>
9557
9558   <li>Switched default file system from ext3 to ext4 for speed and
9559     reliability improvements.</li>
9560   <li>Got rid of unwanted winbind daemon and PAM setup activated because
9561     of <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/706434">706434</a>.</li>
9562   <li>Extended and improved the testsuite tests to detect more possible
9563     problems.</li>
9564   <li>Corrected proxy handling to not set http_proxy to a bogus
9565     direct:// URL.</li>
9566   <li>Corrected proxy setup for diskless workstations.</li>
9567   <li>Corrected PXE setup to use our updated udebs during installation.</li>
9568   <li>Made installation handling of low entropy level more robust.</li>
9569   <li>Create larger partitions for Roaming workstations and Thin client
9570     servers, to make room for all the software installed.</li>
9571   <li>Fix bug in Roaming workstation PAM setup, making it impossible to
9572     log in (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/706753">706753</a>).</li>
9573 </ul>
9574
9575 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
9576 <ul>
9577
9578   <li>IP resolution for the local hostname give useless IPv6 address
9579     (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/705900">705900</a>).  Only install
9580     libnss-myhostname on roaming workstations until it is fixed.</li>
9581   <li>DVD images are not yet ready.</li>
9582   <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
9583     available yet (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698840">698840</a>).</li>
9584   <li>Missing artwork for the KDE desktop (and probably a few others).</li>
9585   <li>KDE Debian submenu lacks icons.</li>
9586   <li>LXDE menu lacks entry for changing GOsa password
9587     (website). Installing gosa-desktop will be an option.</li>
9588   <li>Backup configuration via web interface is impossible due to
9589     password submission problem
9590     (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/700257">700257</a>).</li>
9591
9592 </ul>
9593
9594 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
9595
9596 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
9597 <ul>
9598
9599   <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso</a></li>
9600   <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso</a></li>
9601   <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso</li>
9602
9603 </ul>
9604
9605 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 685ed76c1aa8e44b12d3fde21faf450b</p>
9606
9607 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 6c874de157024da13e115bab29c068080a11ec4c</p>
9608
9609 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
9610
9611 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
9612
9613       </div>
9614       <div class="tags">
9615
9616
9617         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>.
9618
9619
9620       </div>
9621     </div>
9622     <div class="padding"></div>
9623
9624     <div class="entry">
9625       <div class="title">
9626         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian__the_Linux_distribution_of_choice_for_LEGO_designers_.html">Debian, the Linux distribution of choice for LEGO designers?</a>
9627       </div>
9628       <div class="date">
9629         11th May 2013
9630       </div>
9631       <div class="body">
9632         <P>In January,
9633 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">I
9634 announced a</a> new <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">IRC
9635 channel #debian-lego</a>, for those of us in the Debian and Linux
9636 community interested in <a href="http://www.lego.com/">LEGO</a>, the
9637 marvellous construction system from Denmark.  We also created
9638 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">a wiki page</a> to have
9639 a place to take notes and write down our plans and hopes.  And several
9640 people showed up to help.  I was very happy to see the effect of my
9641 call.  Since the small start, we have a debtags tag
9642 <a href="http://debtags.debian.net/search/bytag?wl=hardware::hobby:lego">hardware::hobby:lego</a>
9643 tag for LEGO related packages, and now count 10 packages related to
9644 LEGO and <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/">Mindstorms</a>:</p>
9645
9646 <p><table>
9647 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/brickos">brickos</a></td><td>alternative OS for LEGO Mindstorms RCX. Supports development in C/C++</td></tr>
9648 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/leocad">leocad</a></td><td>virtual brick CAD software</td></tr>
9649 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libnxt">libnxt</a></td><td>utility library for talking to the LEGO Mindstorms NX</td></tr>
9650 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/lnpd">lnpd</a></td><td>daemon for LNP communication with BrickOS</td></tr>
9651 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nbc">nbc</a></td><td>compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks</td></tr>
9652 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nqc">nqc</a></td><td>Not Quite C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms RCX</td></tr>
9653 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/python-nxt">python-nxt</a></td><td>python driver/interface/wrapper for the Lego Mindstorms NXT robot</td></tr>
9654 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/python-nxt-filer">python-nxt-filer</a></td><td>simple GUI to manage files on a LEGO Mindstorms NXT</td></tr>
9655 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/scratch">scratch</a></td><td>easy to use programming environment for ages 8 and up</td></tr>
9656 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/t2n">t2n</a></td><td>simple command-line tool for Lego NXT</td></tr>
9657 </table></p>
9658
9659 <p>Some of these are available in Wheezy, and all but one are
9660 currently available in Jessie/testing.  leocad is so far only
9661 available in experimental.</p>
9662
9663 <p>If you care about LEGO in Debian, please join us on IRC and help
9664 adding the rest of the great free software tools available on Linux
9665 for LEGO designers.</p>
9666
9667       </div>
9668       <div class="tags">
9669
9670
9671         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>.
9672
9673
9674       </div>
9675     </div>
9676     <div class="padding"></div>
9677
9678     <div class="entry">
9679       <div class="title">
9680         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Wheezy_is_out___and_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_should_soon_follow___newinwheezy.html">Debian Wheezy is out - and Debian Edu / Skolelinux should soon follow! #newinwheezy</a>
9681       </div>
9682       <div class="date">
9683          5th May 2013
9684       </div>
9685       <div class="body">
9686         <p>When I woke up this morning, I was very happy to see that the
9687 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130504">release announcement
9688 for Debian Wheezy</a> was waiting in my mail box.  This is a great
9689 Debian release, and I expect to move my machines at home over to it fairly
9690 soon.</p>
9691
9692 <p>The new debian release contain heaps of new stuff, and one program
9693 in particular make me very happy to see included.  The
9694 <a href="http://scratch.mit.edu/">Scratch</a> program, made famous by
9695 the <a href="http://www.code.org/">Teach kids code</a> movement, is
9696 included for the first time.  Alongside similar programs like
9697 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/kturtle/">kturtle</a> and
9698 <a href="http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Turtle_Art">turtleart</a>,
9699 it allow for visual programming where syntax errors can not happen,
9700 and a friendly programming environment for learning to control the
9701 computer.  Scratch will also be included in the next release of Debian
9702 Edu.</a>
9703
9704 <p>And now that Wheezy is wrapped up, we can wrap up the next Debian
9705 Edu/Skolelinux release too.  The
9706 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/04/msg00132.html">first
9707 alpha release</a> went out last week, and the next should soon
9708 follow.<p>
9709
9710       </div>
9711       <div class="tags">
9712
9713
9714         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>.
9715
9716
9717       </div>
9718     </div>
9719     <div class="padding"></div>
9720
9721     <div class="entry">
9722       <div class="title">
9723         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">First alpha release of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
9724       </div>
9725       <div class="date">
9726         26th April 2013
9727       </div>
9728       <div class="body">
9729         <p>The Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is still going strong and made
9730 its first Wheezy based release today.  This is the release
9731 announcement:</p>
9732
9733 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu ~7.0.0 alpha0 released
9734 2013-04-26</strong></p>
9735
9736 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux ~7.0.0
9737 edu alpha0, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
9738
9739 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
9740
9741 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
9742 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
9743 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
9744 network. Immediatly after installation a school server running all
9745 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
9746 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
9747 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
9748 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
9749 installed via the network.</p>
9750
9751 <p>This is the first test release based on Wheezy (which currently is
9752 not released yet). Basically this is an updated and slightly improved
9753 version compared to the Squeeze release.</p>
9754
9755 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
9756
9757 <ul>
9758 <li>Everything which is new in Debian Wheezy, eg:
9759   <ul>
9760      <li>Linux kernel 3.2.x</li>
9761      <li>Desktop environments KDE "Plasma" 4.8.4, GNOME 3.4, and LXDE 4
9762          (KDE is installed by default; to choose GNOME or LXDE: see
9763          manual.)</li>
9764      <li>Web browser Iceweasel 10 ESR</li>
9765      <li>LibreOffice 3.5.4</li>
9766      <li>LTSP 5.4.2</li>
9767      <li>GOsa 2.7.4</li>
9768      <li>CUPS print system 1.5.3</li>
9769      <li>Educational toolbox GCompris 12.01</li>
9770      <li>Music creator Rosegarden 12.04</li>
9771      <li>Image editor Gimp 2.8.2</li>
9772      <li>Virtual universe Celestia 1.6.1</li>
9773      <li>Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.11.3</li>
9774      <li>Scratch visual programming environment 1.4.0.6</li>
9775      <li>New version of debian-installer from Debian Wheezy, see
9776          <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/installmanual">installation
9777          manual</a> for more details.</li>
9778      <li>Debian Wheezy includes about 37000 packages available for
9779          installation.</li>
9780      <li>More information about Debian Wheezy 7.0 is provided in the
9781          <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/releasenotes">release notes</a> and the <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/installmanual">installation manual</a>.</li>
9782   </ul></li>
9783 </ul>
9784
9785 <p><strong>Documentation</strong></p>
9786 <ul>
9787 <li>The (<a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy">English</a>) Debian Edu Wheezy Manual is fully translated to
9788     German, French, Italian and Danish. Partly translated versions exist
9789     for Norwegian Bokmal and Spanish.</li>
9790 </ul>
9791
9792 <p><Strong>LDAP related changes</strong></p>
9793 <ul>
9794 <li>Slight changes to some objects and acls to have more types to
9795     choose from when adding systems in GOsa. Now systems can be of type
9796     server, workstation, printer, terminal or netdevice.</li>
9797 </ul>
9798
9799 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
9800 <ul>
9801 <li>LTSP clients start as diskless workstation / thin client can be
9802     configured via command line argument -- or individually adding an
9803     entry in lts.conf or LDAP.<li>
9804 <li>GOsa gui: Now some options that seemed to be available, but are non
9805     functional, are greyed out (or are not clickable). Some tabs are
9806     completely hidden to the end user, others even to the GOsa admin.</li>
9807 </ul>
9808
9809 <p><strong>Regressions</strong></p>
9810 <ul>
9811 <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv) available
9812     yet.</li>
9813 </ul>
9814
9815 <p><strong>No updated artwork</strong></p>
9816
9817 <ul>
9818 <li>Updated artwork which is visible during installation, in the login
9819     screen and as desktop wallpaper is still missing or the same as we
9820     had for our Squeeze based release.</li>
9821 </ul>
9822
9823 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
9824
9825 To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use
9826 <ul>
9827 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</a></li>
9828 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</a></li>
9829 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</li>
9830 </ul>
9831
9832 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: c5e773ddafdaa4f48c409c682f598b6c</p>
9833
9834 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 25934fabb9b7d20235499a0a51f08ce6c54215f2</p>
9835
9836 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
9837
9838 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
9839
9840       </div>
9841       <div class="tags">
9842
9843
9844         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>.
9845
9846
9847       </div>
9848     </div>
9849     <div class="padding"></div>
9850
9851     <div class="entry">
9852       <div class="title">
9853         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_developer_gathering_in_2013_take_place_in_Trondheim.html">First Debian Edu / Skolelinux developer gathering in 2013 take place in Trondheim</a>
9854       </div>
9855       <div class="date">
9856         16th April 2013
9857       </div>
9858       <div class="body">
9859         <p>This years first <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux /
9860 Debian Edu</a> developer gathering take place the coming weekend in Trondheim.
9861 Details about the gathering can be found
9862 <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2013-04-19-21-Trondheim">on
9863 the FRiSK wiki</a>.  The dates are 19-21th of April 2013, and online
9864 participation for those unable to make it in person is very welcome,
9865 and I plan to participate online myself as I could not leave Oslo this
9866 weekend.</p>
9867
9868 <p>The focus of the gathering is to work on the web pages and project
9869 infrastructure, and to continue the work on the Wheezy based Debian
9870 Edu release.</p>
9871
9872 <p>See you on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">IRC, #debian-edu on irc.debian.org,</a> then?</p>
9873
9874       </div>
9875       <div class="tags">
9876
9877
9878         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>.
9879
9880
9881       </div>
9882     </div>
9883     <div class="padding"></div>
9884
9885     <div class="entry">
9886       <div class="title">
9887         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Isenkram_0_2_finally_in_the_Debian_archive.html">Isenkram 0.2 finally in the Debian archive</a>
9888       </div>
9889       <div class="date">
9890          3rd April 2013
9891       </div>
9892       <div class="body">
9893         <p>Today the <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram
9894 package</a> finally made it into the archive, after lingering in NEW
9895 for many months.  I uploaded it to the Debian experimental suite
9896 2013-01-27, and today it was accepted into the archive.</p>
9897
9898 <p>Isenkram is a system for suggesting to users what packages to
9899 install to work with a pluggable hardware device.  The suggestion pop
9900 up when the device is plugged in.  For example if a Lego Mindstorm NXT
9901 is inserted, it will suggest to install the program needed to program
9902 the NXT controller.  Give it a go, and report bugs and suggestions to
9903 BTS. :)</p>
9904
9905       </div>
9906       <div class="tags">
9907
9908
9909         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>.
9910
9911
9912       </div>
9913     </div>
9914     <div class="padding"></div>
9915
9916     <div class="entry">
9917       <div class="title">
9918         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Change_the_font__save_the_world__and_save_some_money_in_the_process_.html">Change the font, save the world (and save some money in the process)</a>
9919       </div>
9920       <div class="date">
9921         26th March 2013
9922       </div>
9923       <div class="body">
9924         <p>Would you like to help the environment and save money at the same
9925 time, without much sacrifice?  A small step could be to change the
9926 font you use when printing.</p>
9927
9928 <p>Three years ago,
9929 <a href="http://arstechnica.com/business/2010/04/last-year-printer-comparison-website/">Ars
9930 Technica</a> reported how the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay
9931 changed their default front from
9932 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arial">Arial</a> to
9933 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_Gothic">Century
9934 Gothic</a> to save money.  The Century Gothic font uses 30% less toner
9935 than Arial to print the same text.  In other word, you could cut your
9936 toner costs by 30% (or actually, increase your toner supply life time
9937 by more than 30%), by simply changing the default font used in your
9938 prints.</p>
9939
9940 <p>But it is not quite obvious how much one will save by switching.
9941 The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay said it used $100,000 per year
9942 on ink and toner cartridges, according to
9943 <a href="http://www.twincities.com/ci_14833097">a report from
9944 TwinCities.com</a>, and expected to save between $5,000 and $10,000
9945 per year by asking staff and students to use a different font.  Not
9946 all PDFs and documents are created internally, and those from external
9947 sources will most likely still use a different font.  Also, the
9948 Century Gothic font is slightly wider than Arial, and thus might use
9949 more sheets of paper to print the same text, so the total saving
9950 depend on the documents printed.</p>
9951
9952 <p>But it is definitely something to consider, if you want to reduce
9953 the amount of trash, decrease the amount of toner used in the world,
9954 and save some money in the process.</p>
9955
9956 <p>Update 2013-04-10: If you want to know how much ink/toner could be
9957 saved when switching between fonts, Inkfarm got a
9958 <a href="http://www.inkfarm.com/What-the-Font">service to calculate the
9959 difference between font pairs</a>.  They also
9960 <a href="http://www.inkfarm.com/Recommended-Ink-Saving-Fonts---">recommend
9961 which fonts to use</a> to save ink.  Check it out. :) While updating
9962 this blog post, I also came across a blog post from InkCloners,
9963 <a href="http://inkcloners.com/blog/ink-cartridges/change-fonts-to-save-ink-costs/">listing
9964 the fonts they recommend</a>, with Centory Gothic at the top.</p>
9965
9966       </div>
9967       <div class="tags">
9968
9969
9970         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9971
9972
9973       </div>
9974     </div>
9975     <div class="padding"></div>
9976
9977     <div class="entry">
9978       <div class="title">
9979         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Typesetting_a_short_story_using_docbook_for_PDF__HTML_and_EPUB.html">Typesetting a short story using docbook for PDF, HTML and EPUB</a>
9980       </div>
9981       <div class="date">
9982         24th March 2013
9983       </div>
9984       <div class="body">
9985         <p>A few days ago, during a discussion in
9986 <a href="http://www.efn.no/">EFN</a> about interesting books to read
9987 about copyright and the data retention directive, a suggestion to read
9988 the 1968 short story Kodémus by
9989 <a href="http://web2.gyldendal.no/toraage/">Tore Åge Bringsværd</a>
9990 came up.  The text was only available in old paper books, and thus not
9991 easily available for current and future generations.  Some of the
9992 people participating in the discussion contacted the author, and
9993 reported back 2013-03-19 that the author was OK with releasing the
9994 short story using a <a href="http://www.creativecommons.org/">Creative
9995 Commons</a> license.  The text was quickly scanned and OCR-ed, and we
9996 were ready to start on the editing and typesetting.</p>
9997
9998 <p>As I already had some experience formatting text in my project to
9999 provide a Norwegian version of the Free Culture book by Lawrence
10000 Lessig, I chipped in and set up a
10001 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">DocBook</a> processing framework to
10002 generate PDF, HTML and EPUB version of the short story.  The tools to
10003 transform DocBook to different formats are already in my Linux
10004 distribution of choice, <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>, so
10005 all I had to do was to use the
10006 <a href="http://dblatex.sourceforge.net/">dblatex</a>,
10007 <a href="http://docbook.sourceforge.net/release/xsl/current/epub/README">dbtoepub</a>
10008 and <a href="https://fedorahosted.org/xmlto/">xmlto</a> tools to do the
10009 conversion.  After a few days, we decided to replace dblatex with
10010 xsltproc/fop (aka
10011 <a href="http://wiki.docbook.org/DocBookXslStylesheets">docbook-xsl</a>),
10012 to get the copyright information to show up in the PDF and to get a
10013 nicer &lt;variablelist&gt; typesetting, but that is just a minor
10014 technical detail.</p>
10015
10016 <p>There were a few challenges, of course.  We want to typeset the
10017 short story to look like the original, and that require fairly good
10018 control over the layout.  The original short story have three
10019 parts/scenes separated by a single horizontally centred star (*), and
10020 the paragraphs do not contain only flowing text, but dialogs and text
10021 that started on a new line in the middle of the paragraph.</p>
10022
10023 <p>I initially solved the first challenge by using a paragraph with a
10024 single star in it, ie &lt;para&gt;*&lt;/para&gt;, but it made sure a
10025 placeholder indicated where the scene shifted.  This did not look too
10026 good without the centring.  The next approach was to create a new
10027 preprocessor directive &lt;?newscene?&gt;, mapping to "&lt;hr/&gt;"
10028 for HTML and "&lt;fo:block text-align="center"&gt;&lt;fo:leader
10029 leader-pattern="rule" rule-thickness="0.5pt"/&gt;&lt;/fo:block&gt;"
10030 for FO/PDF output (did not try to implement this in dblatex, as we had
10031 switched at this time).  The HTML XSL file looked like this:</p>
10032
10033 <p><blockquote><pre>
10034 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
10035 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
10036   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('newscene')"&gt;
10037     &lt;hr/&gt;
10038   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
10039 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
10040 </pre></blockquote></p>
10041
10042 <p>And the FO/PDF XSL file looked like this:</p>
10043
10044 <p><blockquote><pre>
10045 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
10046 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
10047   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('newscene')"&gt;
10048     &lt;fo:block text-align="center"&gt;
10049       &lt;fo:leader leader-pattern="rule" rule-thickness="0.5pt"/&gt;
10050     &lt;/fo:block&gt;
10051   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
10052 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
10053 </pre></blockquote></p>
10054
10055 <p>Finally, I came across the &lt;bridgehead&gt; tag, which seem to be
10056 a good fit for the task at hand, and I replaced &lt;?newscene?&gt;
10057 with &lt;bridgehead&gt;*&lt;/bridgehead&gt;.  It isn't centred, but we
10058 can fix it with some XSL rule if the current visual layout isn't
10059 enough.</p>
10060
10061 <p>I did not find a good DocBook compliant way to solve the
10062 linebreak/paragraph challenge, so I ended up creating a new processor
10063 directive &lt;?linebreak?&gt;, mapping to &lt;br/&gt; in HTML, and
10064 &lt;fo:block/&gt; in FO/PDF.  I suspect there are better ways to do
10065 this, and welcome ideas and patches on github.  The HTML XSL file now
10066 look like this:</p>
10067
10068 <p><blockquote><pre>
10069 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
10070 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
10071   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('linebreak)"&gt;
10072     &lt;br/&gt;
10073   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
10074 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
10075 </pre></blockquote></p>
10076
10077 <p>And the FO/PDF XSL file looked like this:</p>
10078
10079 <p><blockquote><pre>
10080 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
10081 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'
10082   xmlns:fo="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Format"&gt;
10083   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('linebreak)"&gt;
10084     &lt;fo:block/&gt;
10085   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
10086 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
10087 </pre></blockquote></p>
10088
10089 <p>One unsolved challenge is our wish to expose different ISBN numbers
10090 per publication format, while keeping all of them in some conditional
10091 structure in the DocBook source.  No idea how to do this, so we ended
10092 up listing all the ISBN numbers next to their format in the colophon
10093 page.</p>
10094
10095 <p>If you want to check out the finished result, check out the
10096 <a href="https://github.com/sickel/kodemus">source repository at
10097 github</a>
10098 (<a href="https://github.com/EFN/kodemus">future/new/official
10099 repository</a>).  We expect it to be ready and announced in a few
10100 days.</p>
10101
10102       </div>
10103       <div class="tags">
10104
10105
10106         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/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
10107
10108
10109       </div>
10110     </div>
10111     <div class="padding"></div>
10112
10113     <div class="entry">
10114       <div class="title">
10115         <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>
10116       </div>
10117       <div class="date">
10118         17th March 2013
10119       </div>
10120       <div class="body">
10121         <p>Via
10122 <a href="https://twitter.com/pcwizz/status/313044373262716930">twitter</a>
10123 I just discovered that <a href="http://pcwizz.net/">Pcwizz</a> have
10124 done a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPzTZ61Pcuc">video
10125 review</a> on Youtube of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
10126 / Debian Edu</a> version 6.  He installed the standalone profile and
10127 the video show a walk-through of of the menu content, demonstration of
10128 a few programs and his view of our distribution.</p>
10129
10130 <p>There is also some really nice quotes (transcribed by me, might
10131 have heard wrong).  While looking thought the Graphics menu:</p>
10132
10133 <blockquote>
10134 "Basically everything you ever need in a school environment."
10135 </blockquote>
10136
10137 <p>And as a general evaluation of the entire distribution:</p>
10138
10139 <blockquote>
10140 "So, yeah, a bit bloated.  It kept all the Debian stuff in there, just
10141 to keep it nice and GNU.  So, I do not want to go on about it, but
10142 lets give it 7 out of 10.  I am not going to use it.  That is because
10143 I am not deploying a school network.  There may be some mythical
10144 feature to help you deploy Skolelinux on a school network."
10145 </blockquote>
10146
10147 <p>To bad he did not test the server profile, and discovered the PXE
10148 installation option.  It make it possible to install only the main
10149 server from CD, and the rest of the machines via the net, and might be
10150 considered the mythical feature he talk about. :)</p>
10151
10152 <p>While looking through the menus, there is also this funny comment
10153 about the part of the K menu generated from the Debian menu subsystem:
10154
10155 <blockquote>
10156 "[The K menu] have a special Debian section for software that no-one
10157 is going to look at, because it contain lots of junky stuff that you
10158 actually don't need in the education distribution, but have just been
10159 included because it isn't stripped out for some reason."
10160 </blockquote>
10161
10162 <p>I guess it is yet another argument for merging the Debian menu and
10163 Gnome/KDE desktop menu entries into
10164 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/Proposals/DebianMenuUsingDesktopEntries">one
10165 consistent menu system</a> instead of two incomplete and partly
10166 inconsistent menu systems.</p>
10167
10168 <p>The entire video is available below for those accepting iframe
10169 embedding:</p>
10170
10171 <iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/wPzTZ61Pcuc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
10172
10173       </div>
10174       <div class="tags">
10175
10176
10177         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>.
10178
10179
10180       </div>
10181     </div>
10182     <div class="padding"></div>
10183
10184     <div class="entry">
10185       <div class="title">
10186         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_update_released.html">First Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze update released</a>
10187       </div>
10188       <div class="date">
10189          8th March 2013
10190       </div>
10191       <div class="body">
10192         <p>Last Sunday, 2013-03-03,, Holger Levsen announced the first update
10193 of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
10194 based on Debian Squeeze.  This is the first update since
10195 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">the
10196 initial release 2012-03-11</a>.  This is the
10197 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2013/03/msg00000.html">release
10198 announcement email from Holger</a>:</p>
10199
10200 <blockquote><p>Hi,</p>
10201
10202 <p>it's my pleasure to announce the immediate availability of Debian
10203 Edu 6.0.7+r1 ("Debian Edu Squeeze").</p>
10204
10205 <p>Debian Edu 6.0.7+r1 is an incremental update to Debian Edu
10206 6.0.4+r0, containing all the changes between Debian 6.0.4 and 6.0.7 as
10207 well Debian Edu specific bugfixes and enhancements. See below (in this
10208 mail) for the full list of (edu) changes.  Please see
10209 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311">http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311</a>
10210 for more information on "Debian Edu Squeeze".</p>
10211
10212 <p>Images are available for download at
10213 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/</a></p>
10214
10215 <p>md5sums:
10216 <br>1fe79eb4f0f9ae1c58fc318e26cc1e2e  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-CD.iso
10217 <br>a6ddd924a8bd9a1b5ca122e8fe1c34ec  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-DVD.iso
10218 <br>ac6c72cd7925ccec51bfbf58e2a7c69c  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-source-DVD.iso</p>
10219
10220 <p>sha1sums:
10221 <br>a4b58233b672a99c7df8dc24fb6de3327654a5c3  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-CD.iso
10222 <br>9b524915e0ff2aa793f13d93123e5bd2bab2dbaa  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-DVD.iso
10223 <br>43997614893fc5e9e59ad6ce066b05d07fd836fa  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-source-DVD.iso</p>
10224
10225 <p>These images are suitable for amd64+i386.</p>
10226
10227 <p>Changes for Debian Edu 6.0.7+r1 Codename "Squeeze", released
10228 2013-03-03:</p>
10229
10230 <ul>
10231   <li>sitesummary was updated from 0.1.3 to 0.1.8
10232   <ul>
10233         <li>Make Nagios configuration more robust and efficient</li>
10234         <li>Comply with 3.X kernel</li>
10235   </ul></li>
10236   <li>debian-edu-doc from 1.4~20120310~6.0.4+r0 to 1.4~20130228~6.0.7+r1
10237   <ul>
10238         <li>Minor updates from the wiki</li>
10239         <li>Danish translation now complete</li>
10240   </ul></li>
10241   <li>debian-edu-config from 1.453 to 1.455
10242      <ul>
10243         <li>Fix /etc/hosts for LTSP diskless workstations. Closes: #699880</li>
10244         <li>Make ltsp_local_mount script work for multiple devices.</li>
10245         <li>Correct Kerberos user policy: don't expire password after 2 days.
10246                 Closes: #664596</li>
10247         <li>Handle '#' characters in the root or first users password.
10248                 Closes: #664976</li>
10249         <li>Fixes for gosa-sync:
10250            <ul>
10251                 <li>Don't fail if password contains "</li>
10252                 <li>Don't disclose new password string in syslog</li>
10253            </ul></li>
10254         <li>Fixes for gosa-create:
10255            <ul>
10256                 <li>Invalidate libnss cache before applying changes</li>
10257                 <li>Multiple failures during mass user import into GOsa²</li>
10258                 <li>gosa-netgroups plugin: don't erase entries of attribute type
10259                          "memberNisNetgroup". Closes: #687256</li>
10260                 <li>First user now uses the same Kerberos policy as all other users</li>
10261            </ul></li>
10262         <li>Add Danish web page</li>
10263     </ul>
10264   <li>debian-edu-install from 1.528 to 1.530
10265     <ul>
10266         <li>Improve preseeding support and documentation</li>
10267     </ul></li>
10268 </ul>
10269
10270 <p>End-user documentation in English is available at
10271 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/</a>
10272 - translations to French, Italian, Danish and German are available in
10273 the debian-edu-doc package. (Other languages could use your help!)</p>
10274
10275 <p>If you want to contribute to Debian Edu, please join our
10276 mailinglist
10277 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">debian-edu@lists.debian.org</a>!
10278 </p></blockquote>
10279
10280 <p>I am very happy to see the fruits of a year of hard work. :)</p>
10281
10282       </div>
10283       <div class="tags">
10284
10285
10286         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>.
10287
10288
10289       </div>
10290     </div>
10291     <div class="padding"></div>
10292
10293     <div class="entry">
10294       <div class="title">
10295         <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>
10296       </div>
10297       <div class="date">
10298          3rd March 2013
10299       </div>
10300       <div class="body">
10301         <p>Do you want to set up your own TV station, schedule videos and
10302 broadcast them on the air?  Using free software?  With video on demand
10303 support using
10304 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and
10305 open standards</a>?  Included a web based video stream as well?  And
10306 administrate it all in your web browser from anywhere in the world?  A
10307 few years now the Norwegian public access TV-channel
10308 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a> have been building a
10309 system to do just this.  The source code for the solution is licensed
10310 using the GNU LGPL, and
10311 <a href="http://github.com/Frikanalen">available from github</a>.</p>
10312
10313 <p>The idea is simple.  You upload a video file over the web, and
10314 attach meta information to the file.  You select a time slot in the
10315 program schedule, and when the time come it is played on the air and
10316 in the web stream.  It is also made available in a video on demand
10317 solution for anyone to see it also outside its scheduled time.  All
10318 you need to run a TV station - using your web browser.</p>
10319
10320 <p>There are several parts to this web based solution.  I'll mention
10321 the three most important ones.  The first part is the database of
10322 videos and the schedule.  This is written in Django and include a REST
10323 API.  The current database is SQLite, but the plan is to migrate it to
10324 PostgreSQL.  At the moment this system can be tested on
10325 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/">beta.frikanalen.tv</a>.  The
10326 second part is the video playout, taking the schedule information from
10327 the database and providing a video stream to broadcast.  This is done
10328 using <a href="http://www.casparcg.com/">CasparCG from SVT</a> and
10329 <a href="http://www.mltframework.org/">Media Lovin' Toolkit</a>.  Video
10330 signal distribution is handled using
10331 <a href="http://www.ob-encoder.com/">Open Broadcast Encoder</a>.  The
10332 third part is the converter, handling the transformation of uploaded
10333 video files to a format useful for broadcasting, streaming and video
10334 on demand.  It is still very much work in progress, so it is not yet
10335 decided what it will end up using.  Note that the source of the latter
10336 two parts are not yet pushed to github.  The lead author want to clean
10337 them up a bit more first.</p>
10338
10339 <p>The development is coordinated on the
10340 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23frikanalen">#frikanalen IRC
10341 channel</a> (irc.freenode.net), and discussed on
10342 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/frikanalen">the
10343 frikanalen mailing list</a>. The lead developer is Benjamin Bruheim
10344 (phed on IRC).  Anyone is welcome to participate in the
10345 development.</p>
10346
10347       </div>
10348       <div class="tags">
10349
10350
10351         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>.
10352
10353
10354       </div>
10355     </div>
10356     <div class="padding"></div>
10357
10358     <div class="entry">
10359       <div class="title">
10360         <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>
10361       </div>
10362       <div class="date">
10363         27th February 2013
10364       </div>
10365       <div class="body">
10366         <p>Dr. <a href="http://www.stallman.org/">Richard Stallman</a>,
10367 founder of <a href="http://www.fsf.org/">Free Software Foundation</a>,
10368 is giving <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20130301-rms/">a
10369 talk in Oslo March 1st 2013 17:00 to 19:00</a>.  The event is public
10370 and organised by <a href="">Norwegian Unix Users Group (NUUG)</a>
10371 (where I am the chair of the board) and
10372 <a href="http://www.friprog.no/">The Norwegian Open Source Competence
10373 Center</a>.  The title of the talk is «The Free Software Movement and
10374 GNU», with this description:
10375
10376 <p><blockquote>
10377 The Free Software Movement campaigns for computer users' freedom to
10378 cooperate and control their own computing. The Free Software Movement
10379 developed the GNU operating system, typically used together with the
10380 kernel Linux, specifically to make these freedoms possible.
10381 </blockquote></p>
10382
10383 <p>The meeting is open for everyone.  Due to space limitations, the
10384 doors opens for NUUG members at 16:15, and everyone else at 16:45.  I
10385 am really curious how many will show up.  See
10386 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20130301-rms/">the event
10387 page</a> for the location details.</p>
10388
10389       </div>
10390       <div class="tags">
10391
10392
10393         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>.
10394
10395
10396       </div>
10397     </div>
10398     <div class="padding"></div>
10399
10400     <div class="entry">
10401       <div class="title">
10402         <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>
10403       </div>
10404       <div class="date">
10405         15th February 2013
10406       </div>
10407       <div class="body">
10408         <p>If you, like me, want an updated a map for your Garmin GPS, there is
10409 now a great source of free maps available from
10410 <a href="http://www.frikart.no/garmin/index.html">Frikart</a>.  To
10411 download a map, just click on the country you are interested in, and
10412 download the map type you want.  There are 8 different maps available,
10413 using different colours and data selection.  Pick one of Roadmap, Topo
10414 Summer, Topo Winter, Roadmap II, Topo Summer II, Topo Winter II,
10415 "Trails - overlay map" and "Cross country - overlay map" (see the web
10416 page for descriptions).</p>
10417
10418 <p>The maps are updated weekly, so if you find something wrong in the
10419 map you can just edit the
10420 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> map source
10421 (anyone can contribute) and fetch a fixed map a week later. :)</p>
10422
10423       </div>
10424       <div class="tags">
10425
10426
10427         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>.
10428
10429
10430       </div>
10431     </div>
10432     <div class="padding"></div>
10433
10434     <div class="entry">
10435       <div class="title">
10436         <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>
10437       </div>
10438       <div class="date">
10439         12th February 2013
10440       </div>
10441       <div class="body">
10442         <p>Here in Norway, electronic invoices are spreading, and the
10443 <a href="http://www.anskaffelser.no/e-handel/faktura">solution promoted
10444 by the Norwegian government</a> require that invoices are sent through
10445 one of the approved facilitators, and it is not possible to send
10446 electronic invoices without an agreement with one of these
10447 facilitators.  This seem like a needless limitation to be able to
10448 transfer invoice information between buyers and sellers.  My preferred
10449 solution would be to just transfer the invoice information directly
10450 between seller and buyer, for example using SMTP, or some HTTP based
10451 protocol like REST or SOAP.  But this might also be overkill, as the
10452 "electronic" information can be transferred using paper invoices too,
10453 using a simple bar code.  My bar code encoding of choice would be QR
10454 codes, as this encoding can be read by any smart phone out there.  The
10455 content of the code could be anything, but I would go with
10456 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VCard">the vCard format</a>, as
10457 it too is supported by a lot of computer equipment these days.</p>
10458
10459 <p>The vCard format support extentions, and the invoice specific
10460 information can be included using such extentions.  For example an
10461 invoice from SLX Debian Labs (picked because we
10462 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">ask
10463 for donations to the Debian Edu project</a> and thus have bank account
10464 information publicly available) for NOK 1000.00 could have these extra
10465 fields:</p>
10466
10467 <p><pre>
10468 X-INVOICE-NUMBER:1
10469 X-INVOICE-AMOUNT:NOK1000.00
10470 X-INVOICE-KID:123412341234
10471 X-INVOICE-MSG:Donation to Debian Edu
10472 X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER:16040884339
10473 X-BANK-IBAN-NUMBER:NO8516040884339
10474 X-BANK-SWIFT-NUMBER:DNBANOKKXXX
10475 </pre></p>
10476
10477 <p>The X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER field was proposed in a stackoverflow
10478 answer regarding
10479 <a href="http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10045664/storing-bank-account-in-vcard-file">how
10480 to put bank account information into a vCard</a>.  For payments in
10481 Norway, either X-INVOICE-KID (payment ID) or X-INVOICE-MSG could be
10482 used to pass on information to the seller when paying the invoice.</p>
10483
10484 <p>The complete vCard could look like this:</p>
10485
10486 <p><pre>
10487 BEGIN:VCARD
10488 VERSION:2.1
10489 ORG:SLX Debian Labs Foundation
10490 ADR;WORK:;;Gunnar Schjelderups vei 29D;OSLO;;0485;Norway
10491 URL;WORK:http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/
10492 EMAIL;PREF;INTERNET:sdl-styret@rt.nuug.no
10493 REV:20130212T095000Z
10494 X-INVOICE-NUMBER:1
10495 X-INVOICE-AMOUNT:NOK1000.00
10496 X-INVOICE-MSG:Donation to Debian Edu
10497 X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER:16040884339
10498 X-BANK-IBAN-NUMBER:NO8516040884339
10499 X-BANK-SWIFT-NUMBER:DNBANOKKXXX
10500 END:VCARD
10501 </pre></p>
10502
10503 <p>The resulting QR code created using
10504 <a href="http://fukuchi.org/works/qrencode/">qrencode</a> would look
10505 like this, and should be readable (and thus checkable) by any smart
10506 phone, or for example the <a href="http://zbar.sourceforge.net/">zbar
10507 bar code reader</a> and feed right into the approval and accounting
10508 system.</p>
10509
10510 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-02-12-qr-invoice.png"></p>
10511
10512 <p>The extension fields will most likely not show up in any normal
10513 vCard reader, so those parts would have to go directly into a system
10514 handling invoices.  I am a bit unsure how vCards without name parts
10515 are handled, but a simple test indicate that this work just fine.</p>
10516
10517 <p><strong>Update 2013-02-12 11:30</strong>: Added KID to the proposal
10518 based on feedback from Sturle Sunde.</p>
10519
10520       </div>
10521       <div class="tags">
10522
10523
10524         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>.
10525
10526
10527       </div>
10528     </div>
10529     <div class="padding"></div>
10530
10531     <div class="entry">
10532       <div class="title">
10533         <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>
10534       </div>
10535       <div class="date">
10536         10th February 2013
10537       </div>
10538       <div class="body">
10539         <p><img align="left" style="margin-right:25px;" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-02-10-morning-light.jpeg"></p>
10540
10541 <p>With kids in the house, one challenge is getting them to sleep
10542 during the night and wake up when it is morning.  I mean, when I
10543 believe it is morning, and not two hours earlier.  In our household we
10544 have decided that 07:00 is the turning point, but getting the kids to
10545 sleep until 07:00 is a small challenge every day.  They have adapted
10546 quite well, and rarely wake up at 05:00 any more, but some times wake
10547 up at times like 05:50, 06:15, 06:30 or 06:45, and it is hard to put
10548 the awake one to bed again without disturbing and waking the rest.
10549 And I understand perfectly well that they fail to sleep until 07:00
10550 some times, as there is no way for them to know if it is before or
10551 after the magic moment without coming and asking us parents.</p>
10552
10553 <p>But yesterday I came up with a method to solve this problem.  It
10554 involve home automation.  A few years ago I bought a
10555 <a href="http://www.telldus.se/products/tellstick">Tellstick</a> and RF
10556 switches at the local <a href="http://www.clasohlson.com/">Clas
10557 Ohlson</a> shop, allowing me to control lights and other electrical
10558 gadgets using my Linux server.  When I moved from the old flat to a
10559 small house, I put away all this equipment as most of the lighting in
10560 the house was not using wall sockets and thus not easy to connect to
10561 the gadgets I had.  But recently I bought a
10562 <a href="http://www.telldus.se/products/tellstick_net">Tellstick
10563 Net</a> to be able to read sensor input as well as control power
10564 sockets.  I want to control ovens in the basement to avoid the pipes
10565 to freeze, and monitor the humidity to detect flooding.  The default
10566 setup for Tellstick Net is to be controlled by the vendor web service,
10567 which to me is a security problem, but it is also possible to build
10568 ones own
10569 <a href="http://developer.telldus.com/blog/2012/03/02/help-us-develop-local-access-using-tellstick-net-build-your-own-firmware">firmware
10570 with local access</A> instead of being controlled by a Swedish
10571 company, thanks to the release of the GPL licensed firmware source
10572 code.  I plan to get that running before I let it control anything
10573 important.  But while working on this, one idea to make it easier for
10574 the kids came to me yesterday.  We can set up a night light controlled
10575 by the computer, and turn it automatically on at 07:00.  The kids can
10576 then check the light in the morning to know if they are supposed to
10577 get up or not.  They joined me in setting everything up, and I
10578 repeated the concept several times before bed times to make sure they
10579 remembered to check the light before getting up in the morning.</p>
10580
10581 <p>We tested it this morning, and all the kids stayed in bed until
10582 after 07:00, and every one of them commented on the fact that the
10583 "morning light" was turned on and signalled that the morning had
10584 arrived.  So this look like a success, and I am excited to see how
10585 this develops the next few days. :) I really hope this can allow us
10586 all to sleep a bit longer in the morning.</p>
10587
10588 <p>A nice advantage of this setup is that we can remote control when
10589 to tell the kids to get up.  We do not have to wait until 07:00, and
10590 can also delay it if we want to.</p>
10591
10592       </div>
10593       <div class="tags">
10594
10595
10596         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10597
10598
10599       </div>
10600     </div>
10601     <div class="padding"></div>
10602
10603     <div class="entry">
10604       <div class="title">
10605         <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>
10606       </div>
10607       <div class="date">
10608          2nd February 2013
10609       </div>
10610       <div class="body">
10611         <p>My
10612 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">last
10613 bitcoin related blog post</a> mentioned that the new
10614 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin package</a> for
10615 Debian was waiting in NEW.  It was accepted by the Debian ftp-masters
10616 2013-01-19, and have been available in unstable since then.  It was
10617 automatically copied to Ubuntu, and is available in their Raring
10618 version too.</p>
10619
10620 <p>But there is a strange problem with the build that block this new
10621 version from being available on the i386 and kfreebsd-i386
10622 architectures.  For some strange reason, the autobuilders in Debian
10623 for these architectures fail to run the test suite on these
10624 architectures (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/672524">BTS #672524</a>).
10625 We are so far unable to reproduce it when building it manually, and
10626 no-one have been able to propose a fix.  If you got an idea what is
10627 failing, please let us know via the BTS.</p>
10628
10629 <p>One feature that is annoying me with of the bitcoin client, because
10630 I often run low on disk space, is the fact that the client will exit
10631 if it run short on space (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/696715">BTS
10632 #696715</a>).  So make sure you have enough disk space when you run
10633 it. :)</p>
10634
10635 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
10636 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
10637 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
10638
10639       </div>
10640       <div class="tags">
10641
10642
10643         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>.
10644
10645
10646       </div>
10647     </div>
10648     <div class="padding"></div>
10649
10650     <div class="entry">
10651       <div class="title">
10652         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">Welcome to the world, Isenkram!</a>
10653       </div>
10654       <div class="date">
10655         22nd January 2013
10656       </div>
10657       <div class="body">
10658         <p>Yesterday, I
10659 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">asked
10660 for testers</a> for my prototype for making Debian better at handling
10661 pluggable hardware devices, which I
10662 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">set
10663 out to create</a> earlier this month.  Several valuable testers showed
10664 up, and caused me to really want to to open up the development to more
10665 people.  But before I did this, I want to come up with a sensible name
10666 for this project.  Today I finally decided on a new name, and I have
10667 renamed the project from hw-support-handler to this new name.  In the
10668 process, I moved the source to git and made it available as a
10669 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/isenkram.git">collab-maint</a>
10670 repository in Debian.  The new name?  It is <strong>Isenkram</strong>.
10671 To fetch and build the latest version of the source, use</p>
10672
10673 <pre>
10674 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/collab-maint/isenkram.git
10675 cd isenkram && git-buildpackage -us -uc
10676 </pre>
10677
10678 <p>I have not yet adjusted all files to use the new name yet.  If you
10679 want to hack on the source or improve the package, please go ahead.
10680 But please talk to me first on IRC or via email before you do major
10681 changes, to make sure we do not step on each others toes. :)</p>
10682
10683 <p>If you wonder what 'isenkram' is, it is a Norwegian word for iron
10684 stuff, typically meaning tools, nails, screws, etc.  Typical hardware
10685 stuff, in other words.  I've been told it is the Norwegian variant of
10686 the German word eisenkram, for those that are familiar with that
10687 word.</p>
10688
10689 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-26</strong>: Added -us -us to build
10690 instructions, to avoid confusing people with an error from the signing
10691 process.</p>
10692
10693 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-27</strong>: Switch to HTTP URL for the git
10694 clone argument to avoid the need for authentication.</p>
10695
10696       </div>
10697       <div class="tags">
10698
10699
10700         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>.
10701
10702
10703       </div>
10704     </div>
10705     <div class="padding"></div>
10706
10707     <div class="entry">
10708       <div class="title">
10709         <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>
10710       </div>
10711       <div class="date">
10712         21st January 2013
10713       </div>
10714       <div class="body">
10715         <p>Early this month I set out to try to
10716 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">improve
10717 the Debian support for pluggable hardware devices</a>.  Now my
10718 prototype is working, and it is ready for a larger audience.  To test
10719 it, fetch the
10720 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">source
10721 from the Debian Edu subversion repository</a>, build and install the
10722 package.  You might have to log out and in again activate the
10723 autostart script.</p>
10724
10725 <p>The design is simple:</p>
10726
10727 <ul>
10728
10729 <li>Add desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ causing a program
10730 hw-support-handlerd to start when the user log in.</li>
10731
10732 <li>This program listen for kernel events about new hardware (directly
10733 from the kernel like udev does), not using HAL dbus events as I
10734 initially did.</li>
10735
10736 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware modalias in
10737 the APT database, a database
10738 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=markup">available
10739 via HTTP</a> and a database available as part of the package.</li>
10740
10741 <li>If a package is mapped to the hardware in question, the package
10742 isn't installed yet and this is the first time the hardware was
10743 plugged in, show a desktop notification suggesting to install the
10744 package or packages.</li>
10745
10746 <li>If the user click on the 'install package now' button, ask
10747 aptdaemon via the PackageKit API to install the requrired package.</li>
10748
10749 <li>aptdaemon ask for root password or sudo password, and install the
10750 package while showing progress information in a window.</li>
10751
10752 </ul>
10753
10754 <p>I still need to come up with a better name for the system.  Here
10755 are some screen shots showing the prototype in action.  First the
10756 notification, then the password request, and finally the request to
10757 approve all the dependencies.  Sorry for the Norwegian Bokmål GUI.</p>
10758
10759 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-1-notification.png">
10760 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-2-password.png">
10761 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-3-dependencies.png">
10762 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-4-installing.png">
10763 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-5-installing-details.png" width="70%"></p>
10764
10765 <p>The prototype still need to be improved with longer timeouts, but
10766 is already useful.  The database of hardware to package mappings also
10767 need more work.  It is currently compatible with the Ubuntu way of
10768 storing such information in the package control file, but could be
10769 changed to use other formats instead or in addition to the current
10770 method.  I've dropped the use of discover for this mapping, as the
10771 modalias approach is more flexible and easier to use on Linux as long
10772 as the Linux kernel expose its modalias strings directly.</p>
10773
10774 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-21 16:50</strong>: Due to popular demand,
10775 here is the command required to check out and build the source: Use
10776 '<tt>svn checkout
10777 svn://svn.debian.org/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/; cd
10778 hw-support-handler; debuild</tt>'.  If you lack debuild, install the
10779 devscripts package.</p>
10780
10781 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-23 12:00</strong>: The project is now
10782 renamed to Isenkram and the source moved from the Debian Edu
10783 subversion repository to a Debian collab-maint git repository.  See
10784 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">build
10785 instructions</a> for details.</p>
10786
10787       </div>
10788       <div class="tags">
10789
10790
10791         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>.
10792
10793
10794       </div>
10795     </div>
10796     <div class="padding"></div>
10797
10798     <div class="entry">
10799       <div class="title">
10800         <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>
10801       </div>
10802       <div class="date">
10803         19th January 2013
10804       </div>
10805       <div class="body">
10806         <p>This Christmas my trusty old laptop died.  It died quietly and
10807 suddenly in bed.  With a quiet whimper, it went completely quiet and
10808 black.  The power button was no longer able to turn it on.  It was a
10809 IBM Thinkpad X41, and the best laptop I ever had.  Better than both
10810 Thinkpads X30, X31, X40, X60, X61 and X61S.  Far better than the
10811 Compaq I had before that.  Now I need to find a replacement.  To keep
10812 going during Christmas, I moved the one year old SSD disk to my old
10813 X40 where it fitted (only one I had left that could use it), but it is
10814 not a durable solution.
10815
10816 <p>My laptop needs are fairly modest.  This is my wishlist from when I
10817 got a new one more than 10 years ago.  It still holds true.:)</p>
10818
10819 <ul>
10820
10821 <li>Lightweight (around 1 kg) and small volume (preferably smaller
10822   than A4).</li>
10823 <li>Robust, it will be in my backpack every day.</li>
10824 <li>Three button mouse and a mouse pin instead of touch pad.</li>
10825 <li>Long battery life time.  Preferable a week.</li>
10826 <li>Internal WIFI network card.</li>
10827 <li>Internal Twisted Pair network card.</li>
10828 <li>Some USB slots (2-3 is plenty)</li>
10829 <li>Good keyboard - similar to the Thinkpad.</li>
10830 <li>Video resolution at least 1024x768, with size around 12" (A4 paper
10831 size).</li>
10832 <li>Hardware supported by Debian Stable, ie the default kernel and
10833   X.org packages.</li>
10834 <li>Quiet, preferably fan free (or at least not using the fan most of
10835   the time).
10836
10837 </ul>
10838
10839 <p>You will notice that there are no RAM and CPU requirements in the
10840 list.  The reason is simply that the specifications on laptops the
10841 last 10-15 years have been sufficient for my needs, and I have to look
10842 at other features to choose my laptop.  But are there still made as
10843 robust laptops as my X41?  The Thinkpad X60/X61 proved to be less
10844 robust, and Thinkpads seem to be heading in the wrong direction since
10845 Lenovo took over.  But I've been told that X220 and X1 Carbon might
10846 still be useful.</p>
10847
10848 <p>Perhaps I should rethink my needs, and look for a pad with an
10849 external keyboard?  I'll have to check the
10850 <a href="http://www.linux-laptop.net/">Linux Laptops site</a> for
10851 well-supported laptops, or perhaps just buy one preinstalled from one
10852 of the vendors listed on the <a href="http://linuxpreloaded.com/">Linux
10853 Pre-loaded site</a>.</p>
10854
10855       </div>
10856       <div class="tags">
10857
10858
10859         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>.
10860
10861
10862       </div>
10863     </div>
10864     <div class="padding"></div>
10865
10866     <div class="entry">
10867       <div class="title">
10868         <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>
10869       </div>
10870       <div class="date">
10871         18th January 2013
10872       </div>
10873       <div class="body">
10874         <p>Some times I try to figure out which Iceweasel browser plugin to
10875 install to get support for a given MIME type.  Thanks to
10876 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Plugins">specifications
10877 done by Ubuntu</a> and Mozilla, it is possible to do this in Debian.
10878 Unfortunately, not very many packages provide the needed meta
10879 information, Anyway, here is a small script to look up all browser
10880 plugin packages announcing ther MIME support using this specification:</p>
10881
10882 <pre>
10883 #!/usr/bin/python
10884 import sys
10885 import apt
10886 def pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
10887     cache = apt.Cache()
10888     cache.open(None)
10889     thepkgs = []
10890     for pkg in cache:
10891         version = pkg.candidate
10892         if version is None:
10893             version = pkg.installed
10894         if version is None:
10895             continue
10896         record = version.record
10897         if not record.has_key('Npp-MimeType'):
10898             continue
10899         mime_types = record['Npp-MimeType'].split(',')
10900         for t in mime_types:
10901             t = t.rstrip().strip()
10902             if t == mimetype:
10903                 thepkgs.append(pkg.name)
10904     return thepkgs
10905 mimetype = "audio/ogg"
10906 if 1 < len(sys.argv):
10907     mimetype = sys.argv[1]
10908 print "Browser plugin packages supporting %s:" % mimetype
10909 for pkg in pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
10910     print "  %s" %pkg
10911 </pre>
10912
10913 <p>It can be used like this to look up a given MIME type:</p>
10914
10915 <pre>
10916 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype
10917 Browser plugin packages supporting audio/ogg:
10918   gecko-mediaplayer
10919 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype application/x-shockwave-flash
10920 Browser plugin packages supporting application/x-shockwave-flash:
10921   browser-plugin-gnash
10922 %
10923 </pre>
10924
10925 <p>In Ubuntu this mechanism is combined with support in the browser
10926 itself to query for plugins and propose to install the needed
10927 packages.  It would be great if Debian supported such feature too.  Is
10928 anyone working on adding it?</p>
10929
10930 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-18 14:20</strong>: The Debian BTS
10931 request for icweasel support for this feature is
10932 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/484010">#484010</a> from 2008 (and
10933 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698426">#698426</a> from today).  Lack
10934 of manpower and wish for a different design is the reason thus feature
10935 is not yet in iceweasel from Debian.</p>
10936
10937       </div>
10938       <div class="tags">
10939
10940
10941         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>.
10942
10943
10944       </div>
10945     </div>
10946     <div class="padding"></div>
10947
10948     <div class="entry">
10949       <div class="title">
10950         <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>
10951       </div>
10952       <div class="date">
10953         16th January 2013
10954       </div>
10955       <div class="body">
10956         <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/AppStreamDebianProposal">DEP-11
10957 proposal to add AppStream information to the Debian archive</a>, is a
10958 proposal to make it possible for a Desktop application to propose to
10959 the user some package to install to gain support for a given MIME
10960 type, font, library etc. that is currently missing.  With such
10961 mechanism in place, it would be possible for the desktop to
10962 automatically propose and install leocad if some LDraw file is
10963 downloaded by the browser.</p>
10964
10965 <p>To get some idea about the current content of the archive, I decided
10966 to write a simple program to extract all .desktop files from the
10967 Debian archive and look up the claimed MIME support there.  The result
10968 can be found on the
10969 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/pub/AppStreamTest">Skolelinux FTP
10970 site</a>.  Using the collected information, it become possible to
10971 answer the question in the title.  Here are the 20 most supported MIME
10972 types in Debian stable (Squeeze), testing (Wheezy) and unstable (Sid).
10973 The complete list is available from the link above.</p>
10974
10975 <p><strong>Debian Stable:</strong></p>
10976
10977 <pre>
10978   count MIME type
10979   ----- -----------------------
10980      32 text/plain
10981      30 audio/mpeg
10982      29 image/png
10983      28 image/jpeg
10984      27 application/ogg
10985      26 audio/x-mp3
10986      25 image/tiff
10987      25 image/gif
10988      22 image/bmp
10989      22 audio/x-wav
10990      20 audio/x-flac
10991      19 audio/x-mpegurl
10992      18 video/x-ms-asf
10993      18 audio/x-musepack
10994      18 audio/x-mpeg
10995      18 application/x-ogg
10996      17 video/mpeg
10997      17 audio/x-scpls
10998      17 audio/ogg
10999      16 video/x-ms-wmv
11000 </pre>
11001
11002 <p><strong>Debian Testing:</strong></p>
11003
11004 <pre>
11005   count MIME type
11006   ----- -----------------------
11007      33 text/plain
11008      32 image/png
11009      32 image/jpeg
11010      29 audio/mpeg
11011      27 image/gif
11012      26 image/tiff
11013      26 application/ogg
11014      25 audio/x-mp3
11015      22 image/bmp
11016      21 audio/x-wav
11017      19 audio/x-mpegurl
11018      19 audio/x-mpeg
11019      18 video/mpeg
11020      18 audio/x-scpls
11021      18 audio/x-flac
11022      18 application/x-ogg
11023      17 video/x-ms-asf
11024      17 text/html
11025      17 audio/x-musepack
11026      16 image/x-xbitmap
11027 </pre>
11028
11029 <p><strong>Debian Unstable:</strong></p>
11030
11031 <pre>
11032   count MIME type
11033   ----- -----------------------
11034      31 text/plain
11035      31 image/png
11036      31 image/jpeg
11037      29 audio/mpeg
11038      28 application/ogg
11039      27 image/gif
11040      26 image/tiff
11041      26 audio/x-mp3
11042      23 audio/x-wav
11043      22 image/bmp
11044      21 audio/x-flac
11045      20 audio/x-mpegurl
11046      19 audio/x-mpeg
11047      18 video/x-ms-asf
11048      18 video/mpeg
11049      18 audio/x-scpls
11050      18 application/x-ogg
11051      17 audio/x-musepack
11052      16 video/x-ms-wmv
11053      16 video/x-msvideo
11054 </pre>
11055
11056 <p>I am told that PackageKit can provide an API to access the kind of
11057 information mentioned in DEP-11.  I have not yet had time to look at
11058 it, but hope the PackageKit people in Debian are on top of these
11059 issues.</p>
11060
11061 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-16 13:35</strong>: Updated numbers after
11062 discovering a typo in my script.</p>
11063
11064       </div>
11065       <div class="tags">
11066
11067
11068         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>.
11069
11070
11071       </div>
11072     </div>
11073     <div class="padding"></div>
11074
11075     <div class="entry">
11076       <div class="title">
11077         <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>
11078       </div>
11079       <div class="date">
11080         15th January 2013
11081       </div>
11082       <div class="body">
11083         <p>Yesterday, I wrote about the
11084 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">modalias
11085 values provided by the Linux kernel</a> following my hope for
11086 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">better
11087 dongle support in Debian</a>.  Using this knowledge, I have tested how
11088 modalias values attached to package names can be used to map packages
11089 to hardware.  This allow the system to look up and suggest relevant
11090 packages when I plug in some new hardware into my machine, and replace
11091 discover and discover-data as the database used to map hardware to
11092 packages.</p>
11093
11094 <p>I create a modaliases file with entries like the following,
11095 containing package name, kernel module name (if relevant, otherwise
11096 the package name) and globs matching the relevant hardware
11097 modalias.</p>
11098
11099 <p><blockquote>
11100 Package: package-name
11101 <br>Modaliases: module(modaliasglob, modaliasglob, modaliasglob)</p>
11102 </blockquote></p>
11103
11104 <p>It is fairly trivial to write code to find the relevant packages
11105 for a given modalias value using this file.</p>
11106
11107 <p>An entry like this would suggest the video and picture application
11108 cheese for many USB web cameras (interface bus class 0E01):</p>
11109
11110 <p><blockquote>
11111 Package: cheese
11112 <br>Modaliases: cheese(usb:v*p*d*dc*dsc*dp*ic0Eisc01ip*)</p>
11113 </blockquote></p>
11114
11115 <p>An entry like this would suggest the pcmciautils package when a
11116 CardBus bridge (bus class 0607) PCI device is present:</p>
11117
11118 <p><blockquote>
11119 Package: pcmciautils
11120 <br>Modaliases: pcmciautils(pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc06sc07i*)
11121 </blockquote></p>
11122
11123 <p>An entry like this would suggest the package colorhug-client when
11124 plugging in a ColorHug with USB IDs 04D8:F8DA:</p>
11125
11126 <p><blockquote>
11127 Package: colorhug-client
11128 <br>Modaliases: colorhug-client(usb:v04D8pF8DAd*)</p>
11129 </blockquote></p>
11130
11131 <p>I believe the format is compatible with the format of the Packages
11132 file in the Debian archive.  Ubuntu already uses their Packages file
11133 to store their mappings from packages to hardware.</p>
11134
11135 <p>By adding a XB-Modaliases: header in debian/control, any .deb can
11136 announce the hardware it support in a way my prototype understand.
11137 This allow those publishing packages in an APT source outside the
11138 Debian archive as well as those backporting packages to make sure the
11139 hardware mapping are included in the package meta information.  I've
11140 tested such header in the pymissile package, and its modalias mapping
11141 is working as it should with my prototype.  It even made it to Ubuntu
11142 Raring.</p>
11143
11144 <p>To test if it was possible to look up supported hardware using only
11145 the shell tools available in the Debian installer, I wrote a shell
11146 implementation of the lookup code.  The idea is to create files for
11147 each modalias and let the shell do the matching.  Please check out and
11148 try the
11149 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/hw-support-lookup?view=co">hw-support-lookup</a>
11150 shell script.  It run without any extra dependencies and fetch the
11151 hardware mappings from the Debian archive and the subversion
11152 repository where I currently work on my prototype.</p>
11153
11154 <p>When I use it on a machine with a yubikey inserted, it suggest to
11155 install yubikey-personalization:</p>
11156
11157 <p><blockquote>
11158 % ./hw-support-lookup
11159 <br>yubikey-personalization
11160 <br>%
11161 </blockquote></p>
11162
11163 <p>When I run it on my Thinkpad X40 with a PCMCIA/CardBus slot, it
11164 propose to install the pcmciautils package:</p>
11165
11166 <p><blockquote>
11167 % ./hw-support-lookup
11168 <br>pcmciautils
11169 <br>%
11170 </blockquote></p>
11171
11172 <p>If you know of any hardware-package mapping that should be added to
11173 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=co">my
11174 database</a>, please tell me about it.</p>
11175
11176 <p>It could be possible to generate several of the mappings between
11177 packages and hardware.  One source would be to look at packages with
11178 kernel modules, ie packages with *.ko files in /lib/modules/, and
11179 extract their modalias information.  Another would be to look at
11180 packages with udev rules, ie packages with files in
11181 /lib/udev/rules.d/, and extract their vendor/model information to
11182 generate a modalias matching rule.  I have not tested any of these to
11183 see if it work.</p>
11184
11185 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
11186 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
11187 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
11188 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
11189
11190       </div>
11191       <div class="tags">
11192
11193
11194         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>.
11195
11196
11197       </div>
11198     </div>
11199     <div class="padding"></div>
11200
11201     <div class="entry">
11202       <div class="title">
11203         <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>
11204       </div>
11205       <div class="date">
11206         14th January 2013
11207       </div>
11208       <div class="body">
11209         <p>While looking into how to look up Debian packages based on hardware
11210 information, to find the packages that support a given piece of
11211 hardware, I refreshed my memory regarding modalias values, and decided
11212 to document the details.  Here are my findings so far, also available
11213 in
11214 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
11215 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>:
11216
11217 <p><strong>Modalias decoded</strong></p>
11218
11219 <p>This document try to explain what the different types of modalias
11220 values stands for.  It is in part based on information from
11221 &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias">https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias</a> &gt;,
11222 &lt;URL: <a href="http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/26132/how-to-assign-usb-driver-to-device">http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/26132/how-to-assign-usb-driver-to-device</a> &gt;,
11223 &lt;URL: <a href="http://code.metager.de/source/history/linux/stable/scripts/mod/file2alias.c">http://code.metager.de/source/history/linux/stable/scripts/mod/file2alias.c</a> &gt; and
11224 &lt;URL: <a href="http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/dmidecode/dmidecode.c?root=dmidecode&view=markup">http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/dmidecode/dmidecode.c?root=dmidecode&view=markup</a> &gt;.
11225
11226 <p>The modalias entries for a given Linux machine can be found using
11227 this shell script:</p>
11228
11229 <pre>
11230 find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u
11231 </pre>
11232
11233 <p>The supported modalias globs for a given kernel module can be found
11234 using modinfo:</p>
11235
11236 <pre>
11237 % /sbin/modinfo psmouse | grep alias:
11238 alias:          serio:ty05pr*id*ex*
11239 alias:          serio:ty01pr*id*ex*
11240 %
11241 </pre>
11242
11243 <p><strong>PCI subtype</strong></p>
11244
11245 <p>A typical PCI entry can look like this.  This is an Intel Host
11246 Bridge memory controller:</p>
11247
11248 <p><blockquote>
11249 pci:v00008086d00002770sv00001028sd000001ADbc06sc00i00
11250 </blockquote></p>
11251
11252 <p>This represent these values:</p>
11253
11254 <pre>
11255  v   00008086  (vendor)
11256  d   00002770  (device)
11257  sv  00001028  (subvendor)
11258  sd  000001AD  (subdevice)
11259  bc  06        (bus class)
11260  sc  00        (bus subclass)
11261  i   00        (interface)
11262 </pre>
11263
11264 <p>The vendor/device values are the same values outputted from 'lspci
11265 -n' as 8086:2770.  The bus class/subclass is also shown by lspci as
11266 0600.  The 0600 class is a host bridge.  Other useful bus values are
11267 0300 (VGA compatible card) and 0200 (Ethernet controller).</p>
11268
11269 <p>Not sure how to figure out the interface value, nor what it
11270 means.</p>
11271
11272 <p><strong>USB subtype</strong></p>
11273
11274 <p>Some typical USB entries can look like this.  This is an internal
11275 USB hub in a laptop:</p>
11276
11277 <p><blockquote>
11278 usb:v1D6Bp0001d0206dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00
11279 </blockquote></p>
11280
11281 <p>Here is the values included in this alias:</p>
11282
11283 <pre>
11284  v    1D6B  (device vendor)
11285  p    0001  (device product)
11286  d    0206  (bcddevice)
11287  dc     09  (device class)
11288  dsc    00  (device subclass)
11289  dp     00  (device protocol)
11290  ic     09  (interface class)
11291  isc    00  (interface subclass)
11292  ip     00  (interface protocol)
11293 </pre>
11294
11295 <p>The 0900 device class/subclass means hub.  Some times the relevant
11296 class is in the interface class section.  For a simple USB web camera,
11297 these alias entries show up:</p>
11298
11299 <p><blockquote>
11300 usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc01ip00
11301 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc02ip00
11302 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc01ip00
11303 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc02ip00
11304 </blockquote></p>
11305
11306 <p>Interface class 0E01 is video control, 0E02 is video streaming (aka
11307 camera), 0101 is audio control device and 0102 is audio streaming (aka
11308 microphone).  Thus this is a camera with microphone included.</p>
11309
11310 <p><strong>ACPI subtype</strong></p>
11311
11312 <p>The ACPI type is used for several non-PCI/USB stuff.  This is an IR
11313 receiver in a Thinkpad X40:</p>
11314
11315 <p><blockquote>
11316 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
11317 </blockquote></p>
11318
11319 <p>The values between the colons are IDs.</p>
11320
11321 <p><strong>DMI subtype</strong></p>
11322
11323 <p>The DMI table contain lots of information about the computer case
11324 and model.  This is an entry for a IBM Thinkpad X40, fetched from
11325 /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/modalias:</p>
11326
11327 <p><blockquote>
11328 dmi:bvnIBM:bvr1UETB6WW(1.66):bd06/15/2005:svnIBM:pn2371H4G:pvrThinkPadX40:rvnIBM:rn2371H4G:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
11329 </blockquote></p>
11330
11331 <p>The values present are</p>
11332
11333 <pre>
11334  bvn  IBM            (BIOS vendor)
11335  bvr  1UETB6WW(1.66) (BIOS version)
11336  bd   06/15/2005     (BIOS date)
11337  svn  IBM            (system vendor)
11338  pn   2371H4G        (product name)
11339  pvr  ThinkPadX40    (product version)
11340  rvn  IBM            (board vendor)
11341  rn   2371H4G        (board name)
11342  rvr  NotAvailable   (board version)
11343  cvn  IBM            (chassis vendor)
11344  ct   10             (chassis type)
11345  cvr  NotAvailable   (chassis version)
11346 </pre>
11347
11348 <p>The chassis type 10 is Notebook.  Other interesting values can be
11349 found in the dmidecode source:</p>
11350
11351 <pre>
11352   3 Desktop
11353   4 Low Profile Desktop
11354   5 Pizza Box
11355   6 Mini Tower
11356   7 Tower
11357   8 Portable
11358   9 Laptop
11359  10 Notebook
11360  11 Hand Held
11361  12 Docking Station
11362  13 All In One
11363  14 Sub Notebook
11364  15 Space-saving
11365  16 Lunch Box
11366  17 Main Server Chassis
11367  18 Expansion Chassis
11368  19 Sub Chassis
11369  20 Bus Expansion Chassis
11370  21 Peripheral Chassis
11371  22 RAID Chassis
11372  23 Rack Mount Chassis
11373  24 Sealed-case PC
11374  25 Multi-system
11375  26 CompactPCI
11376  27 AdvancedTCA
11377  28 Blade
11378  29 Blade Enclosing
11379 </pre>
11380
11381 <p>The chassis type values are not always accurately set in the DMI
11382 table.  For example my home server is a tower, but the DMI modalias
11383 claim it is a desktop.</p>
11384
11385 <p><strong>SerIO subtype</strong></p>
11386
11387 <p>This type is used for PS/2 mouse plugs.  One example is from my
11388 test machine:</p>
11389
11390 <p><blockquote>
11391 serio:ty01pr00id00ex00
11392 </blockquote></p>
11393
11394 <p>The values present are</p>
11395
11396 <pre>
11397   ty  01  (type)
11398   pr  00  (prototype)
11399   id  00  (id)
11400   ex  00  (extra)
11401 </pre>
11402
11403 <p>This type is supported by the psmouse driver.  I am not sure what
11404 the valid values are.</p>
11405
11406 <p><strong>Other subtypes</strong></p>
11407
11408 <p>There are heaps of other modalias subtypes according to
11409 file2alias.c.  There is the rest of the list from that source: amba,
11410 ap, bcma, ccw, css, eisa, hid, i2c, ieee1394, input, ipack, isapnp,
11411 mdio, of, parisc, pcmcia, platform, scsi, sdio, spi, ssb, vio, virtio,
11412 vmbus, x86cpu and zorro.  I did not spend time documenting all of
11413 these, as they do not seem relevant for my intended use with mapping
11414 hardware to packages when new stuff is inserted during run time.</p>
11415
11416 <p><strong>Looking up kernel modules using modalias values</strong></p>
11417
11418 <p>To check which kernel modules provide support for a given modalias,
11419 one can use the following shell script:</p>
11420
11421 <pre>
11422   for id in $(find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u); do \
11423     echo "$id" ; \
11424     /sbin/modprobe --show-depends "$id"|sed 's/^/  /' ; \
11425   done
11426 </pre>
11427
11428 <p>The output can look like this (only the first few entries as the
11429 list is very long on my test machine):</p>
11430
11431 <pre>
11432   acpi:ACPI0003:
11433     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/acpi/ac.ko
11434   acpi:device:
11435   FATAL: Module acpi:device: not found.
11436   acpi:IBM0068:
11437     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/char/nvram.ko
11438     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/leds/led-class.ko
11439     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko
11440     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.ko
11441   acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
11442     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/lib/crc-ccitt.ko
11443     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/irda/irda.ko
11444     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/net/irda/nsc-ircc.ko
11445   [...]
11446 </pre>
11447
11448 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
11449 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
11450 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
11451 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
11452
11453 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-15:</strong> Rewrite "cat $(find ...)" to
11454 "find ... -print0 | xargs -0 cat" to make sure it handle directories
11455 in /sys/ with space in them.</p>
11456
11457       </div>
11458       <div class="tags">
11459
11460
11461         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>.
11462
11463
11464       </div>
11465     </div>
11466     <div class="padding"></div>
11467
11468     <div class="entry">
11469       <div class="title">
11470         <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>
11471       </div>
11472       <div class="date">
11473         10th January 2013
11474       </div>
11475       <div class="body">
11476         <p>As part of my investigation on how to improve the support in Debian
11477 for hardware dongles, I dug up my old Mark and Spencer USB Rocket
11478 Launcher and updated the Debian package
11479 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">pymissile</a> to make
11480 sure udev will fix the device permissions when it is plugged in.  I
11481 also added a "Modaliases" header to test it in the Debian archive and
11482 hopefully make the package be proposed by jockey in Ubuntu when a user
11483 plug in his rocket launcher.  In the process I moved the source to a
11484 git repository under collab-maint, to make it easier for any DD to
11485 contribute.  <a href="http://code.google.com/p/pymissile/">Upstream</a>
11486 is not very active, but the software still work for me even after five
11487 years of relative silence.  The new git repository is not listed in
11488 the uploaded package yet, because I want to test the other changes a
11489 bit more before I upload the new version.  If you want to check out
11490 the new version with a .desktop file included, visit the
11491 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/pymissile.git">gitweb
11492 view</a> or use "<tt>git clone
11493 git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/pymissile.git</tt>".</p>
11494
11495       </div>
11496       <div class="tags">
11497
11498
11499         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
11500
11501
11502       </div>
11503     </div>
11504     <div class="padding"></div>
11505
11506     <div class="entry">
11507       <div class="title">
11508         <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>
11509       </div>
11510       <div class="date">
11511          9th January 2013
11512       </div>
11513       <div class="body">
11514         <p>One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
11515 general, is that there is a great package management system with the
11516 ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
11517 from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
11518 install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
11519 machine.  Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
11520 Linux distribution.  When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
11521 suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
11522 I need to talk to it.  When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
11523 yubikey-personalization package.  The information required to do this
11524 is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.</p>
11525
11526 <p>Some years ago, I proposed to
11527 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg01206.html">use
11528 the discover subsystem to implement this</a>.  The idea is fairly
11529 simple:
11530
11531 <ul>
11532
11533 <li>Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
11534   starting when a user log in.</li>
11535
11536 <li>Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
11537   hardware is inserted into the computer.</li>
11538
11539 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
11540   database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
11541   packages.</li>
11542
11543 <li>Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
11544   package, and make it easy to install it.</li>
11545
11546 </ul>
11547
11548 <p>I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
11549 initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
11550 discover database to find packages and
11551 <a href="http://www.packagekit.org/">PackageKit</a> to install
11552 packages.</p>
11553
11554 <p>Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
11555 draft package is now checked into
11556 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
11557 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>.  In the process, I updated the
11558 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html">discover-data</a>
11559 package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
11560 the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
11561 2.2013.01.09 to unstable.  I also discovered that the current
11562 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html">discover</a>
11563 package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
11564 /proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present.  I ported it to use
11565 libusb as a fall back option to get it working.  The fixed package
11566 version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn't upload it to unstable
11567 because of the freeze).</p>
11568
11569 <p>With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
11570 desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
11571 inserted):</p>
11572
11573 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-09-hw-autoinstall.png"></p>
11574
11575 <p>For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
11576 install the proposed packages by pressing the "Please install
11577 program(s)" button should to be implemented.</p>
11578
11579 <p>If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
11580 happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
11581 from hardware to Debian packages.  Check if 'discover-pkginstall -l'
11582 list the package you would like to have installed when a given
11583 hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
11584 reportbug if it isn't.  Or, if you know of a better way to provide
11585 such mapping, please let me know.</p>
11586
11587 <p>This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
11588 should be considered before it is ready for production use.  Is dbus
11589 the correct way to detect new hardware?  At the moment I look for HAL
11590 dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
11591 on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop.  Are there better events to use?
11592 How should the user be notified?  Is the desktop notification
11593 mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
11594 popup instead?  How should packages be installed?  When should they
11595 not be installed?</p>
11596
11597 <p>If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
11598 please send me an email. :)</p>
11599
11600       </div>
11601       <div class="tags">
11602
11603
11604         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>.
11605
11606
11607       </div>
11608     </div>
11609     <div class="padding"></div>
11610
11611     <div class="entry">
11612       <div class="title">
11613         <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>
11614       </div>
11615       <div class="date">
11616          2nd January 2013
11617       </div>
11618       <div class="body">
11619         <p>During Christmas, I have worked a bit on the Debian support for
11620 <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx">LEGO Mindstorm
11621 NXT</a>.  My son and I have played a bit with my NXT set, and I
11622 discovered I had to build all the tools myself because none were
11623 already in Debian Squeeze.  If Debian support for LEGO is something
11624 you care about, please join me on the IRC channel
11625 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego</a> (server
11626 irc.debian.org).  There is a lot that could be done to improve the
11627 Debian support for LEGO designers.  For example both CAD software
11628 and Mindstorm compilers are missing. :)</p>
11629
11630 <p>Update 2012-01-03: A
11631 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">project page</a>
11632 including links to Lego related packages is now available.</p>
11633
11634       </div>
11635       <div class="tags">
11636
11637
11638         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>.
11639
11640
11641       </div>
11642     </div>
11643     <div class="padding"></div>
11644
11645     <div class="entry">
11646       <div class="title">
11647         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Christmas_present_for_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu.html">A Christmas present for Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
11648       </div>
11649       <div class="date">
11650         28th December 2012
11651       </div>
11652       <div class="body">
11653         <p>I was happy to discover a few days ago that the
11654 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
11655 project also this year received a Christmas present from Another
11656 Agency in Trondheim.  NOK 1000,- showed up on our donation account
11657 December 24th.  I want to express our thanks for this very welcome
11658 present.  As the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is very short on
11659 funding these days, and thus lack the money to do regular developer
11660 gatherings, this donation was most welcome.  One developer gathering
11661 cost around NOK 15&nbsp;000,-, so we need quite a lot more to keep the
11662 development pace we want.  Thus, I hope their example this year is
11663 followed by many others. :)</p>
11664
11665 <p>The public list of donors can be found on
11666 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">the
11667 donation page</a> for the project, which also contain instructions if
11668 you want to donate to the project.</p>
11669
11670       </div>
11671       <div class="tags">
11672
11673
11674         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>.
11675
11676
11677       </div>
11678     </div>
11679     <div class="padding"></div>
11680
11681     <div class="entry">
11682       <div class="title">
11683         <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>
11684       </div>
11685       <div class="date">
11686         25th December 2012
11687       </div>
11688       <div class="body">
11689         <p>Let me start by wishing you all marry Christmas and a happy new
11690 year!  I hope next year will prove to be a good year.</p>
11691
11692 <p><a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">Bitcoin</a>, the digital
11693 decentralised "currency" that allow people to transfer bitcoins
11694 between each other with minimal overhead, is a very interesting
11695 experiment.  And as I wrote a few days ago, the bitcoin situation in
11696 <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> is about to improve a bit.
11697 The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">new debian source
11698 package</a> (version 0.7.2-2) was uploaded yesterday, and is waiting
11699 in <a href="http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the NEW queue</A>
11700 for one of the ftpmasters to approve the new bitcoin-qt package
11701 name.</p>
11702
11703 <p>And thanks to the great work of Jonas and the rest of the bitcoin
11704 team in Debian, you can easily test the package in Debian Squeeze
11705 using the following steps to get a set of working packages:</p>
11706
11707 <blockquote><pre>
11708 git clone git://git.debian.org/git/collab-maint/bitcoin
11709 cd bitcoin
11710 DEB_MAINTAINER_MODE=1 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp fakeroot debian/rules clean
11711 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp git-buildpackage --git-ignore-new
11712 </pre></blockquote>
11713
11714 <p>You might have to install some build dependencies as well.  The
11715 list of commands should give you two packages, bitcoind and
11716 bitcoin-qt, ready for use in a Squeeze environment.  Note that the
11717 client will download the complete set of bitcoin "blocks", which need
11718 around 5.6 GiB of data on my machine at the moment.  Make sure your
11719 ~/.bitcoin/ directory have lots of spare room if you want to download
11720 all the blocks.  The client will warn if the disk is getting full, so
11721 there is not really a problem if you got too little room, but you will
11722 not be able to get all the features out of the client.</p>
11723
11724 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
11725 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
11726 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
11727
11728       </div>
11729       <div class="tags">
11730
11731
11732         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>.
11733
11734
11735       </div>
11736     </div>
11737     <div class="padding"></div>
11738
11739     <div class="entry">
11740       <div class="title">
11741         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html">A word on bitcoin support in Debian</a>
11742       </div>
11743       <div class="date">
11744         21st December 2012
11745       </div>
11746       <div class="body">
11747         <p>It has been a while since I wrote about
11748 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>, the decentralised
11749 peer-to-peer based crypto-currency, and the reason is simply that I
11750 have been busy elsewhere.  But two days ago, I started looking at the
11751 state of <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin in
11752 Debian</a> again to try to recover my old bitcoin wallet.  The package
11753 is now maintained by a
11754 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-bitcoin/">team of
11755 people</a>, and the grunt work had already been done by this team.  We
11756 owe a huge thank you to all these team members. :)
11757 But I was sad to discover that the bitcoin client is missing in
11758 Wheezy.  It is only available in Sid (and an outdated client from
11759 backports).  The client had several RC bugs registered in BTS blocking
11760 it from entering testing.  To try to help the team and improve the
11761 situation, I spent some time providing patches and triaging the bug
11762 reports.  I also had a look at the bitcoin package available from Matt
11763 Corallo in a
11764 <a href="https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin">PPA for
11765 Ubuntu</a>, and moved the useful pieces from that version into the
11766 Debian package.</p>
11767
11768 <p>After checking with the main package maintainer Jonas Smedegaard on
11769 IRC, I pushed several patches into the collab-maint git repository to
11770 improve the package.  It now contains fixes for the RC issues (not from
11771 me, but fixed by Scott Howard), build rules for a Qt GUI client
11772 package, konqueror support for the bitcoin: URI and bash completion
11773 setup.  As I work on Debian Squeeze, I also created
11774 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-bitcoin-devel/Week-of-Mon-20121217/000041.html">a
11775 patch to backport</a> the latest version.  Jonas is going to look at
11776 it and try to integrate it into the git repository before uploading a
11777 new version to unstable.
11778
11779 <p>I would very much like bitcoin to succeed, to get rid of the
11780 centralized control currently exercised in the monetary system.  I
11781 find it completely unacceptable that the USA government is collecting
11782 transaction data for almost all international money transfers (most are done in USD and transaction logs shipped to the spooks), and
11783 that the major credit card companies can block legal money
11784 transactions to Wikileaks.  But for bitcoin to succeed, more people
11785 need to use bitcoins, and more people need to accept bitcoins when
11786 they sell products and services.  Improving the bitcoin support in
11787 Debian is a small step in the right direction, but not enough.
11788 Unfortunately the user experience when browsing the web and wanting to
11789 pay with bitcoin is still not very good.  The bitcoin: URI is a step
11790 in the right direction, but need to work in most or every browser in
11791 use.  Also the bitcoin-qt client is too heavy to fire up to do a
11792 quick transaction.  I believe there are other clients available, but
11793 have not tested them.</p>
11794
11795 <p>My
11796 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">experiment
11797 with bitcoins</a> showed that at least some of my readers use bitcoin.
11798 I received 20.15 BTC so far on the address I provided in my blog two
11799 years ago, as can be
11800 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">seen
11801 on the blockexplorer service</a>.  Thank you everyone for your
11802 donation.  The blockexplorer service demonstrates quite well that
11803 bitcoin is not quite anonymous and untracked. :) I wonder if the
11804 number of users have gone up since then.  If you use bitcoin and want
11805 to show your support of my activity, please send Bitcoin donations to
11806 the same address as last time,
11807 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
11808
11809       </div>
11810       <div class="tags">
11811
11812
11813         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>.
11814
11815
11816       </div>
11817     </div>
11818     <div class="padding"></div>
11819
11820     <div class="entry">
11821       <div class="title">
11822         <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>
11823       </div>
11824       <div class="date">
11825         18th December 2012
11826       </div>
11827       <div class="body">
11828         <p>A few days ago I came across
11829 <a href="http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/hledger/">a blog post from Joey
11830 Hess</a> describing <a href="http://ledger-cli.org/">ledger</a> and
11831 hledger, a text based system for double-entry accounting.  I found it
11832 interesting, as I am involved with several organizations where
11833 accounting is an issue, and I have not really become too friendly with
11834 the different web based systems we use.  I find it hard to find what I
11835 look for in the menus and even harder try to get sensible data out of
11836 the systems.  Ledger seem different.  The accounting data is kept in
11837 text files that can be stored in a version control system, and there
11838
11839 are at least <a href="https://github.com/ledger/ledger/wiki/Ports">five
11840 different implementations</a> able to read the format.  An example
11841 entry look like this, and is simple enough that it will be trivial to
11842 generate entries based on CVS files fetched from the bank:</p>
11843
11844 <blockquote><pre>
11845 2004-05-27 Book Store
11846       Expenses:Books                 $20.00
11847       Liabilities:Visa
11848 </pre></blockquote>
11849
11850 <p>The concept seemed interesting enough for me to check it out and
11851 look for others using it.  I found blog posts from
11852 <a href="http://blog.spang.cc/posts/hledger_rocks_my_world/">Christine
11853 Spang</a>,
11854 <a href="http://bugsplat.info/2010-05-23-keeping-finances-with-ledger.html">Pete
11855 Keen</a>,
11856 <a href="http://blog.andrewcantino.com/blog/2010/11/06/command-line-accounting-with-ledger-and-reckon/">Andrew
11857 Cantino</a> and
11858 <a href="http://blog.iphoting.com/blog/2012/11/29/command-line-double-entry-accounting/">Ronald
11859 Ip</a> describing how they use it, as well as a post from
11860 <a href="https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/ledger-cli/r0oWjwbQ9Bo">Bradley
11861 M. Kuhn</a> at the Software Freedom Conservancy.  All seemed like good
11862 recommendations fitting my need.</p>
11863
11864 <p>The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/l/ledger.html">ledger</a>
11865 package is available in Debian Squeeze, while the
11866 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/h/haskell-hledger.html">hledger</a>
11867 package only is available in Debian Sid.  As I use Squeeze, ledger
11868 seemed the best choice to get started.</p>
11869
11870 <p>To get some real data to test on, I wrote a
11871 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/tools/lodo2ledger">web scraper</a> for
11872 <a href="http://www.lodo.no/">LODO</a>, the accounting system used by
11873 the <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a> association, and started to
11874 play with the data set.  I'm not really deeply into accounting, but I
11875 am able to get a simple balance and accounting status for example
11876 using the "<tt>ledger balance</tt>" command.  But I will have to
11877 gather more experience before I know if the ledger way is a good fit
11878 for the organisations I am involved in.</p>
11879
11880       </div>
11881       <div class="tags">
11882
11883
11884         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>.
11885
11886
11887       </div>
11888     </div>
11889     <div class="padding"></div>
11890
11891     <div class="entry">
11892       <div class="title">
11893         <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>
11894       </div>
11895       <div class="date">
11896          6th December 2012
11897       </div>
11898       <div class="body">
11899         <p>Where I work at the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of
11900 Oslo</a>, we use the
11901 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/cerebrum/">Cerebrum user
11902 administration system</a> to maintain users, groups, DNS, DHCP, etc.
11903 I've known since the system was written that the server is providing
11904 an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML-RPC">XML-RPC</a> API, but
11905 I have never spent time to try to figure out how to use it, as we
11906 always use the bofh command line client at work.  Until today.  I want
11907 to script the updating of DNS and DHCP to make it easier to set up
11908 virtual machines.  Here are a few notes on how to use it with
11909 Python.</p>
11910
11911 <p>I started by looking at the source of the Java
11912 <a href="http://cerebrum.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/cerebrum/trunk/cerebrum/clients/jbofh/">bofh
11913 client</a>, to figure out how it connected to the API server.  I also
11914 googled for python examples on how to use XML-RPC, and found
11915 <a href="http://tldp.org/HOWTO/XML-RPC-HOWTO/xmlrpc-howto-python.html">a
11916 simple example in</a> the XML-RPC howto.</p>
11917
11918 <p>This simple example code show how to connect, get the list of
11919 commands (as a JSON dump), and how to get the information about the
11920 user currently logged in:</p>
11921
11922 <blockquote><pre>
11923 #!/usr/bin/env python
11924 import getpass
11925 import xmlrpclib
11926 server_url = 'https://cerebrum-uio.uio.no:8000';
11927 username = getpass.getuser()
11928 password = getpass.getpass()
11929 server = xmlrpclib.Server(server_url);
11930 #print server.get_commands(sessionid)
11931 sessionid = server.login(username, password)
11932 print server.run_command(sessionid, "user_info", username)
11933 result = server.logout(sessionid)
11934 print result
11935 </pre></blockquote>
11936
11937 <p>Armed with this knowledge I can now move forward and script the DNS
11938 and DHCP updates I wanted to do.</p>
11939
11940       </div>
11941       <div class="tags">
11942
11943
11944         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>.
11945
11946
11947       </div>
11948     </div>
11949     <div class="padding"></div>
11950
11951     <div class="entry">
11952       <div class="title">
11953         <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>
11954       </div>
11955       <div class="date">
11956         17th November 2012
11957       </div>
11958       <div class="body">
11959         <p>While working on a
11960 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">Norwegian
11961 translation of the Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig</a> (76% done),
11962 which cover the problems with todays copyright law and how it stifles
11963 creativity, one idea occurred to me.  The idea is to get the tax
11964 office to help make more works enter the public domain and also help
11965 make it easier to clear rights for using copyrighted works.</p>
11966
11967 <p>I mentioned this idea briefly during Yesterdays
11968 <a href="http://www.farmann.no/2012/11/14/john-perry-barlow-in-oslo-friday-nov-16
11969 -15-30-19-00/">presentation
11970 by John Perry Barlow</a>, and concluded that it was best to put it
11971 in writing for a wider audience.  The idea is not really based on the
11972 argument that copyrighted works are "intellectual property", as the
11973 core requirement is that copyrighted work have value for the copyright
11974 holder and the tax office like to collect their share from any value
11975 controlled by the citizens in a country.  I'm sharing the idea here to
11976 let others consider it and perhaps shoot it down with a fresh set of
11977 arguments.</p>
11978
11979 <p>Most valuables are taxed by the government.  At least here in
11980 Norway, the amount of money you have, the value of our land property,
11981 the value of your house, the value of your car, the value of our
11982 stocks and other valuables are all added together.  If the tax value
11983 of these values exceed your debt, you have to pay the tax office some
11984 taxes for these values.  And copyrighted work have value.  It have
11985 value for the rights holder, who can earn money selling access to the
11986 work.  But it is not included in the tax calculations?  Why not?</p>
11987
11988 <p>If the government want to tax copyrighted works, it would want to
11989 maintain a database of all the copyrighted works and who are the
11990 rights holders for a given works, to be able to associate the works
11991 value to the right citizen or company for tax purposes.  If such
11992 database exist, it will become a lot easier to find out who to talk to
11993 for clearing permissions to use a copyrighted work, which is a very
11994 hard operation with todays copyright law.  To ensure that copyright
11995 holders keep the database up-to-date, it would have to become a
11996 requirement to be able to collect money for granting access to
11997 copyrighted works that the work is listed in the database with the
11998 correct right holder.</p>
11999
12000 <p>If copyright causes copyright holders to have to pay more taxes,
12001 they will have a small incentive to "disown" their copyright, and let
12002 the work enter the public domain. For works with several right holders
12003 one of the right holders could state (and get it registered in the
12004 database) that she do not need to be consulted when clearing rights to
12005 use the work in question and thus will not get any income from that
12006 work.  Stating this would have to be impossible to revert and stop the
12007 tax office from adding the value of that work to the given citizens
12008 tax calculation.  I assume the copyright law would stay the same,
12009 allowing creators to pick a license of their choosing, and also
12010 allowing them to put their work directly in the public domain.  The
12011 existence of such database will make it even easier to clear rights,
12012 and if the right holders listed in the database is taxed, this system
12013 would increase the amount of works that enter the public domain.</p>
12014
12015 <p>The effect would be that the tax office help to make it easier to
12016 get rights to use the works that have not yet entered the public
12017 domain and help to get more work into the public domain and .</p>
12018
12019 <p>Why have such taxing not happened yet?  I am sure the tax office
12020 would like to tax copyrighted work values if they could.</p>
12021
12022       </div>
12023       <div class="tags">
12024
12025
12026         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>.
12027
12028
12029       </div>
12030     </div>
12031     <div class="padding"></div>
12032
12033     <div class="entry">
12034       <div class="title">
12035         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Angela_Fu_.html">Debian Edu interview: Angela Fuß</a>
12036       </div>
12037       <div class="date">
12038         14th November 2012
12039       </div>
12040       <div class="body">
12041         <p>Here is another interview with one of the people in the <a
12042 href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
12043 community.  I am running short on people willing to be interviewed, so
12044 if you know about someone I should interview, Please send me an email.
12045 After asking for many months, I finally managed to lure another one of
12046 the people behind the German
12047 "<a href="http://wiki.it-zukunft-schule.de/">IT-Zukunft Schule</a>"
12048 project out from maternity leave to conduct an interview.  Give a warm
12049 welcome to Angela Fuß. :)</p>
12050
12051 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
12052
12053 <p>I am a 39-year-old woman living in the very north of Germany near
12054 Denmark. I live in a patchwork family with "my man" Mike Gabriel, my
12055 two daughters, Mikes daughter and Mikes and my rather newborn son.
12056
12057 <p>At the moment - because of our little baby - I am spending most of
12058 the day by being a caring and organising mom for all the kids.
12059 Besides that I am really involved into and occupied with several inner
12060 growth processes: New born souls always bring the whole familiar
12061 system into movement and that needs time and focus ;-).  We are also
12062 in the middle of buying a house and moving to it.</p>
12063
12064 <p>In 2013 I will work again in my job in a German foundation for
12065 nature conservation. I am doing public relation work there.  Besides
12066 that - and that is the connection to Skolelinux / Debian Edu - I am
12067 working in our own school project "IT-Zukunft Schule" in North
12068 Germany. I am responsible for the quality assurance, the customer
12069 relationship management and the communication processes in the
12070 project.</p>
12071
12072 <p>Since 2001 I constantly have been training myself in communication
12073 and leadership. Besides that I am a forester, a landscaping gardener
12074 and a yoga teacher.</p>
12075
12076 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
12077 project?</strong></p>
12078
12079 <p>I fell in love with Mike ;-).</p>
12080
12081 <p>Very soon after getting to know him I was completely enrolled into
12082 Free Software.  At this time Mike did IT-services for one newly
12083 founded school in Kiel. Other schools in Kiel needed concepts for
12084 their IT environment.  Often when Mike came home from working at the
12085 newly founded school I found myself listening to his complaints about
12086 several points where the communication with the schools head or the
12087 teachers did not work.  So we were clear that he would not work for
12088 one more school if we did not set up a structure for communication
12089 between him, the schools head, the teachers, the students and the
12090 parents.</p>
12091
12092 <p>Together with our friend and hardware supplier Andreas Buchholz we
12093 started to get an overview of free software solutions suitable for
12094 schools. One day before Christmas 2010 Mike and I had a date with Kurt
12095 Gramlich in Gütersloh. As Kurt and I are really interested in building
12096 networks of people and in being in communication we dived into
12097 Skolelinux and brought it to the first grammar schools in Northern
12098 Germany.</p>
12099
12100 <p>For information about our school project you can read
12101 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html">the
12102 interview with Mike Gabriel</a>.</p>
12103
12104 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
12105 Edu?</strong></p>
12106
12107 <p>First I have to say: I cannot answer this question technically. My
12108 answer comes rather from a social point of view.</p>
12109
12110 <p>The biggest advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu I see is the large
12111 and strong international community of Debian Developers in the
12112 background which is very alive and connected over mailinglists, blogs
12113 and meetings. My constant feeling for the Debian Community is: If
12114 something does not work they will somehow fix it. All is well
12115 ;-). This is of course a user experience.  What I also get as a big
12116 advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu is that everybody who uses it and
12117 works with it can also contribute to it - that includes students,
12118 teachers, parents...</p>
12119
12120 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
12121 Edu?</strong></p>
12122
12123 <p>I will answer this question relating to the internal structure of
12124 Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
12125
12126 <p>What I see as a major disadvantage is that there is a gap between
12127 the group of developers for Debian Edu and the people who make the
12128 marketing, that means the people that bring Skolelinux to the
12129 schools. There is a lack of communication between these two groups and
12130 I think that does not really work for Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
12131
12132 <p>Further I appreciate that Skolelinux / Debian Edu is known as a
12133 do-ocracy. Nevertheless I keep asking myself if at some points a
12134 democracy or some kind of hierarchical project structure would be good
12135 and helpful.  I am also missing some kind of contact between the
12136 Skolelinux / Debian Edu communities in Europe or on an international
12137 level. I think it would be good if there was more sharing between the
12138 different countries using Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
12139
12140 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
12141
12142 <p>On my laptop I am still using an Ubuntu 10.04 with a Gnome Desktop
12143 on.  As applications I use Openoffice.org, Gedit, Firefox, Pidgin,
12144 LaTeX and GnuCash. For mails I am using Horde. And I am really fond of
12145 my N900 running with Maemo.</p>
12146
12147 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
12148 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
12149
12150 <p>I am really convinced that in our school project "IT-Zukunft
12151 Schule" we have developed (and keep developing) a great way to get
12152 schools to use Free Software. We have written a detailed concept for
12153 that so I cannot explain the whole thing here. But in a nutshell the
12154 strategy has three crucial pillars:</p>
12155
12156 <ul>
12157
12158 <li>We really take time to get what sort of stories, questions and
12159 concerns the schools head and the teachers have about using different
12160 kinds of IT and we take time to enrol them into Free Software.</li>
12161
12162 <li>Our solution for schools is never just technical. In the centre
12163 are always the people who are going to use the software. From the very
12164 beginning of the planning for a school, we tell the schools head that
12165 they are paying us not only for a technical solution for their school,
12166 they also pay us for leading all the communication processes
12167 needed. If they do not want that, we are not working with them because
12168 we cannot give a guarantee for the quality of our work then.</li>
12169
12170 <li>Another focus lies in the training of teachers and students in
12171 co-administrating the IT-System at their school. They start getting in
12172 contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu community and they get the
12173 offer to become more and more independent from us.</li>
12174
12175 </ul>
12176
12177       </div>
12178       <div class="tags">
12179
12180
12181         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>.
12182
12183
12184       </div>
12185     </div>
12186     <div class="padding"></div>
12187
12188     <div class="entry">
12189       <div class="title">
12190         <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>
12191       </div>
12192       <div class="date">
12193          4th November 2012
12194       </div>
12195       <div class="body">
12196         <p>Slashdot just ran a story about the European Central Bank (ECB)
12197 <a href="http://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/other/virtualcurrencyschemes201210en.pdf">releasing
12198 a report (PDF)</a> about virtual currencies and
12199 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>.  It is interesting to
12200 see how a member of the bitcoin community
12201 <a href="http://blog.bitinstant.com/blog/2012/10/30/the-ecb-report-on-bitcoin-and-virtual-currencies.html">receive
12202 the report</a>.  As for the future, I suspect the central banks and
12203 the governments will outlaw bitcoin if it gain any popularity, to avoid
12204 competition.  My thoughts go to the
12205 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wörgl">Wörgl experiment</a> with
12206 negative inflation on cash which was such a success that it was
12207 terminated by the Austrian National Bank in 1933.  A successful
12208 alternative would be a threat to the current money system and gain
12209 powerful forces to work against it.</p>
12210
12211 <p>While checking out the current status of bitcoin, I also discovered
12212 that the community already seem to have
12213 <a href="http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/27/3271637/bitcoin-savings-trust-pyramid-scheme-shuts-down">experienced
12214 its first pyramid game / Ponzi scheme</a>.  Not very surprising, given
12215 how members of "small" communities tend to trust each other.  I guess
12216 enterprising crocks will try again and again, as they do anywhere
12217 wealth is available.</p>
12218
12219       </div>
12220       <div class="tags">
12221
12222
12223         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>.
12224
12225
12226       </div>
12227     </div>
12228     <div class="padding"></div>
12229
12230     <div class="entry">
12231       <div class="title">
12232         <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>
12233       </div>
12234       <div class="date">
12235         26th October 2012
12236       </div>
12237       <div class="body">
12238         <p>I work at the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a>
12239 looking after the computers, mostly on the unix side, but in general
12240 all over the place.  I am also a member (and currently leader) of
12241 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the NUUG association</a>, which in turn
12242 make me a member of <a href="http://www.usenix.org/">USENIX</a>.  NUUG
12243 is an member organisation for us in Norway interested in free
12244 software, open standards and unix like operating systems, and USENIX
12245 is a US based member organisation with similar targets.  And thanks to
12246 these memberships, I get all issues of the great USENIX magazine
12247 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login">;login:</a> in the
12248 mail several times a year.  The magazine is great, and I read most of
12249 it every time.</p>
12250
12251 <p>In the last issue of the USENIX magazine ;login:, there is an
12252 article by <a href="http://www.skendric.com/">Stuart Kendrick</a> from
12253 Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center titled
12254 "<a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/october-2012-volume-37-number-5/what-takes-us-down">What
12255 Takes Us Down</a>" (longer version also
12256 <a href="http://www.skendric.com/problem/incident-analysis/2012-06-30/What-Takes-Us-Down.pdf">available
12257 from his own site</a>), where he report what he found when he
12258 processed the outage reports (both planned and unplanned) from the
12259 last twelve years and classified them according to cause, time of day,
12260 etc etc.  The article is a good read to get some empirical data on
12261 what kind of problems affect a data centre, but what really inspired
12262 me was the kind of reporting they had put in place since 2000.<p>
12263
12264 <p>The centre set up a mailing list, and started to send fairly
12265 standardised messages to this list when a outage was planned or when
12266 it already occurred, to announce the plan and get feedback on the
12267 assumtions on scope and user impact.  Here is the two example from the
12268 article: First the unplanned outage:
12269
12270 <blockquote><pre>
12271 Subject:     Exchange 2003 Cluster Issues
12272 Severity:    Critical (Unplanned)
12273 Start:       Monday, May 7, 2012, 11:58
12274 End:         Monday, May 7, 2012, 12:38
12275 Duration:    40 minutes
12276 Scope:       Exchange 2003
12277 Description: The HTTPS service on the Exchange cluster crashed, triggering
12278              a cluster failover.
12279
12280 User Impact: During this period, all Exchange users were unable to
12281              access e-mail. Zimbra users were unaffected.
12282 Technician:  [xxx]
12283 </pre></blockquote>
12284
12285 Next the planned outage:
12286
12287 <blockquote><pre>
12288 Subject:     H Building Switch Upgrades
12289 Severity:    Major (Planned)
12290 Start:       Saturday, June 16, 2012, 06:00
12291 End:         Saturday, June 16, 2012, 16:00
12292 Duration:    10 hours
12293 Scope:       H2 Transport
12294 Description: Currently, Catalyst 4006s provide 10/100 Ethernet to end-
12295              stations. We will replace these with newer Catalyst
12296              4510s.
12297 User Impact: All users on H2 will be isolated from the network during
12298              this work. Afterward, they will have gigabit
12299              connectivity.
12300 Technician:  [xxx]
12301 </pre></blockquote>
12302
12303 <p>He notes in his article that the date formats and other fields have
12304 been a bit too free form to make it easy to automatically process them
12305 into a database for further analysis, and I would have used ISO 8601
12306 dates myself to make it easier to process (in other words I would ask
12307 people to write '2012-06-16 06:00 +0000' instead of the start time
12308 format listed above).  There are also other issues with the format
12309 that could be improved, read the article for the details.</p>
12310
12311 <p>I find the idea of standardising outage messages seem to be such a
12312 good idea that I would like to get it implemented here at the
12313 university too.  We do register
12314 <a href="http://www.uio.no/tjenester/it/aktuelt/planlagte-tjenesteavbrudd/">planned
12315 changes and outages in a calendar</a>, and report the to a mailing
12316 list, but we do not do so in a structured format and there is not a
12317 report to the same location for unplanned outages.  Perhaps something
12318 for other sites to consider too?</p>
12319
12320       </div>
12321       <div class="tags">
12322
12323
12324         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/usenix">usenix</a>.
12325
12326
12327       </div>
12328     </div>
12329     <div class="padding"></div>
12330
12331     <div class="entry">
12332       <div class="title">
12333         <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>
12334       </div>
12335       <div class="date">
12336         22nd October 2012
12337       </div>
12338       <div class="body">
12339         <p>A blog post from Martin Bekkelund today tell the story of
12340 <a href="http://www.bekkelund.net/2012/10/22/outlawed-by-amazon-drm/">how
12341 Amazon erased the books from a customer's kindle, locked the account
12342 and refuse to tell the customer why</a>.  If a real book store did
12343 this to a customer, it would be called breaking into private property
12344 and theft.  The story has spread around the net today.  A bit more
12345 background information is available in Norwegian from
12346 <a href="http://www.digi.no/904658/hun-ble-kastet-ut-av-amazon">digi.no</a>.
12347 It is no surprise that digital restriction mechanisms (DRM) are used
12348 this way, as it has been warned about such abuse since DRM was
12349 introduced many years back.  And Amazon proved in 2009 that it was
12350 willing to
12351 <a href="http://boingboing.net/2009/07/20/amazons-orwellian-de.html">
12352 break into customers equipment and remove the books</a> people had
12353 bought, when it removed the book 1984 by George Orwell from all the
12354 customers who had bought it.  From the official comments, it even
12355 sounded like
12356 <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html">Amazon
12357 would never do that again</a>.  And here we are, three years
12358 later.</p>
12359
12360 <p>And thought this action is
12361 <a href="http://www.itavisen.no/904648/forbrukerraadet-helt-haarreisende">against
12362 Norwegian regulations and law</a>, it is according to the terms of use
12363 as written by Amazon, and it is hard to hold Amazon accountable to
12364 Norwegian laws.  It is just yet another example of unacceptable terms
12365 of use on the web, and how they are used to remove customer
12366 rights.</p>
12367
12368 <p>Luckily for electronic books, there are alternatives without
12369 unacceptable terms.  For example
12370 <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/">Project Gutenberg</a> (about 40,000
12371 books), <a href="http://runeberg.org/">Project Runenberg</a> (1,652
12372 books) and <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/texts">The Internet
12373 Archive</a> (3,641,797 books) have heaps of books without DRM, which
12374 can read by anyone and shared with anyone.</p>
12375
12376 <p>Update 2012-10-23: This story broke in the morning on Monday. In
12377 the evening after the story had spread all across the Internet, Amazon
12378 restored the account of the user, as reported by
12379 <a href="http://www.digi.no/904675/helomvending-fra-amazon">digi.no</a>
12380 and <a href="http://nrk.no/kultur-og-underholdning/1.8368487">NRK</a>.
12381 Apparently public pressure work.  The story from Martin have seen
12382 several twitter messages per minute the last 24 hours, which is quite
12383 a lot, and is still drawing a lot of attention.  But even when the
12384 account is restored, the fundamental problem still exist.  I recommend
12385 reading two opinions from
12386 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2012/10/rights-you-have-no-right-to-your-ebooks/index.htm">Simon
12387 Phipps</a> and
12388 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/10/is-amazon-playing-fair/index.htm">Glen
12389 Moody</a> if you want to learn more about the fundamentals and more
12390 details about the original story.</p>
12391
12392       </div>
12393       <div class="tags">
12394
12395
12396         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>.
12397
12398
12399       </div>
12400     </div>
12401     <div class="padding"></div>
12402
12403     <div class="entry">
12404       <div class="title">
12405         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_fight_for_freedom_and_privacy.html">The fight for freedom and privacy</a>
12406       </div>
12407       <div class="date">
12408         18th October 2012
12409       </div>
12410       <div class="body">
12411         <p>Civil liberties and privacy in the western world are going down the
12412 drain, and it is hard to fight against it.  I try to do my best, but
12413 time is limited.  I hope you do your best too.  A few years ago I came
12414 across a marvellous drawing by
12415 <a href="http://www.claybennett.com/about.html">Clay Bennett</a>
12416 visualising some of what is going on.
12417
12418 <p><a href="http://www.claybennett.com/pages/security_fence.html">
12419 <img src="http://www.claybennett.com/images/archivetoons/security_fence.jpg"></a></p>
12420
12421 <blockquote>
12422 «They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
12423 safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.» - Benjamin Franklin
12424 </blockquote>
12425
12426 <p>Do you feel safe at the airport?  I do not.  Do you feel safe when
12427 you see a surveillance camera?  I do not.  Do you feel safe when you
12428 leave electronic traces of your behaviour and opinions?  I do not.  I
12429 just remember <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon">the
12430 Panopticon</a>, and can not help to think that we are slowly
12431 transforming our society to a huge Panopticon on our own.</p>
12432
12433       </div>
12434       <div class="tags">
12435
12436
12437         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>.
12438
12439
12440       </div>
12441     </div>
12442     <div class="padding"></div>
12443
12444     <div class="entry">
12445       <div class="title">
12446         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ColonHelp_produser_sue_WordPress_to_silence_critic.html">ColonHelp produser sue WordPress to silence critic</a>
12447       </div>
12448       <div class="date">
12449         12th October 2012
12450       </div>
12451       <div class="body">
12452         <p>Thanks to a blog post by
12453 <a href="http://ramblingfoo.blogspot.no/2012/10/a-shitstorm-is-comming.html">Eddy
12454 Petrișor</a>, I became aware of yet another "alternative medicine"
12455 company using legal intimidation tactics to scare off critics.
12456 According to the originating blog post about the detox "cure"
12457 <a href="http://insulaindoielii.wordpress.com/2012/10/11/colon-help-sues-wordpress/">ColonHelp
12458 and its producers Zenyth Pharmaceuticals actions</a>, the producer
12459 sues Wordpress to get rid of the critical information.  To check if
12460 the story was for real, I contacted Automattic, the company behind
12461 wordpress.com, and they reply was "We can confirm that Zenyth is
12462 seeking a court order against WordPress / Automattic.  However, we
12463 don't believe the Terms of Service have been violated in this
12464 matter".</p>
12465
12466 <p>The story seem to be simply that a blogger checked the scientific
12467 foundation for a popular health product in Rumania, ColonHelp, and
12468 reported that there was no reason at all to believe it improved the
12469 health of its users.  This caused the company behind the product,
12470 Zenyth Pharmaceuticals, to use legal intimidation to try to silence
12471 the critic, instead of presenting its views and scientific foundation
12472 to argue its side.</p>
12473
12474 <p>This is the usual story, and the Zenyth Pharmaceuticals company
12475 deserve everyone to know how it failed to act properly.  Lets hope the
12476 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect">Streisand
12477 effect</a> can make it rethink its strategy.</p>
12478
12479 <p>What is the harm, you might think.  I suggest you take a look at
12480 <a href="http://www.whatstheharm.net/detoxification.html">a list of
12481 victims of detoxification</a>.</p>
12482
12483       </div>
12484       <div class="tags">
12485
12486
12487         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>.
12488
12489
12490       </div>
12491     </div>
12492     <div class="padding"></div>
12493
12494     <div class="entry">
12495       <div class="title">
12496         <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>
12497       </div>
12498       <div class="date">
12499          3rd October 2012
12500       </div>
12501       <div class="body">
12502         <p>I just read the blog post from Tim Retout
12503 <a href="http://retout.co.uk/blog/2012/10/02/the-library-challenge">about
12504 the computer science book collection available in his local
12505 library</a>, and just wanted to share my comment on his theory about
12506 computer books becoming obsolete so soon.  That is part of the reason
12507 why the selection is so sad in almost any local library (it is in mine
12508 too), but I believe the major contributing factor is that the people
12509 buying books to the library have no way to know a good and future
12510 computer classic from trash.  And they need to know which one will
12511 become a classic in the future, as they would normally buy one of the
12512 recently published books.</p>
12513
12514 <p>During my university years, I worked for a while at the university
12515 library, and even there the person in charge of buying computer
12516 related books (and in fact any natural science related book), did not
12517 know enough about computers to make a good educated guess.  Once, just
12518 before Christmas, they had some leftover money on the book budget and
12519 I was asked if I could pick out a lot of computer books in the
12520 university book store, for the library to buy for their collection.  I
12521 had a great time picking all the books I dreamt of buying and reading,
12522 and the books I knew were classics (like most of the
12523 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Richard_Stevens">Stevens
12524 collection</a>).  I picked several of the generic O'Reilly books (ie
12525 documenting protocols, formats and systems, not specific versions of
12526 products) and stayed away from the 'teach yourself X in N days' class.
12527 I had a great time, and probably picked out more than a hundred books
12528 for the library that evening.</p>
12529
12530 <p>The sad fact is that there is no way a overworked librarian is
12531 going to know that for example
12532 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Practice_of_Programming">The
12533 Practice of Programming</a> is a must-have in any computer library,
12534 and they will most of the time end up picking the wrong books to buy.
12535 Perhaps you can help your local library make better choices by giving
12536 the suggestions for books to get?  I know they would love to hear from
12537 you, even if their budget might block them from getting your favourite
12538 book right away.</p>
12539
12540       </div>
12541       <div class="tags">
12542
12543
12544         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12545
12546
12547       </div>
12548     </div>
12549     <div class="padding"></div>
12550
12551     <div class="entry">
12552       <div class="title">
12553         <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>
12554       </div>
12555       <div class="date">
12556         23rd September 2012
12557       </div>
12558       <div class="body">
12559         <p>Since this summer, I have worked in my spare time on a Norwegian <a
12560 href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book <a
12561 href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
12562 The reason is that this book is a great primer on what problems exist
12563 in the current copyright laws, and I want it to be available also for
12564 those that are reluctant do read an English book.
12565
12566 When I started, I
12567 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">called
12568 for volunteers</a> to help me, but too few have volunteered so far,
12569 and progress is a bit slow.  Anyway, today I broken the 70 percent
12570 mark for the first rough translation.  At the moment, less than 700
12571 strings (paragraphs, index terms, titles) are left to translate.  With
12572 my current progress of 10-20 strings per day, it will take a while to
12573 complete the translation.  This graph show the updated progress:</p>
12574
12575 <img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png">
12576
12577 <p>Progress have slowed down lately due to family and work
12578 commitments.  If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out
12579 the project files currently available from
12580 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
12581
12582 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
12583 the updated
12584 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
12585 and
12586 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
12587 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
12588 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
12589 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
12590
12591       </div>
12592       <div class="tags">
12593
12594
12595         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>.
12596
12597
12598       </div>
12599     </div>
12600     <div class="padding"></div>
12601
12602     <div class="entry">
12603       <div class="title">
12604         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Giorgio_Pioda.html">Debian Edu interview: Giorgio Pioda</a>
12605       </div>
12606       <div class="date">
12607         17th September 2012
12608       </div>
12609       <div class="body">
12610         <p>After a long break in my row of interviews with people in the
12611 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
12612 community, I finally found time to wrap up another.  This time it is
12613 Giorgio Pioda, which showed up on the mailing list at the start of
12614 this year, asking questions and inspiring us to improve the first time
12615 administrators experience with Skolelinux. :) The interview was
12616 conduced in May, but I only found time to publish it now.</p>
12617
12618 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
12619
12620 <p>I have a PhD in chemistry but since several years I work as teacher
12621 in secondary (15-18 year old students) and tertiary (a kind of "light"
12622 university) schools. Five years ago I started to manage a Learning
12623 Management Service server and slowly I got more and more involved with
12624 IT. 3 years ago the graduating schools moved completely to Linux and I
12625 got the head of the IT for this. The experience collected in chemistry
12626 labs computers (for example NMR analysis of protein folding) and in
12627 the IT-courses during university where sufficient to start. Self
12628 training is anyway very important</p>
12629
12630 <p>I live in the Italian speaking part of Switzerland, and the
12631 <a href="http://www.spse.ch/">SPSE school</a> (secondary) is a very
12632 special sport school for young people who try to became sport pro (for
12633 all sports, we have dozens of disciplines represented) and we are
12634 recognised by the Olympic Swiss Organisation.
12635
12636 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
12637 project?</strong></p>
12638
12639 <p>Looking for Linux / Primary Domain Controller (PDC) I found it
12640 already several years ago. But since the system was still not
12641 Kerberized and since our schools relies strongly on laptops I didn't
12642 use it. I plan to introduce it in the next future, probably for the
12643 next school year, since the squeeze release solved this security
12644 hole.</p>
12645
12646 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
12647 Edu?</strong></p>
12648
12649 <p>Many. First of all there is a strong and living community that is
12650 very generous for help and hints.  Chat help is crucial, together with
12651 the mailing list.  Second. With Skolelinux you get an already well
12652 engineered platform and you don't have to start to build up your PDC
12653 and your clients from GNU/scratch; I've already done this once and I
12654 can tell it, it is hard. Third, since Skolelinux is a standard
12655 platform, it is way easier to educate other IT people and even if the
12656 head IT is sick another one could pick up the task without too much
12657 hassle.</p>
12658
12659 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
12660 Edu?</strong></p>
12661
12662 <p>The only real problem I see is that it is a little too less
12663 flexible at client level. Debian stable is rocky and desirable, but
12664 there are many reasons that force for another choice. For example the
12665 need of new drivers for new PC, or the need for a specific OS for some
12666 devices that have specific software packages for another specific
12667 distribution (I have such a case for whiteboards that have only
12668 Ubuntu packages). Thus, I prepared compatibility packages educlient
12669 and eduroaming, hoping not to use them ;-)</p>
12670
12671 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
12672
12673 <p>I have a Debian Stable PDC at school (Kerberos, NIS, NFS) with
12674 mixed Debian and Ubuntu clients. If you think that this triad
12675 combination is exotic... well I discovered right yesterday that
12676 <a href="http://moo.nac.uci.edu/~hjm/Perceus-Report.html">Perceus</a>
12677 has the same...</p>
12678
12679 <p>For myself I run Debian wheezy/sid, but this combination is good
12680 only I you have enough competence to fix stuff for yourself, if
12681 something breaks.  Daily I use texmacs, gnumeric, a little bit of R
12682 statistics, kmplot, and less frequently OpenOffice.org.</p>
12683
12684 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
12685 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
12686
12687 <P>I think that the only real argument that school managers "hear" is
12688 cost reduction. They don't give too much weight on quality, stability,
12689 just because they are normally not open to change.</p>
12690
12691 <p>Students adapts very quickly to GNU/Linux (and for them being able
12692 to switch between different OS is a plus value); teachers and managers
12693 don't.</p>
12694
12695 <p>We decided to move to Linux because students at our school have own
12696 laptop and we have the responsibility to keep the laptop ready to use;
12697 we were really unsatisfied with Microsoft since every Monday we had 20
12698 machine to fix for viral infections... With Linux this has been
12699 reduced to zero, since people installs almost only from official
12700 repositories. I think that our special needs brought us to Linux.
12701 Those who don't have such needs will hardly move to Linux.</p>
12702
12703       </div>
12704       <div class="tags">
12705
12706
12707         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>.
12708
12709
12710       </div>
12711     </div>
12712     <div class="padding"></div>
12713
12714     <div class="entry">
12715       <div class="title">
12716         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_activity_to_standardise_video_codec.html">IETF activity to standardise video codec</a>
12717       </div>
12718       <div class="date">
12719         15th September 2012
12720       </div>
12721       <div class="body">
12722         <p>After the
12723 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html">Opus
12724 codec made</a> it into <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">IETF</a> as
12725 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716">RFC 6716</a>, I had a look
12726 to see if there is any activity in IETF to standardise a video codec
12727 too, and I was happy to discover that there is some activity in this
12728 area.  A non-"working group" mailing list
12729 <a href="https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/video-codec">video-codec</a>
12730 was
12731 <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
12732 formal working group should be formed.</p>
12733
12734 <p>I look forward to see how this plays out.  There is already
12735 <a href="http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/video-codec/current/msg00003.html">an
12736 email from someone</a> in the MPEG group at ISO asking people to
12737 participate in the ISO group.  Given how ISO failed with OOXML and given
12738 that it so far (as far as I can remember) only have produced
12739 multimedia formats requiring royalty payments, I suspect
12740 joining the ISO group would be a complete waste of time, but I am not
12741 involved in any codec work and my opinion will not matter much.</p>
12742
12743 <p>If one of my readers is involved with codec work, I hope she will
12744 join this work to standardise a royalty free video codec within
12745 IETF.</p>
12746
12747       </div>
12748       <div class="tags">
12749
12750
12751         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>.
12752
12753
12754       </div>
12755     </div>
12756     <div class="padding"></div>
12757
12758     <div class="entry">
12759       <div class="title">
12760         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html">IETF standardize its first multimedia codec: Opus</a>
12761       </div>
12762       <div class="date">
12763         12th September 2012
12764       </div>
12765       <div class="body">
12766         <p>Yesterday, <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">IETF</a> announced the
12767 publication of of
12768 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716">RFC 6716, the Definition
12769 of the Opus Audio Codec</a>, a low latency, variable bandwidth, codec
12770 intended for both VoIP, film and music.  This is the first time, as
12771 far as I know, that IETF have standardized a multimedia codec.  In
12772 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3533">RFC 3533</a>, IETF
12773 standardized the OGG container format, and it has proven to be a great
12774 royalty free container for audio, video and movies.  I hope IETF will
12775 continue to standardize more royalty free codeces, after ISO and MPEG
12776 have proven incapable of securing everyone equal rights to publish
12777 multimedia content on the Internet.</p>
12778
12779 <p>IETF require two interoperating independent implementations to
12780 ratify a standard, and have so far ensured to only standardize royalty
12781 free specifications.  Both are key factors to allow everyone (rich and
12782 poor), to compete on equal terms on the Internet.</p>
12783
12784 <p>Visit the <a href="http://opus-codec.org/">Opus project page</a> if
12785 you want to learn more about the solution.</p>
12786
12787       </div>
12788       <div class="tags">
12789
12790
12791         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>.
12792
12793
12794       </div>
12795     </div>
12796     <div class="padding"></div>
12797
12798     <div class="entry">
12799       <div class="title">
12800         <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>
12801       </div>
12802       <div class="date">
12803          7th September 2012
12804       </div>
12805       <div class="body">
12806         <p>As I
12807 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">mentioned
12808 this summer</a>, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
12809 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
12810 <a href="https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook">Gitorious
12811 repository for the project</a>.</p>
12812
12813 <p>If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
12814 to the HTML version.  To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
12815 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
12816 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.</p>
12817
12818 <p>Want to sing?  You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
12819 PostScript formats at
12820 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's Computer
12821 Science Songbook</a>.</p>
12822
12823       </div>
12824       <div class="tags">
12825
12826
12827         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>.
12828
12829
12830       </div>
12831     </div>
12832     <div class="padding"></div>
12833
12834     <div class="entry">
12835       <div class="title">
12836         <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>
12837       </div>
12838       <div class="date">
12839         23rd August 2012
12840       </div>
12841       <div class="body">
12842         <p>I came across a great comment from Simon Phipps today, about how
12843 <a href="http://www.infoworld.com/d/open-source-software/how-microsoft-was-forced-open-office-200233">Microsoft
12844 have been forced to open Office</a>, and it made me remember and
12845 revisit the great site
12846 <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">officeshots</a> which allow you
12847 to check out how different programs present the ODF file format.  I
12848 recommend both to those of my readers interested in ODF. :)</p>
12849
12850       </div>
12851       <div class="tags">
12852
12853
12854         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>.
12855
12856
12857       </div>
12858     </div>
12859     <div class="padding"></div>
12860
12861     <div class="entry">
12862       <div class="title">
12863         <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>
12864       </div>
12865       <div class="date">
12866         17th August 2012
12867       </div>
12868       <div class="body">
12869         <p>In my spare time, I currently work on a Norwegian
12870 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
12871 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
12872 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with the copyright law
12873 I can give to my parents and others that are reluctant to read an
12874 English book.  It is a marvellous set of examples on how the ever
12875 expanding copyright regulations hurt culture and society.  When the
12876 translation is done, I hope to find funding to print and ship a copy
12877 to all the members of the Norwegian parliament, before they sit down
12878 to debate the latest revisions to the Norwegian copyright law.  This
12879 summer I
12880 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">called
12881 for volunteers</a> to help me, and I have been able to secure the
12882 valuable contribution from at least one other Norwegian.</p>
12883
12884 <p>Two days ago, we finally broke the 50% mark.  Then more than 50% of
12885 the number of strings to translate (normally paragraphs, but also
12886 titles and index entries are also counted).  All parts from the
12887 beginning up to and including chapter four is translated.  So is
12888 chapters six, seven and the conclusion.  I created a graph to show the
12889 progress:</p>
12890
12891 <img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png">
12892
12893 <p>The number of strings to translate increase as I insert the index
12894 entries into the docbook.  They were missing with the docbook version
12895 I initially started with.  There are still quite a few index entries
12896 missing, but everyone starting with A, B, O, Z and Y are done.  I
12897 currently focus on completing the index entries, to get a complete
12898 english version of the docbook source.</p>
12899
12900 <p>There is still need for translators and people with docbook
12901 knowledge, to be able to get a good looking book (I still struggle
12902 with dblatex, xmlto and docbook-xsl) as well as to do the draft
12903 translation and proof reading.  And I would like the figures to be
12904 redrawn as SVGs to make it easy to translate them.  Any SVG master
12905 around?  I am sure there are some legal terms that are unfamiliar to
12906 me.  If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out the
12907 project files currently available from <a
12908 href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
12909
12910 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
12911 the updated
12912 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
12913 and
12914 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
12915 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
12916 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
12917 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
12918
12919       </div>
12920       <div class="tags">
12921
12922
12923         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>.
12924
12925
12926       </div>
12927     </div>
12928     <div class="padding"></div>
12929
12930     <div class="entry">
12931       <div class="title">
12932         <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>
12933       </div>
12934       <div class="date">
12935         10th August 2012
12936       </div>
12937       <div class="body">
12938         <p>In <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> one can specify
12939 the language used at the top, and the processing pipeline will use
12940 this information to pick the correct translations for 'chapter', 'see
12941 also', 'index' etc.  And for most languages used with docbook, I guess
12942 this work just fine.  For example a German user can start the document
12943 with &lt;book lang="de"&gt;, and the document will show up with the
12944 correct content with any of the docbook processors.  This is not the
12945 case for the language
12946 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Culture_in_Norwegian___5_chapters_done__74_percent_left_to_do.html">I
12947 am working with at the moment</a>, Norwegian Bokmål.</p>
12948
12949 <p>For a while, I was confused about which language code to use,
12950 because I was unable to find any language code that would work across
12951 all tools.  I am currently testing dblatex, xmlto, docbook-xsl, and
12952 dbtoepub, and they do not handle Norwegian Bokmål the same way.  Some
12953 of them do not handle it at all.</p>
12954
12955 <p>A bit of background information is probably needed to understand
12956 this mess.  Norwegian is not one, but two written variants.  The
12957 variants are Norwegian Nynorsk and Norwegian Bokmål.  There are three
12958 two letter language codes associated with these languages, Norwegian
12959 is 'no', Norwegian Nynorsk is 'nn' and Norwegian Bokmål is 'nb'.
12960 Historically the 'no' language code was used for Norwegian Bokmål, but
12961 many years ago this was found to be å bad idea, and the recommendation
12962 is to use the most specific language code instead, to avoid confusion.
12963 In the transition period it is a good idea to make sure 'no' was an
12964 alias for 'nb'.</p>
12965
12966 <p>Back to docbook processing tools in Debian.  The dblatex tool only
12967 understand 'nn'.  There are translations for 'no', but not 'nb' (BTS
12968 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/684391">#684391</a>), but due to a bug
12969 (BTS <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682936">#682936</a>) the 'no'
12970 language code is not recognised.  The docbook-xsl tool chain only
12971 recognise 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'.  The xmlto tool only recognise
12972 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'.  The end result that there is no language
12973 code I can use to get the docbook file working with all of these tools
12974 at the same time. :(</p>
12975
12976 <p>The correct solution is to use &lt;book lang="nb"&gt;, but it will
12977 take time before that will work with all the free software docbook
12978 processors. :(</p>
12979
12980 <p>Oh, the joy of well integrated tools. :/</p>
12981
12982       </div>
12983       <div class="tags">
12984
12985
12986         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>.
12987
12988
12989       </div>
12990     </div>
12991     <div class="padding"></div>
12992
12993     <div class="entry">
12994       <div class="title">
12995         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Best_way_to_create_a_docbook_book_.html">Best way to create a docbook book?</a>
12996       </div>
12997       <div class="date">
12998         31st July 2012
12999       </div>
13000       <div class="body">
13001         <p>I tried to send this text to the
13002 <a href="https://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook-apps/">docbook-apps
13003 mailing list at lists.oasis-open.org</a>, but it only accept messages
13004 from subscribers and rejected my post, and I completely lack the
13005 bandwidth required to subscribe to another mailing list, so instead I
13006 try to post my message here and hope my blog readers can help me
13007 out.</p>
13008
13009 <p>I am quite new to docbook processing, and am climbing a steep
13010 learning curve at the moment.</p>
13011
13012 <p>To give you some background, I am working on a Norwegian
13013 translation of the book Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig, and I use
13014 docbook to handle the process.  The files to build the book are
13015 available from
13016 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.
13017 The book got around 400 pages with parts, images, footnotes, tables,
13018 index entries etc, which has proven to be a challenge for the free
13019 software docbook processors.  My build platform is Debian GNU/Linux
13020 Squeeze.</p>
13021
13022 <p>I want to build PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book, and have
13023 tried different tool chains to do the conversion from docbook to these
13024 formats.  I am currently focusing on the PDF version, and have a few
13025 problems.</p>
13026
13027 <ul>
13028
13029 <li>Using dblatex, the &lt;part&gt; handling is not the way I want to,
13030    as &lt;/part&gt; do not really end the &lt;part&gt;. (See
13031    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683166">BTS report #683166</a>), the
13032    xetex backend (needed to process UTF-8) give incorrect hyphens in
13033    index references spanning several pages (See
13034    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682901">BTS report #682901</a>), and
13035    I am unable to get the norwegian template texts (See
13036    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682936">BTS report #682936</a>).</li>
13037
13038 <li>Using straight xmlto fail with some latex error (See
13039    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683163">BTS report
13040    #683163</a>).</li>
13041
13042 <li>Using xmlto with the fop backend fail to handle images (do not
13043    show up in the PDF), fail to handle a long footnote (overlap
13044    footnote and text body, see
13045    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683197">BTS report #683197</a>), and
13046    fail to create a correct index (some lack page ref, and the page
13047    refs listed are not right).</li>
13048
13049 <li>Using xmlto with the dblatex backend behave like dblatex.</li>
13050
13051 <li>Using docbook-xls with xsltproc + fop have the same footnote and
13052    index problems the xmlto + fop processing.</li>
13053
13054 </ul>
13055
13056 <p>So I wonder, what would be the best way to create the PDF version
13057 of this book?  Are some of the bugs found above solved in new or
13058 experimental versions of some docbook tool chain?</p>
13059
13060 <p>What about HTML and EPUB versions?</p>
13061
13062       </div>
13063       <div class="tags">
13064
13065
13066         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>.
13067
13068
13069       </div>
13070     </div>
13071     <div class="padding"></div>
13072
13073     <div class="entry">
13074       <div class="title">
13075         <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>
13076       </div>
13077       <div class="date">
13078         21st July 2012
13079       </div>
13080       <div class="body">
13081         <p>I reported earlier that I am working on
13082 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">a
13083 norwegian version</a> of the book
13084 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
13085 Progress is good, and yesterday I got a major contribution from Anders
13086 Hagen Jarmund completing chapter six.  The source files as well as a
13087 PDF and EPUB version of this book are available from
13088 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
13089
13090 <p>I am happy to report that the draft for the first two chapters
13091 (preface, introduction) is complete, and three other chapters are also
13092 completely translated.  This completes 26 percent of the number of
13093 strings (equivalent to paragraphs) in the book, and there is thus 74
13094 percent left to translate.  A graph of the progress is present at the
13095 bottom of the github project page.  There is still room for more
13096 contributors.  Get in touch or send github pull requests with fixes if
13097 you got time and are willing to help make this book make it to
13098 print. :)</p>
13099
13100 <p>The book translation framework could also be a good basis for other
13101 translations, if you want the book to be available in your
13102 language.</p>
13103
13104       </div>
13105       <div class="tags">
13106
13107
13108         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>.
13109
13110
13111       </div>
13112     </div>
13113     <div class="padding"></div>
13114
13115     <div class="entry">
13116       <div class="title">
13117         <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>
13118       </div>
13119       <div class="date">
13120         16th July 2012
13121       </div>
13122       <div class="body">
13123         <p>I am currently working on a
13124 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">project
13125 to translate</a> the book
13126 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig
13127 to Norwegian.  And the source we base our translation on is the
13128 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DocBook">docbook</a> version, to
13129 allow us to use po4a and .po files to handle the translation, and for
13130 this to work well the docbook source document need to be properly
13131 tagged.  The source files of this project is available from
13132 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
13133
13134 <p>The problem is that the docbook source have flaws, and we have
13135 no-one involved in the project that is a docbook expert.  Is there a
13136 docbook expert somewhere that is interested in helping us create a
13137 well tagged docbook version of the book, and adjust our build process
13138 for the PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book?  This will provide a
13139 well tagged English version (our source document), and make it a lot
13140 easier for us to create a good Norwegian version.  If you can and want
13141 to help, please get in touch with me or fork the github project and
13142 send pull requests with fixes. :)</p>
13143
13144       </div>
13145       <div class="tags">
13146
13147
13148         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>.
13149
13150
13151       </div>
13152     </div>
13153     <div class="padding"></div>
13154
13155     <div class="entry">
13156       <div class="title">
13157         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__George_Bredberg.html">Debian Edu interview: George Bredberg</a>
13158       </div>
13159       <div class="date">
13160          9th July 2012
13161       </div>
13162       <div class="body">
13163         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
13164 Skolelinux</a> project have users all over the globe, but until
13165 recently we have not known about any users in Norway's neighbour
13166 country Sweden.  This changed when George Bredberg showed up in March
13167 this year on the mailing list, asking interesting questions about how
13168 to adjust and scale the just released
13169 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
13170 Wheezy</a> setup to his liking.  He granted me an interview, and I am
13171 happy to share his answers with you here.</p>
13172
13173 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
13174
13175 <p>I'm a 44 year old country guy that have been working 12 years at
13176 the same school as 50% IT-manager and 50% Teacher. My educational
13177 background is fil.kand in history and religious beliefs, an exam as a
13178 "folkhighschool" teacher, that is, for teaching grownups.  In
13179 Norwegian I believe it's called "Vuxenupplaring". I also have a master
13180 in "Technology and social change". So I'm not really a tech guy, I
13181 just like to study how humans and technology interact and that is my
13182 perspective when working with IT.</p>
13183
13184 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
13185 project?</strong></p>
13186
13187 I have followed the Skolelinux project for quite some time by
13188 now. Earlier I tested out the K12-LTSP project, which we used for some
13189 time, but I really like the idea of having a distribution aimed to be
13190 a complete solution for schools with necessary tools integrated. When
13191 K12-LTSP abandoned that idea some years ago, I started to look more
13192 seriously into Skolelinux instead.
13193
13194 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
13195 Edu?</strong></p>
13196
13197 The big point of Skolelinux to me is that it is a complete
13198 distribution, ready to install. It has LDAP-support, MS Windows
13199 integration tools and so forth already configured, saving an
13200 administrator a lot of time and headache. We were using another Linux
13201 based thin-client system called Thinlinc, that has served us very
13202 well. But that Skolelinux is based on VNC and LTSP, to me, is better
13203 when it comes to the kind of multimedia used in schools. That is
13204 showing videos from Youtube or educational TV. It is also easier to
13205 mix thin clients with workstations, since the user settings will be the
13206 same. In our VNC-based solution you had to "beat around the bush" by
13207 setting up a second, hidden, home-directory for user settings for the
13208 workstations, because they will be different from the ones used on the
13209 thin clients. Skolelinux support for diskless workstations are very
13210 convenient since a school today often need to use a class room
13211 projector showing videos in full screen. That is easily done with a
13212 small integrated media computer running as a diskless workstation. You
13213 have only two installs to update and configure. One for the thin
13214 clients and one for the workstations. Also saving a lot of time.  Our
13215 old system was also based on Redhat and CentOS. They are both very
13216 nice distributions, but they are sometimes painfully slow when it
13217 comes to updating multimedia support and multimedia programs (even
13218 such as Gimp), leaving us with a bit "oldish" applications. Debian is
13219 quicker to update.
13220
13221 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
13222 Edu?</strong></p>
13223
13224 <p>Debian is a bit too quick when it comes to updating. As an example
13225 we use old HP terminals as thinclients, and two times already this
13226 year (2012) the updates you get from the repositories has stopped
13227 sound from working with them.  It's a kernel/ALSA issue. So you have
13228 to be more careful properly testing the updates before you run them in
13229 a production environment. This has never happened with CentOS.</p>
13230
13231 <p>I also would like to be able to set my own domain-settings at
13232 install time.  In Skolelinux they are kind of hard coded into the
13233 distribution, when it comes to LDAP and at least samba integration.
13234 That is more a cosmetic/translation issue, and not a real problem.
13235 Running MS Windows applications within the Skolelinux environment needs
13236 to be better supported. That is, running them seamlessly via RDP, and
13237 support for single-sign on.  That will make the transition to free
13238 software easier, because you can keep the applications you really
13239 need.  No support will make it impossible if you work in a school where
13240 some applications can't be open source. As for us we really need to
13241 run Adobe InDesign in our journalist classes.  We run a journalist
13242 education, and is one of the very few non university ones that is ok:d
13243 by Svenska journalistförbundet (Swedish journalist association).  Our
13244 education gives the pupils the right of membership there, once they
13245 are done.  This is important if you want to get a job.</p>
13246
13247 <p>Adobe InDesign is the program most commonly used in newspapers and
13248 magazines.  We used Quark Express before, but they seem to loose there
13249 market to Adobe. The only "equivalent" to InDesign in the opensource
13250 world is Scribus, and its not advanced enough. At least not according
13251 to the teacher. I think it would be possible to use it, because they
13252 are not supposed to learn a program, they are supposed to learn how to
13253 edit and compile a newspaper.  But politically at our school we are not
13254 there yet.  And Scribus lacks a lot of things you find i InDesign.</p>
13255
13256 <p>We used even a windows program for sound editing when it comes to
13257 the radio-journalist part. The year to come we are going to try
13258 Audacity. That software has the same kind of limitations compared to
13259 Adobe Audition, but that teacher is a bit more open minded. We have
13260 tried Ardour also, but that instead is more like a music studio
13261 program, not intended for the kind of editing taking place in a radio
13262 studio. Its way to complex and the GUI is to scattered when you only
13263 want to cut, make pass-overs, add extra channels and normalise.  Those
13264 things you can do in Audacity, but its not as easy as in Audition. You
13265 have to do more things manually with envelopes, and that is a bit old
13266 fashion and timewasting. Its also harder to cut and move sound from
13267 one channel to another, which is a thing that you do frequently
13268 because you often find yourself needing to rearrange parts of the
13269 sound file.</p>
13270
13271 <p>So, I am not sure we will succeed in replacing even Audition, but we
13272 will try.  The problem is the students have certain expectations when
13273 they start an education towards a profession.  So the programs has to
13274 look and feel professional.  Good thing with radio, there are many
13275 programs out there, that radio studios use, so its not as standardised
13276 as Newspaper editing. That means, it does not really matter what
13277 program they learn, because once they start working they still have to
13278 learn the program the studio uses, so instead focus has to be to learn
13279 the editing part without to much focus on a specific software.</p>
13280
13281 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
13282
13283 <p>Myself I'm running Linux Mint, or Ubuntu these days.  I use almost
13284 only open source software, and preferably Linux based. When it comes
13285 to most used applications its OpenOffice, and Firefox (of course ;)
13286 )</p>
13287
13288 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
13289 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
13290
13291 <p>To get schools to use free software there has to be good open
13292 source software that are windows based, to ease the transition. But
13293 it's also very important that the multimedia support is working
13294 flawlessly.  The problems with Youtube, Twitter, Facebook and whatever
13295 will create problems when it comes to both teachers and
13296 students. Economy are also important for schools, so using thin
13297 clients, as long as they have good multimedia support, is a very good
13298 idea. It's also important that the open source software works even for
13299 the administration.  It's hard to convince the teachers to stick with
13300 open source, if the principal has to run Windows.  It also creates a
13301 problem if some classes has to use Windows for there tasks, since that
13302 will create a difference in "status" between classes, so a good
13303 support for running windows applications via the thin client (Linux)
13304 desktop is essential.  At least at our school, where we have mixed
13305 level of educations, from high-school to journalist-school.</p>
13306
13307 <p>Update 2012-07-09 08:30: Paul Wise tipped me on IRC about three
13308 useful sources related to Free Software for radio stations: the LWN
13309 article <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/481607/">Radio station
13310 management with Airtime</a>,
13311 <a href="http://www.sourcefabric.org/en/airtime/">Airtime</a> which
13312 claim to be a Free open source radio automation software and
13313 <a href="http://www.rivendellaudio.org/">Rivendell</a> which claim to
13314 be complete radio broadcast automation solution.  All of them seem
13315 useful to the aspiring radio producer.</p>
13316
13317       </div>
13318       <div class="tags">
13319
13320
13321         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>.
13322
13323
13324       </div>
13325     </div>
13326     <div class="padding"></div>
13327
13328     <div class="entry">
13329       <div class="title">
13330         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_do_schools_waste_money_on_IT_.html">Why do schools waste money on IT?</a>
13331       </div>
13332       <div class="date">
13333          8th July 2012
13334       </div>
13335       <div class="body">
13336         <p>In the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project, we have realised that one
13337 of the major blockers for the project success is the purchasing skills
13338 in schools and municipalities.  We provide what the happy users of
13339 Debian Edu / Skolelinux say they need and to a lower cost than the
13340 alternatives, and yet so few schools decide to use our solution.  I
13341 was pleased to discover the same observation done by mySociety and Tom
13342 Steinberg in his blog post
13343 "<a href="http://www.mysociety.org/2012/06/19/can-you-recognize-the-million-pound-chair/">Can
13344 you recognize the million pound chair?</a>".  Read it and weep for the
13345 spending of your tax money.</p>
13346
13347 <p>Of course there are other factors involved as well, like our
13348 projects bad marketing skills and the Linux community fragmentation
13349 causing worry with the people on the outside, so we as a project need
13350 to keep working hard to gain users, but it is a up-hill battle when
13351 public decision makers are unable to understand computer system
13352 purchases.</p>
13353
13354       </div>
13355       <div class="tags">
13356
13357
13358         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>.
13359
13360
13361       </div>
13362     </div>
13363     <div class="padding"></div>
13364
13365     <div class="entry">
13366       <div class="title">
13367         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Timetabling_Software___nice_free_software.html">Free Timetabling Software - nice free software</a>
13368       </div>
13369       <div class="date">
13370          7th July 2012
13371       </div>
13372       <div class="body">
13373         <p>Included in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
13374 Skolelinux</a> is a large collection of end user and school specific
13375 software.  It is one of the packages not installed by default but
13376 provided in the Debian archive for schools to install if they want to,
13377 is a system to automatically plan the school time table using
13378 information about available teachers, classes and rooms, combined with
13379 the list of required courses and how many hours each topic should
13380 receive.  The software is
13381
13382 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/">named FET</a>, and it provide a
13383 graphical user interface to input the required information, save the
13384 result in a fairly simple XML format, and generate time tables for
13385 both teachers and students.  It is available both for
13386 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/download.html">Linux, MacOSX and
13387 Windows</a>.</p>
13388
13389 <p>This is <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/features.html">the
13390 feature list</a>, liftet from the project web site:</p>
13391
13392 <p><ul>
13393
13394   <li>FET is free software, licensed under the GNU GPL v2 or later.
13395     You can freely use, copy, modify and redistribute it </li>
13396
13397   <li>Localized to en_US (US English, default), ar (Arabic), ca
13398     (Catalan), da (Danish), de (German), el (Greek), es (Spanish), fa
13399     (Persian), fr (French), gl (Galician), he (Hebrew), hu
13400     (Hungarian), id (Indonesian), it (Italian), lt (Lithuanian), mk
13401     (Macedonian), ms (Malay), nl (Dutch), pl (Polish), pt_BR
13402     (Brazilian Portuguese), ro (Romanian), ru (Russian), si (Sinhala),
13403     sk (Slovak), sr (Serbian), tr (Turkish), uk (Ukrainian), uz
13404     (Uzbek) and vi (Vietnamese) (incompletely for some languages)
13405     </li>
13406
13407   <li>Fully automatic generation algorithm, allowing also
13408     semi-automatic or manual allocation</li>
13409
13410   <li>Platform independent implementation, allowing running on
13411     GNU/Linux, Windows, Mac and any system that Qt supports </li>
13412
13413   <li>Flexible modular XML format for the input file, allowing editing
13414     with an XML editor or by hand (besides FET interface)</li>
13415
13416   <li>Import/export from CSV format</li>
13417
13418   <li>The resulted timetables are exported into HTML, XML and CSV
13419     formats </li>
13420
13421   <li>Flexible students structure, organized into sets: years, groups
13422     and subgroups. FET allows overlapping years and groups and
13423     non-overlapping subgroups. You can even define individual students
13424     (as separate sets)</li>
13425
13426   <li>Each constraint has a weight percentage, from 0.0% to 100.0%
13427     (but some special constraints are allowed to have only 100% weight
13428     percentage)</li>
13429
13430   <li>Limits for the algorithm (all these limits can be increased on
13431     demand, as a custom version, because this would require a bit more
13432     memory):
13433     <ul>
13434       <li>Maximum total number of hours (periods) per day: 60</li>
13435       <li>Maximum number of working days per week: 35</li>
13436       <li>Maximum total number of teachers: 6000</li>
13437       <li>Maximum total number of sets of students: 30000</li>
13438       <li>Maximum total number of subjects: 6000</li>
13439       <li>Virtually unlimited number of activity tags</li>
13440       <li>Maximum number of activities: 30000</li>
13441       <li>Maximum number of rooms: 6000</li>
13442       <li>Maximum number of buildings: 6000</li>
13443       <li>Possibility of adding multiple teachers and
13444           students sets for each activity.  (it is possible
13445           also to have no teachers or no students sets for an
13446           activity)</li>
13447       <li>Virtually unlimited number of time constraints</li>
13448       <li>Virtually unlimited number of space constraints</li>
13449     </ul></li>
13450
13451   <li>A large and flexible palette of time constraints:
13452     <ul>
13453       <li>Break periods</li>
13454       <li>For teacher(s):
13455         <ul>
13456           <li>Not available periods</li>
13457           <li>Max/min days per week</li>
13458           <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
13459           <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
13460           <li>Min hours daily</li>
13461           <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
13462
13463           <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
13464             days per week</li>
13465         </ul></li>
13466       <li>For students (sets):
13467         <ul>
13468           <li>Not available periods</li>
13469           <li>Begins early (specify max allowed beginnings at second hour)</li>
13470           <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
13471           <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
13472           <li>Min hours daily</li>
13473           <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
13474
13475           <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
13476             days per week</li>
13477         </ul></li>
13478       <li>For an activity or a set of activities/subactivities:
13479         <ul>
13480           <li>A single preferred starting time</li>
13481           <li>A set of preferred starting times</li>
13482           <li>A set of preferred time slots</li>
13483           <li>Min/max days between them</li>
13484           <li>End(s) students day</li>
13485           <li>Same starting time/day/hour</li>
13486           <li>Occupy max time slots from selection (a complex and
13487             flexible constraint, useful in many situations)</li>
13488           <li>Consecutive, ordered, grouped (for 2 or 3 (sub)activities)</li>
13489           <li>Not overlapping</li>
13490           <li>Max simultaneous in selected time slots</li>
13491           <li>Min gaps between a set of (sub)activities</li>
13492         </ul></li>
13493     </ul></li>
13494
13495   <li>A large and flexible palette of space constraints:
13496     <ul>
13497       <li>Room not available periods</li>
13498       <li>For teacher(s):
13499         <ul>
13500           <li>Home room(s)</li>
13501           <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
13502           <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
13503         </ul>
13504       </li>
13505
13506       <li>For students (sets):
13507         <ul>
13508           <li>Home room(s)</li>
13509           <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
13510           <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
13511         </ul>
13512       </li>
13513       <li>Preferred room(s):
13514         <ul>
13515           <li>For a subject</li>
13516           <li>For an activity tag</li>
13517           <li>For a subject and an activity tag</li>
13518           <li>Individually for a (sub)activity</li>
13519         </ul>
13520       </li>
13521
13522       <li>For a set of activities:
13523         <ul>
13524           <li>Occupy a maximum number of different rooms</li>
13525         </ul>
13526       </li>
13527     </ul>
13528   </li>
13529 </ul></p>
13530
13531 <p>I have not used it myself, as I am not involved in time table
13532 planning at a school, but it seem to work fine when I test it.  If you
13533 need to set up your schools time table, and is tired of doing it
13534 manually, check it out.
13535
13536 A quick summary on how to use it can be found in
13537 <a href="http://marvelsoft.co.in/wp/2012/03/generate-timetable-for-state-cbse-icse-igcse-schools-free/">a
13538 blog post from MarvelSoft</a>.  If you find FET useful, please provide
13539 a recipe for the Debian Edu project in the
13540 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu#Howtos">Debian Edu HowTo
13541 section</a>.</p>
13542
13543       </div>
13544       <div class="tags">
13545
13546
13547         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>.
13548
13549
13550       </div>
13551     </div>
13552     <div class="padding"></div>
13553
13554     <div class="entry">
13555       <div class="title">
13556         <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>
13557       </div>
13558       <div class="date">
13559          3rd July 2012
13560       </div>
13561       <div class="body">
13562         <p>In the NUUG <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a>
13563 project (Norwegian version of
13564 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> from
13565 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a>), we have discovered
13566 a problem with the municipalities using
13567 <a href="http://www.zimbra.com/">Zimbra</a>.  When FiksGataMi send a
13568 problem report to the government, the email From: address is set to
13569 the address of the person reporting the problem, while envelope sender
13570 is set to the FiksGataMi contact address.  The intention is to make
13571 sure the municipality send any replies to the person reporting the
13572 problem, while any email delivery problems are sent to us in NUUG.
13573 This work well in most cases, but not for Karmøy municipality using
13574 Zimbra.  Karmøy is using the vacation message function in Zimbra to
13575 send an automatic reply to report that the message has been received,
13576 and this message is sent to the envelope sender and not the address in
13577 the From: header.</p>
13578
13579 <p>This causes the automatic message from Karmøy to go to NUUGs
13580 request-tracker instance instead of to the person reporting the
13581 problem.  We can not really change the envelope sender address, as
13582 this would make it impossible for us to discover when there are
13583 problems with the MTAs receiving problem reports.  We have been in
13584 contact with the people at Karmøy municipality, and they are willing
13585 to adjust Zimbra if something can be changed there to get a better
13586 behaviour.</p>
13587
13588 <p>The default behaviour of Zimbra is as far as I can tell according
13589 to the specification in RFC 3834, which recommend that vacation
13590 messages are sent to the envelope sender and not to the From: address.
13591 But I wonder if it is possible to adjust or configure Zimbra to behave
13592 differently.  Anyone know?  Please let us know at
13593 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami">fiksgatami
13594 (at) nuug.no</a>.</p>
13595
13596       </div>
13597       <div class="tags">
13598
13599
13600         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>.
13601
13602
13603       </div>
13604     </div>
13605     <div class="padding"></div>
13606
13607     <div class="entry">
13608       <div class="title">
13609         <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>
13610       </div>
13611       <div class="date">
13612         26th June 2012
13613       </div>
13614       <div class="body">
13615         <p>I've been too busy at home, but finally I found time to wrap up
13616 another interview with the people behind
13617 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>.
13618 This time we get to know José Luis Redrejo Rodríguez, one of our great
13619 helpers from Spain.  His effort was the reason we added support for
13620 several desktop types (KDE, Gnome and most recently LXDE) in Debian
13621 Edu, and have all of these available in the recently published
13622 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
13623 Squeeze</a> version.</p>
13624
13625 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
13626
13627 <p>I'm a father, teacher and engineer who is working for the Education
13628 ministry of the Region of Extremadura (Spain) in the implementation of
13629 ICT in schools</p>
13630
13631 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
13632 project?</strong></p>
13633
13634 <p>At 2006, I verified that both, we in Extremadura and Skolelinux
13635 project, had been working in parallel for some years, doing very
13636 similar things, using very similar tools and with similar targets, so
13637 I decided it was time to join forces as much as possible.</p>
13638
13639 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
13640 Edu?</strong></p>
13641
13642 <p>A community of highly skilled experts working together, with a
13643 really open schema of collaboration and work. I really love the
13644 concepts of Do-ocracy and Merit-ocracy and the way these concepts are
13645 been used everyday inside Debian Edu.</p>
13646
13647 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
13648 Edu?</strong></p>
13649
13650 <p>Sometimes the differences in the implementations, laws or
13651 economical and technical resources in the different countries don't
13652 allow us to agree in the same solution for all of us, and several
13653 approaches are needed, what is a waste of effort. Also, there is a
13654 lack of more man power to be able to follow the fast evolution of the
13655 technologies in school.</p>
13656
13657 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
13658
13659 <p>Debian, of course, and due to my kind of job I am most of my time
13660 between Iceweasel, <a href="http://www.geany.org/">Geany</a> and
13661 <a href="http://www.ohloh.net/p/gnome-terminator">Terminator</a>.</p>
13662
13663 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
13664 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
13665
13666 <p>I think there is not a single strategy because there are very
13667 different scenarios: schools with mixed proprietary and free
13668 environments, schools using only workstations, other schools using
13669 laptops, netbooks, tablets, interactive white-boards, etc.</p>
13670
13671 <p>Also the range of ages of the students is very broad and you can
13672 not use the same solutions for primary schools and secondary or even
13673 universities. So different strategies are needed.</p>
13674
13675 <p>But, looking at these differences, and looking back to the things
13676 we've done and implemented, and the places were we have spent most of
13677 our forces, I think we should focus as much as possible in free
13678 multi-platform environments, using only standards tools, and moving
13679 more and more to Internet or network solutions that could be deployed
13680 using wireless. I think we'll see more and more personal devices in
13681 the schools, devices the students and teachers will take home with
13682 them, so the solutions must be able to be taken at home and continue
13683 working there.</p>
13684
13685       </div>
13686       <div class="tags">
13687
13688
13689         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>.
13690
13691
13692       </div>
13693     </div>
13694     <div class="padding"></div>
13695
13696     <div class="entry">
13697       <div class="title">
13698         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Song book for Computer Scientists</a>
13699       </div>
13700       <div class="date">
13701         24th June 2012
13702       </div>
13703       <div class="body">
13704         <p>Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
13705 <a href="http://www.uit.no/">University of Tromsø</a>, I started
13706 collecting computer related songs for use at parties.  The original
13707 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
13708 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
13709 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format.  I have
13710 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
13711 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
13712 help me extend and update the book.  If anyone is volunteering to help
13713 me with this, send me an email.  Also let me know if there are songs
13714 missing in my book.</p>
13715
13716 <p>I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
13717 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
13718 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
13719 Especially now that <a href="http://debconf12.debconf.org/">Debconf
13720 12</a> is about to start (and I am not going).  Want to sing?  Check
13721 out <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's
13722 Computer Science Songbook</a>.
13723
13724       </div>
13725       <div class="tags">
13726
13727
13728         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>.
13729
13730
13731       </div>
13732     </div>
13733     <div class="padding"></div>
13734
13735     <div class="entry">
13736       <div class="title">
13737         <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>
13738       </div>
13739       <div class="date">
13740         11th June 2012
13741       </div>
13742       <div class="body">
13743         <p>During my work on
13744 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.nb.html">Debian Edu
13745 based on Squeeze</a>, I came across some issues that should be
13746 addressed in the Wheezy release.  I finally found time to wrap up my
13747 notes and provide quick summary of what I found, with a bit
13748 explanation.</p>
13749
13750 <p><ul>
13751
13752 <li>We need to rewrite our package installation framework, as tasksel
13753 changed from using tasksel tasks to using meta packages (aka packages
13754 with dependencies like our education-* packages), and our installation
13755 system depend on tasksel tasks in
13756 /usr/share/tasksel/debian-edu-tasks.desc for package
13757 installation.</li>
13758
13759 <li>Enable Kerberos login for more services.  Now with the Kerberos
13760 foundation in place, we should use it to get single sign on with more
13761 services, and avoiding unneeded password / login questions.  We should
13762 at least try to enable it for these services:
13763 <ul>
13764
13765   <li>CUPS for admins to add/configure printers and users when using
13766     quotas.</li>
13767   <li>Nagios for admins checking the system status.</li>
13768   <li>GOsa for admins updating LDAP and users changing their passwords.</li>
13769   <li>LDAP for admins updating LDAP.</li>
13770   <li>Squid for users when exam mode / filtering is active.</li>
13771   <li>ssh for admins and users to save a password prompt.</li>
13772
13773 </ul></li>
13774
13775 <li>When we move GOsa to use Kerberos instead of LDAP bind to
13776 authenticate users, we should try to block or at least limit access to
13777 use LDAP bind for authentication, to ensure Kerberos is used when it
13778 is intended, and nothing fall back to using the less safe LDAP bind</li>
13779
13780 <li>Merge debian-edu-config and debian-edu-install.  The split made
13781 sense when d-e-install did a lot more, but these days it is just an
13782 inconvenience when we update the debconf preseeding values.</li>
13783
13784 <li>Fix partman-auto to allow us to abort the installation before
13785 touching the disk if the disk is too small.  This is
13786 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/653305">BTS report #653305</a> and the
13787 d-i developers are fine with the patch and someone just need to apply
13788 it and upload.  After this is done we need to adjust
13789 debian-edu-install to use this new hook.</li>
13790
13791 <li>Adjust to new LTSP framework (boot time config instead of install
13792 time config).  LTSP changed its design, and our hooks to install
13793 packages and update the configuration is most likely not going to work
13794 in Wheezy.
13795
13796 <li>Consider switching to NBD instead of NFS for LTSP root, to allow
13797 the Kernel to cache files in its normal file cache, possibly speeding
13798 up KDE login on slow networks.</li>
13799
13800 <li>Make it possible to create expired user passwords that need to
13801 change on first login.  This is useful when handing out password on
13802 paper, to make sure only the user know the password.  This require
13803 fixes to the PAM handling of kdm and gdm.</li>
13804
13805 <li>Make GUI for adding new machines automatically from sitesummary.
13806 The current command line script is not very friendly to people most
13807 familiar with GUIs.  This should probably be integrated into GOsa to
13808 have it available where the admin will be looking for it..</li>
13809
13810 <li>We should find way for Nagios to check that the DHCP service
13811 actually is working (as in handling out IP addresses).  None of the
13812 Nagios checks I have found so far have been working for me.</li>
13813
13814 <li>We should switch from libpam-nss-ldapd to sssd for all profiles
13815 using LDAP, and not only on for roaming workstations, to have less
13816 packages to configure and consistent setup across all profiles.</li>
13817
13818 <li>We should configure Kerberos to update LDAP and Samba password
13819 when changing password using the Kerberos protocol.  The hook was
13820 requested in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/588968">BTS report
13821 #588968</a> and is now available in Wheezy.  We might need to write a
13822 MIT Kerberos plugin in C to get this.</li>
13823
13824 <li>We should clean up the set of applications installed by default.
13825 <ul>
13826
13827 <li>reduce the number of chemistry visualisers</li>
13828 <li>consider dropping xpaint</li>
13829 <li>and probably more?</li>
13830 </ul></li>
13831
13832 <li>Some hardware need external firmware to work properly.  This is
13833 mostly the case for WiFi network cards, but there are some other
13834 examples too.  For popular laptops to work out of the box, such
13835 firmware need to be installed from non-free, and we should provide
13836 some GUI to do this.  Ubuntu already have this implemented, and we
13837 could consider using their packages.  At the moment we have some
13838 command line script to do this (one for the running system, another
13839 for the LTSP chroot).</li>
13840
13841
13842 <li>In Squeeze, we provide KDE, Gnome and LXDE as desktop options.  We
13843 should extend the list to Xfce and Sugar, and preferably find a way to
13844 install several and allow the admin or the user to select which one to
13845 use.</li>
13846
13847 <li>The golearn tool from the goplay package make it easy to check out
13848 interesting educational packages.  We should work on the package
13849 tagging in Debian to ensure it represent all the useful educational
13850 packages, and extend the tool to allow it to use packagekit to install
13851 new applications with a simple mouse click.</li>
13852
13853 <li>The Squeeze version got half a exam solution already in place,
13854 with the introduction of iptable based network blocking, but for it to
13855 be a complete exam solution the Squid proxy need to enable
13856 filtering/blocking as well when the exam mode is enabled.  We should
13857 implement a way to easily enable this for the schools that want it,
13858 instead of the "it is documented" method of today.</li>
13859
13860 <li>A feature used in several schools is the ability for a teacher to
13861 "take over" the desktop of individual or all computers in the room.
13862 There are at least three implementations,
13863 <a href="italc.sourceforge.net/">italc</a>,
13864 <a href="http://www.itais.net/help/en/">controlaula</a> og
13865 <a href="http://www.epoptes.org/">epoptes</a> and we should pick one of
13866 them and make it trivial to set it up in a school.  The challenges is
13867 how to distribute crypto keys and how to group computers in one room
13868 and how to set up which machine/user can control the machines in a
13869 given room.</li>
13870
13871 <li>Tablets and surf boards are getting more and more popular, and we
13872 should look into providing a good solution for integrating these into
13873 the Debian Edu network.  Not quite sure how.  Perhaps we should
13874 provide a installation profile with better touch screen support for
13875 them, or add some sync services to allow them to exchange
13876 configuration and data with the central server.  This should be
13877 investigated.</li>
13878
13879 </ul></p>
13880
13881 <p>I guess we will discover more as we continue to work on the Wheezy
13882 version.</p>
13883
13884       </div>
13885       <div class="tags">
13886
13887
13888         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>.
13889
13890
13891       </div>
13892     </div>
13893     <div class="padding"></div>
13894
13895     <div class="entry">
13896       <div class="title">
13897         <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>
13898       </div>
13899       <div class="date">
13900          9th June 2012
13901       </div>
13902       <div class="body">
13903         <p>Slashdot got a story about Intel planning a
13904 <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
13905 with face recognition</a> to recognise the viewer, and it occurred to
13906 me that it would be more interesting to turn it around, and do face
13907 recognition on the TV image itself.  It could let the viewer know who
13908 is present on the screen, and perhaps look up their credibility,
13909 company affiliation, previous appearances etc for the viewer to better
13910 evaluate what is being said and done.  That would be a feature I would
13911 be willing to pay for.</p>
13912
13913 <p>I would not be willing to pay for a TV that point a camera on my
13914 household, like the big brother feature apparently proposed by Intel.
13915 It is the telescreen idea fetched straight out of the book
13916 <a href="http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021.txt">1984 by George
13917 Orwell</a>.</p>
13918
13919       </div>
13920       <div class="tags">
13921
13922
13923         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>.
13924
13925
13926       </div>
13927     </div>
13928     <div class="padding"></div>
13929
13930     <div class="entry">
13931       <div class="title">
13932         <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>
13933       </div>
13934       <div class="date">
13935          6th June 2012
13936       </div>
13937       <div class="body">
13938         <p>A few days ago
13939 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/SOAP_based_webservice_from_Dell_to_check_server_support_status.html">I
13940 reported how to get</a> the support status out of Dell using an
13941 unofficial and undocumented SOAP API, which I since have found out was
13942 <a href="http://lists.us.dell.com/pipermail/linux-poweredge/2012-February/045959.html">discovered
13943 by Daniel De Marco in february</a>.  Combined with my web scraping
13944 code for HP, Dell and IBM
13945 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">from
13946 2009</a>, I got inspired and wrote
13947 <a href="https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/">a
13948 web service</a> based on Scraperwiki to make it easy to look up the
13949 support status and get a machine readable result back.</p>
13950
13951 <p>This is what it look like at the moment when asking for the JSON
13952 output:
13953
13954 <blockquote><pre>
13955 % 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>
13956 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": ""})
13957 %
13958 </pre></blockquote>
13959
13960 <p>It currently support Dell and HP, and I am hoping for help to add
13961 support for other vendors.  The python source is available on
13962 Scraperwiki and I welcome help with adding more features.</p>
13963
13964       </div>
13965       <div class="tags">
13966
13967
13968         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>.
13969
13970
13971       </div>
13972     </div>
13973     <div class="padding"></div>
13974
13975     <div class="entry">
13976       <div class="title">
13977         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html">Debian Edu interview: Mike Gabriel</a>
13978       </div>
13979       <div class="date">
13980          2nd June 2012
13981       </div>
13982       <div class="body">
13983         <p>Back in 2010, Mike Gabriel showed up on the
13984 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
13985 mailing list.  He quickly proved to be a valuable developer, and
13986 thanks to his tireless effort we now have Kerberos integrated into the
13987 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
13988 Squeeze</a> version.</p>
13989
13990 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
13991
13992 <p>My name is Mike Gabriel, I am 38 years old and live near Kiel,
13993 Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. I live together with a wonderful partner
13994 (Angela Fuß) and two own children and two bonus children (contributed
13995 by Angela).</p>
13996
13997 <p>During the day I am part-time employed as a system administrator
13998 and part-time working as an IT consultant. The consultancy work
13999 touches free software topics wherever and whenever possible. During
14000 the nights I am a free software developer. In the gaps I also train in
14001 becoming an osteopath.</p>
14002
14003 <p>Starting in 2010 we (Andreas Buchholz, Angela Fuß, Mike Gabriel)
14004 have set up a free software project in the area of Kiel that aims at
14005 introducing free software into schools. The project's name is
14006 "IT-Zukunft Schule" (IT future for schools). The project links IT
14007 skills with communication skills.</p>
14008
14009 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
14010 project?</strong></p>
14011
14012 <p>While preparing our own customised Linux distribution for
14013 "IT-Zukunft Schule" we were repeatedly asked if we really wanted to
14014 reinvent the wheel. What schools really need is already available,
14015 people said.  From this impulse we started evaluating other Linux
14016 distributions that target being used for school networks.</p>
14017
14018 <p>At the end we short-listed two approaches and compared them: a
14019 commercial Linux distribution developed by a company in Bremen,
14020 Germany, and Skolelinux / Debian Edu. Between 12/2010 and 03/2011 we
14021 went to several events and met people being responsible for marketing
14022 and development of either of the distributions. Skolelinux / Debian
14023 Edu was by far much more convincing compared to the other product that
14024 got short-listed beforehand--across the full spectrum. What was most
14025 attractive for me personally: the perspective of collaboration within
14026 the developmental branch of the Debian Edu project itself.</p>
14027
14028 <p>In parallel with this, we talked to many local and not-so-local
14029 people.  People teaching at schools, headmasters, politicians, data
14030 protection experts, other IT professionals.</p>
14031
14032 <p>We came to two conclusions:</p>
14033
14034 <p>First, a technical conclusion: What schools need is available in
14035 bits and pieces here and there, and none of the solutions really fit
14036 by 100%. Any school we have seen has a very individual IT setup
14037 whereas most of each school's requirements could mapped by a standard
14038 IT solution.  The requirement to this IT solution is flexibility and
14039 customisability, so that individual adaptations here and there are
14040 possible.  In terms of re-distributing and rolling out such a
14041 standardised IT system for schools (a system that is still to some
14042 degree customisable) there is still a lot of work to do here
14043 locally. Debian Edu / Skolelinux has been our choice as the starting
14044 point.</p>
14045
14046 <p>Second, a holistic conclusion: What schools need does not exist at
14047 all (or we missed it so far). There are several technical solutions
14048 for handling IT at schools that tend to make a good impression. What
14049 has been missing completely here in Germany, though, is the enrolment
14050 of people into using IT and teaching with IT. "IT-Zukunft Schule"
14051 tries to provide an approach for this.</p>
14052
14053 <p>Only some schools have some sort of a media concept which explains,
14054 defines and gives guidance on how to use IT in class. Most schools in
14055 Northern Germany do not have an IT service provider, the school's IT
14056 equipment is managed by one or (if the school is lucky) two (admin)
14057 teachers, most of the workload these admin teachers get done in there
14058 spare time.</p>
14059
14060 <p>We were surprised that only a very few admin teachers were
14061 networked with colleagues from other schools. Basically, every school
14062 here around has its individual approach of providing IT equipment to
14063 teachers and students and the exchange of ideas has been quasi
14064 non-existent until 2010/2011.</p>
14065
14066 <p>Quite some (non-admin) teachers try to avoid using IT technology in
14067 class as a learning medium completely. Several reasons for this
14068 avoidance do exist.</p>
14069
14070 <p>We discovered that no-one has ever taken a closer look at this
14071 social part of IT management in schools, so far. On our quest journey
14072 for a technical IT solution for schools, we discussed this issue with
14073 several teachers, headmasters, politicians, other IT professionals and
14074 they all confirmed: a holistic approach of considering IT management
14075 at schools, an approach that includes the people in place, will be new
14076 and probably a gain for all.</p>
14077
14078 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
14079 Edu?</strong></p>
14080
14081 <p>There is a list of advantages: international context, openness to
14082 any kind of contributions, do-ocracy policy, the closeness to Debian,
14083 the different installation scenarios possible (from stand-alone
14084 workstation to complex multi-server sites), the transparency within
14085 project communication, honest communication within the group of
14086 developers, etc.</p>
14087
14088 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
14089 Edu?</strong></p>
14090
14091 <p>Every coin has two sides:</p>
14092
14093 <p>Technically: <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/311188">BTS issue
14094 #311188</a>, tricky upgradability of a Debian Edu main server, network
14095 client installations on top of a plain vanilla Debian installation
14096 should become possible sometime in the near future, one could think
14097 about splitting the very complex package debian-edu-config into
14098 several portions (to make it easier for new developers to
14099 contribute).</p>
14100
14101 <p>Another issue I see is that we (as Debian Edu developers) should
14102 find out more about the network of people who do the marketing for
14103 Debian Edu / Skolelinux. There is a very active group in Germany
14104 promoting Skolelinux on the bigger Linux Days within Germany. Are
14105 there other groups like that in other countries? How can we bring
14106 these marketing people together (marketing group A with group B and
14107 all of them with the group of Debian Edu developers)? During the last
14108 meeting of the German Skolelinux group, I got the impression of people
14109 there being rather disconnected from the development department of
14110 Debian Edu / Skolelinux.</p>
14111
14112 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
14113
14114 <p>For my daily business, I do not use commercial software at all.</p>
14115
14116 <p>For normal stuff I use Iceweasel/Firefox, Libreoffice.org. For
14117 serious text writing I prefer LaTeX. I use gimp, inkscape, scribus for
14118 more artistic tasks. I run virtual machines in KVM and Virtualbox.</p>
14119
14120 <p>I am one of the upstream developers of X2Go. In 2010 I started the
14121 development of a Python based X2Go Client, called PyHoca-GUI.
14122 PyHoca-GUI has brought forth a Python X2Go Client API that currently
14123 is being integrated in Ubuntu's software center.</p>
14124
14125 <p>For communications I have my own Kolab server running using Horde
14126 as web-based groupware client. For IRC I love to use irssi, for Jabber
14127 I have several clients that I use, mostly pidgin, though. I am also
14128 the Debian maintainer of Coccinella, a Jabber-based interactive
14129 whiteboard.</p>
14130
14131 <p>My favourite terminal emulator is KDE's Yakuake.</p>
14132
14133 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
14134 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
14135
14136 <p>Communicate, communicate, communicate. Enrol people, enrol people,
14137 enrol people.</p>
14138
14139       </div>
14140       <div class="tags">
14141
14142
14143         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>.
14144
14145
14146       </div>
14147     </div>
14148     <div class="padding"></div>
14149
14150     <div class="entry">
14151       <div class="title">
14152         <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>
14153       </div>
14154       <div class="date">
14155          1st June 2012
14156       </div>
14157       <div class="body">
14158         <p>A few years ago I wrote
14159 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">how
14160 to extract support status</a> for your Dell and HP servers.  Recently
14161 I have learned from colleges here at the
14162 <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> that Dell have
14163 made this even easier, by providing a SOAP based web service.  Given
14164 the service tag, one can now query the Dell servers and get machine
14165 readable information about the support status.  This perl code
14166 demonstrate how to do it:</p>
14167
14168 <p><pre>
14169 use strict;
14170 use warnings;
14171 use SOAP::Lite;
14172 use Data::Dumper;
14173 my $GUID = '11111111-1111-1111-1111-111111111111';
14174 my $App = 'test';
14175 my $servicetag = $ARGV[0] or die "Please supply a servicetag. $!\n";
14176 my ($deal, $latest, @dates);
14177 my $s = SOAP::Lite
14178     -> uri('http://support.dell.com/WebServices/')
14179     -> on_action( sub { join '', @_ } )
14180     -> proxy('http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx')
14181     ;
14182 my $a = $s->GetAssetInformation(
14183     SOAP::Data->name('guid')->value($GUID)->type(''),
14184     SOAP::Data->name('applicationName')->value($App)->type(''),
14185     SOAP::Data->name('serviceTags')->value($servicetag)->type(''),
14186 );
14187 print Dumper($a -> result) ;
14188 </pre></p>
14189
14190 <p>The output can look like this:</p>
14191
14192 <p><pre>
14193 $VAR1 = {
14194           'Asset' => {
14195                      'Entitlements' => {
14196                                        'EntitlementData' => [
14197                                                             {
14198                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
14199                                                               'EndDate' => '2009-07-29T00:00:00',
14200                                                               'Provider' => '',
14201                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
14202                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
14203                                                             },
14204                                                             {
14205                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
14206                                                               'EndDate' => '2009-07-29T00:00:00',
14207                                                               'Provider' => '',
14208                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
14209                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
14210                                                             },
14211                                                             {
14212                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
14213                                                               'EndDate' => '2007-07-29T00:00:00',
14214                                                               'Provider' => '',
14215                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
14216                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
14217                                                             }
14218                                                           ]
14219                                      },
14220                      'AssetHeaderData' => {
14221                                           'SystemModel' => 'GX620',
14222                                           'ServiceTag' => '8DSGD2J',
14223                                           'SystemShipDate' => '2006-07-29T19:00:00-05:00',
14224                                           'Buid' => '2323',
14225                                           'Region' => 'Europe',
14226                                           'SystemID' => 'PLX_GX620',
14227                                           'SystemType' => 'OptiPlex'
14228                                         }
14229                    }
14230         };
14231 </pre></p>
14232
14233 <p>I have not been able to find any documentation from Dell about this
14234 service outside the
14235 <a href="http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx?op=GetAssetInformation">inline
14236 documentation</a>, and according to
14237 <a href="http://iboyd.net/index.php/2012/02/14/updated-dell-warranty-information-script/">one
14238 comment</a> it can have stability issues, but it is a lot better than
14239 scraping HTML pages. :)</p>
14240
14241 <p>Wonder if HP and other server vendors have a similar service.  If
14242 you know of one, drop me an email. :)</p>
14243
14244       </div>
14245       <div class="tags">
14246
14247
14248         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>.
14249
14250
14251       </div>
14252     </div>
14253     <div class="padding"></div>
14254
14255     <div class="entry">
14256       <div class="title">
14257         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_monitor_calibration_using_ColorHug.html">First monitor calibration using ColorHug</a>
14258       </div>
14259       <div class="date">
14260         31st May 2012
14261       </div>
14262       <div class="body">
14263         <p>A few days ago my color calibration gadget
14264 <a href="http://www.hughski.com/index.html">ColorHug</a> arrived in the
14265 mail, and I've had a few days to test it.  As all my machines are
14266 running Debian Squeeze, where
14267 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html">the
14268 calibration software</a> is missing (it is present in Wheezy and Sid),
14269 I ran the calibration using the Fedora based live CD.  This worked
14270 just fine.  So far I have only done the quick calibration.  It was
14271 slow enough for me, so I will leave the more extensive calibration for
14272 another day.</p>
14273
14274 <p>After calibration, I get a
14275 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICC_profile">ICC color
14276 profile</a> file that can be passed to programs understanding such
14277 tools.  KDE do not seem to understand it out of the box, so I searched
14278 for command line tools to use to load the color profile into X.
14279 xcalib was the first one I found, and it seem to work fine for single
14280 monitor setups.  But for my video player, a laptop with a flat screen
14281 attached, it was unable to load the color profile for the correct
14282 monitor.  After searching a bit, I
14283 <a href="http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1347896">discovered</a>
14284 that the dispwin tool from the argyll package would do what I wanted,
14285 and a simple</p>
14286
14287 <p><pre>
14288 dispwin -d 1 profile.icc
14289 </pre></p>
14290
14291 <p>later I had the color profile loaded for the correct monitor.  The
14292 result was a bit more pink than I expected.  I guess I picked the
14293 wrong monitor type for the "led" monitor I got, but the result is good
14294 enough for now.</p>
14295
14296       </div>
14297       <div class="tags">
14298
14299
14300         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
14301
14302
14303       </div>
14304     </div>
14305     <div class="padding"></div>
14306
14307     <div class="entry">
14308       <div class="title">
14309         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Ralf_Gesellensetter.html">Debian Edu interview: Ralf Gesellensetter</a>
14310       </div>
14311       <div class="date">
14312         27th May 2012
14313       </div>
14314       <div class="body">
14315         <p>In 2003, a German teacher showed up on the
14316 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
14317 mailing list with interesting problems and reports proving he setting
14318 up Linux for a (for us at the time) lot of pupils.  His name was Ralf
14319 Gesellensetter, and he has been an important tester and contributor
14320 since then, helping to make sure the
14321 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
14322 Squeeze</a> release became as good as it is..</p>
14323
14324 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
14325
14326 <p>I am a teacher from Germany, and my subjects are Geography,
14327 Mathematics, and Computer Science ("Informatik"). During the past 12
14328 years (since 2000), I have been working for a comprehensive (and soon,
14329 also inclusive) school leading to all kind of general levels, such as
14330 O- or A-level ("Abitur").  For quite as long, I've been taking care of
14331 our computer network.</p>
14332
14333 <p>Now, in my early 40s, I enjoy the privilege of spending a lot of my
14334 spare time together with my wife, our son (3 years) and our daughter
14335 (4 months).</p>
14336
14337 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
14338 project?</strong></p>
14339
14340 <p>We had tried different Linux based school servers, when members of
14341 my local Linux User Group (LUG OWL) detected Skolelinux. I remember
14342 very well, being part of a party celebrating the Linux New Media Award
14343 ("Best Newcomer Distribution", also nominated: Ubuntu) that was given
14344 to Skolelinux at Linux World Exposition in Frankfurt, 2005 (IIRC). Few
14345 months later, I had the chance to join a developer meeting in Ulsrud
14346 (Oslo) and to hand out the award to Knut Yrvin and others.  For more
14347 than 7 years, Skolelinux is part of our schools infrastructure, namely
14348 our main server (tjener), one LTSP (today without thin clients), and
14349 approximately 50 work stations. Most of these have the option to boot a
14350 locally installed Skolelinux image.  As a consequence, I joined quite
14351 a few events dealing with free software or Linux, and met many Debian
14352 (Edu) developers. All of them seemed quite nice and competent to me,
14353 one more reason to stick to Skolelinux.</p>
14354
14355 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
14356 Edu?</strong></p>
14357
14358 <p>Debian driven, you are given all the advantages of a community
14359 project including well maintained updates. Once, you are familiar with
14360 the network layout, you can easily roll out an entire educational
14361 computer infrastructure, from just one installation media. As only
14362 free software (FOSS) is used, that supports even elderly hardware,
14363 up-sizing your IT equipment is only limited by space (i.e. available
14364 labs).  Especially if you run a LTSP thin client server, your
14365 administration costs tend towards zero.</p>
14366
14367 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
14368 Edu?</strong></p>
14369
14370 <p>While Debian's stability has loads of advantages for servers, this
14371 might be different in some cases for clients: Schools with unlimited
14372 budget might buy new hardware with components that are not yet
14373 supported by Debian stable, or wish to use more recent versions of
14374 office packages or desktop environments.  These schools have the
14375 option to run Debian testing or other distributions - if they have the
14376 capacity to do so.  Another issue is that Debian release cycles
14377 include a wide range of changes; therefor a high percentage of human
14378 power seems to be absorbed by just keeping the features of Skolelinux
14379 within the new setting of the version to come. During this process,
14380 the cogs of Debian Edu are getting more and more professional,
14381 i.e. harder to understand for novices.</p>
14382
14383 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
14384
14385 <p>LibreOffice, Wikipedia, Openstreetmap, Iceweasel (Mozilla Firefox),
14386 KMail, Gimp, Inkscape - and of course the Linux Kernel (not only on
14387 PC, Laptop, Mobile, but also our SAT receiver)</p>
14388
14389 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
14390 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
14391
14392 <p><ol>
14393
14394 <li>Support computer science as regular subject in schools to make
14395 people really "own" their hardware, to make them understand the
14396 difference between proprietary software products, and free software
14397 developing.</li>
14398
14399 <li>Make budget baskets corresponding: In Germany's public schools
14400 there are more or less fixed budgets for IT equipment (including
14401 licenses), so schools won't benefit from any savings here. This
14402 privilege is left to private schools which have consequently a large
14403 share among German Skolelinux schools.</li>
14404
14405 <li>Get free software in the seminars where would-be teachers are
14406 trained. In many cases, teachers' software customs are respected by
14407 decision makers rather than the expertise of any IT experts.</li>
14408
14409 <li>Don't limit ourself to free software run natively. Everybody uses
14410 free software or free licenses (for instance Wikipedia), and this
14411 general concept should get expanded to free educational content to be
14412 shared world wide (school books e.g.).</li>
14413
14414 <li>Make clear where ever you can that the market share of free (libre)
14415 office suites is much above 20 p.c. today, and that you pupils don't
14416 need to know the "ribbon menu" in order to get employed.</li>
14417
14418 <li>Talk about the difference between freeware and free software.</li>
14419
14420 <li>Spread free software, or even collections of portable free apps
14421 for USB pen drives. Endorse students to get a legal copy of
14422 Libreoffice rather than accepting them to use illegal serials.  And
14423 keep sending documents in ODF formats.</li>
14424
14425 </ol></p>
14426
14427       </div>
14428       <div class="tags">
14429
14430
14431         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>.
14432
14433
14434       </div>
14435     </div>
14436     <div class="padding"></div>
14437
14438     <div class="entry">
14439       <div class="title">
14440         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_cost_of_ODF_and_OOXML.html">The cost of ODF and OOXML</a>
14441       </div>
14442       <div class="date">
14443         26th May 2012
14444       </div>
14445       <div class="body">
14446         <p>I just come across a blog post from Glyn Moody reporting the
14447 claimed cost from Microsoft on requiring ODF to be used by the UK
14448 government.  I just sent him an email to let him know that his
14449 assumption are most likely wrong.  Sharing it here in case some of my
14450 blog readers have seem the same numbers float around in the UK.</p>
14451
14452 <p><blockquote> <p>Hi.  I just noted your
14453 <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>
14454 comment:</p>
14455
14456 <p><blockquote>"They're all in Danish, not unreasonably, but even
14457 with the help of Google Translate I can't find any figures about the
14458 savings of "moving to a flexible two standard" as claimed by the
14459 Microsoft email. But I assume it is backed up somewhere, so let's take
14460 it, and the £500 million figure for the UK, on trust."
14461 </blockquote></p>
14462
14463 <p>I can tell you that the Danish reports are inflated.  I believe it is
14464 the same reports that were used in the Norwegian debate around 2007,
14465 and Gisle Hannemyr (a well known IT commentator in Norway) had a look
14466 at the content.  In short, the reason it is claimed that using ODF
14467 will be so costly, is based on the assumption that this mean every
14468 existing document need to be converted from one of the MS Office
14469 formats to ODF, transferred to the receiver, and converted back from
14470 ODF to one of the MS Office formats, and that the conversion will cost
14471 10 minutes of work time for both the sender and the receiver.  In
14472 reality the sender would have a tool capable of saving to ODF, and the
14473 receiver would have a tool capable of reading it, and the time spent
14474 would at most be a few seconds for saving and loading, not 20 minutes
14475 of wasted effort.</p>
14476
14477 <p>Microsoft claimed all these costs were saved by allowing people to
14478 transfer the original files from MS Office instead of spending 10
14479 minutes converting to ODF. :)</p>
14480
14481 <p>See
14482 <a href="http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php">http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php</a>
14483 and
14484 <a href="http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php">http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php</a>
14485 for background information.  Norwegian only, sorry. :)</p>
14486 </blockquote></p>
14487
14488       </div>
14489       <div class="tags">
14490
14491
14492         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>.
14493
14494
14495       </div>
14496     </div>
14497     <div class="padding"></div>
14498
14499     <div class="entry">
14500       <div class="title">
14501         <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>
14502       </div>
14503       <div class="date">
14504         18th May 2012
14505       </div>
14506       <div class="body">
14507         <p>In january, I
14508 <a href="http://blog.cihar.com/archives/2012/01/17/colorhug-has-arrived/">discovered
14509 the ColorHug</a>, a USB dongle from
14510 <a href="http://www.hughski.com/index.html">Hughski</a> to calibrate
14511 the color on a computer screen.  The software required is
14512 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html">included
14513 in Debian</a>, and I decided back then to preorder from the next
14514 batch.  Yesterday I finally heard back from them, and got the
14515 opportunity to order.  Today I ordered mine, and eagerly await the
14516 delivery.  I hope it arrive next week, as I got a confirmation that it
14517 should go in the mail on monday. :)</p>
14518
14519 <p>If you want to ensure the colors on the screen match the intended
14520 colors, I suggest you check out this cheap tool with free software
14521 drivers. :)</p>
14522
14523       </div>
14524       <div class="tags">
14525
14526
14527         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
14528
14529
14530       </div>
14531     </div>
14532     <div class="padding"></div>
14533
14534     <div class="entry">
14535       <div class="title">
14536         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__J_rgen_Leibner.html">Debian Edu interview: Jürgen Leibner</a>
14537       </div>
14538       <div class="date">
14539         13th May 2012
14540       </div>
14541       <div class="body">
14542         <p>It has been a few busy weeks for me, but I am finally back to
14543 publish another interview with the people behind
14544 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>.
14545 This time it is one of our German developers, who have helped out over the
14546 years to make sure both a lot of major but also a lot of the minor
14547 details get right before release.
14548
14549 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
14550
14551 <p>My name is Jürgen Leibner, I'm 49 years old and living in
14552 Bielefeld, a town in northern Germany.  I worked nearly 20 years as
14553 certified engineer in the department for plant design and layout of an
14554 international company for machinery and equipment.  Since 2011 I'm a
14555 certified technical writer (tekom e.V.) and doing technical
14556 documentations for a steam turbine manufacturer.  From April this year
14557 I will manage the department of technical documentation at a
14558 manufacturer of automation and assembly line engineering.</p>
14559
14560 <p>My first contact with linux was around 1993. Since that time I used
14561 it at work and at home repeatedly but not exclusively as I do now at
14562 home since 2006.</p>
14563
14564 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
14565 project?</strong></p>
14566
14567 <p>Once a day in the early year of 2001 when I wanted to fetch my
14568 daughter from primary school, there was a teacher sitting in the
14569 middle of 20 old computers trying to boot them and he failed. I helped
14570 him to get them booting. That was seen by the school director and she
14571 asked me if I would like to manage that the school gets all that old
14572 computers in use. I answered: "Yes".</p>
14573
14574 <p>Some weeks later every of the 10 classrooms had one computer
14575 running Windows98. I began to collect old computers and equipment as
14576 gifts and installed the first computer room with a peer-to-peer
14577 network. I did my work at school without being payed in my spare time
14578 and with a lot of fun.  About one year later the school was connected
14579 to Internet and a local area network was installed in the school
14580 building.  That was the time to have a server and I knew it must be a
14581 Linux server to be able to fulfil all the wishes of the teachers and
14582 being able to do this in a transparent and economic way, without extra
14583 costs for things like licence and software.  So I searched for a
14584 school server system running under Linux and I found a couple of
14585 people nearby who founded 'skolelinux.de'. It was the Skolelinux
14586 prerelease 32 I first tried out for being used at the school.  I
14587 managed the IT of that school until the municipal authority took over
14588 the IT management and centralised the services for all schools in
14589 Bielefeld in December of 2006.</p>
14590
14591 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
14592 Edu?</strong></p>
14593
14594 <p>When I'm looking back to the beginning, there were other advantages
14595 for me as today.</p>
14596
14597 <p>In the past there were advantages like:</p>
14598
14599 <p><ul>
14600
14601 <li>I don't need to buy it so it generates no costs to the school as
14602 they had little money to spent for computers and software.</li>
14603
14604 <li>It has a licence which grands all rights to use it without
14605 cost.</li>
14606
14607 <li>It was more able to fit all requirements of a server system for
14608 schools than a Microsoft server system, even if there are only Windows
14609 clients because of it's preconfigured overall concept of being a
14610 infrastructure solution and community for schools, not only a
14611 server</li>
14612
14613 <li>I was able to configure the server to the needs of the
14614 school.</li>
14615
14616 </ul></p>
14617
14618 <p>Today some of the advantages has been lost, changed or new ones
14619 came up in this way:</p>
14620
14621 <p><ul>
14622
14623 <li>Most schools here do have money to buy hardware and software
14624 now.</li>
14625
14626 <li>They are today mostly managed from central IT departments which
14627 have own concepts which often do not fit to Debian Edu concepts
14628 because they are to close to Microsoft ideology.</li>
14629
14630 <li>With the Squeeze version of Debian Edu which now uses GOsa² for
14631 management I feel more able to manage the daily tasks than with the
14632 interfaces used in the past.</li>
14633
14634 <li>It is more modular than in the past and fits even better to the
14635 different needs.</li>
14636
14637 <li>The documentation is usable and gets better every day.</li>
14638
14639 <li>More people than ever before are using Debian Edu all over the
14640 world and so the community, which is an very important part I think,
14641 is sharing knowledge and minds.</li>
14642
14643 <li>Most, maybe all, of the technical requirements for schools are
14644 solved today by Debian Edu. </li>
14645
14646 </ul></p>
14647
14648 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
14649 Edu?</strong></p>
14650
14651 <p><ul>
14652
14653 <li>There are too few IT companies able to integrate Debian Edu into
14654 their product portfolio for serving schools with concepts or even
14655 whole municipality areas.</li>
14656
14657 <li>Debian Edu has beside other free and open software projects not
14658 enough lobbyists which promote free and open software to
14659 politicians.</li>
14660
14661 <li>Technically there are no disadvantages I'm aware of.</li>
14662
14663 </ul></p>
14664
14665 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
14666
14667 <p>I use Debian stable on my home server and on my little desktop
14668 computer. On my laptop I use Debian testing/sid. The applications I
14669 use on my laptop and my desktop are Open/Libre-office, Iceweasel,
14670 KMail, DigiKam, Amarok, Dolphin, okular and all the other programs I
14671 need from the KDE environment.  On console I use newsbeuter, mutt,
14672 screen, irssi and all the other famous and useful tools.</p>
14673
14674 <p>My home server provides mail services with exim, dovecot, roundcube
14675 and mutt over ssh on the console, file services with samba, NFS,
14676 rsync, web services with apache, moinmoin-wiki, multimedia services
14677 with gallery2 and mediatomb and database services with MySQL for me
14678 and the whole family.  I probably forgot something.</p>
14679
14680 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
14681 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
14682
14683 <p>I believe, we should provide concepts for IT companies to integrate
14684 Debian Edu into their product portfolio with use cases for different
14685 countries and areas all over the world.</p>
14686
14687       </div>
14688       <div class="tags">
14689
14690
14691         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>.
14692
14693
14694       </div>
14695     </div>
14696     <div class="padding"></div>
14697
14698     <div class="entry">
14699       <div class="title">
14700         <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>
14701       </div>
14702       <div class="date">
14703         30th April 2012
14704       </div>
14705       <div class="body">
14706         <p><!-- IMG_5869.JPG -->
14707 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/panasonic-er-1611.jpeg"></p>
14708
14709 <p>I normally cut my hair short, and my tool of choice has been a
14710 common hair/beard cutter, bought in a electrical shop here in Norway.
14711 But the last ones have not really been up to the task.  My last
14712 cutter, some model from Braun, could only cut a few of my hairs at the
14713 time, and cutting my head took forever.  And the one before that did
14714 not work very well either.  We have looked for something better for a
14715 while, but it was not until I ended up visiting a hairdresser that we
14716 discovered that there are indeed better tools available.  But these
14717 are not marketed and sold to "regular consumers".  The hair saloons
14718 can get them through their suppliers, but their suppliers only sell
14719 companies.  The models they sell, are very different from the ones
14720 available from Elkjøp and Lefdal.  The main difference is their
14721 efficiency.  It would cut my hair in 5 minutes, instead of the 30-40
14722 minutes required by my impotent Braun.  The hairdresser I visited had
14723 a Panasonic ER160, which unfortunately is no longer available from the
14724 producer.  But I found it had a successor, the Panasonic ER1611.</p>
14725
14726 <p>The next step was to find somewhere to buy it.  This was not
14727 straight forward.  The list of suppliers I got from the hairdresser
14728 did not want to sell anything to me.  But searching for the model on
14729 the web we found a supplier in Norway willing to sell it to us for
14730 around NOK 4000,-.  This was a bit much.  We kept searching and
14731 finally found a Danish supplier
14732 <a href="http://nicehair.dk/panasonic-er-1611-professionel-hartrimmer.html">selling
14733 it for around NOK 1800,-</a>.  We ordered one, and it arrived a few
14734 days ago.</p>
14735
14736 <p>The instructions said it had to charge for 8 hours when we started
14737 to use it, so we left it charging over night.  Normally it will only
14738 need one hour to charge.  The following evening we successfully tested
14739 it, and I can warmly recommend it to anyone looking for a real hair
14740 cutter.  The ones we have used until now have been hair cutter
14741 toys.</p>
14742
14743       </div>
14744       <div class="tags">
14745
14746
14747         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
14748
14749
14750       </div>
14751     </div>
14752     <div class="padding"></div>
14753
14754     <div class="entry">
14755       <div class="title">
14756         <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>
14757       </div>
14758       <div class="date">
14759         26th April 2012
14760       </div>
14761       <div class="body">
14762         <p>In <a href="http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article243690.ece">an
14763 article today</a> published by Computerworld Norway, the photographer
14764 <a href="http://www.urke.com/eirik/">Eirik Helland Urke</a> reports
14765 that the video editor application included with
14766 <a href="http://www.htc.com/www/smartphones/htc-one-x/#specs">HTC One
14767 X</a> have some quite surprising terms of use.  The article is mostly
14768 based on the twitter message from mister Urke, stating:
14769
14770 <p><blockquote>
14771 "<a href="http://twitter.com/urke/status/194062269724897280">Drøy
14772 brukeravtale: HTC kan bruke MINE redigerte videoer kommersielt. Selv
14773 kan jeg KUN bruke dem privat.</a>"
14774 </blockquote></p>
14775
14776 <p>I quickly translated it to this English message:</p>
14777
14778 <p><blockquote>
14779 "Arrogant user agreement: HTC can use MY edited videos
14780 commercially.  Although I can ONLY use them privately."
14781 </blockquote></p>
14782
14783 <p>I've been unable to find the text of the license term myself, but
14784 suspect it is a variation of the MPEG-LA terms I
14785 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Terms_of_use_for_video_produced_by_a_Canon_IXUS_130_digital_camera.html">discovered
14786 with my Canon IXUS 130</a>.  The HTC One X specification specifies that
14787 the recording format of the phone is .amr for audio and .mp3 for
14788 video.  AMR is
14789 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_Multi-Rate_audio_codec#Licensing_and_patent_issues">Adaptive
14790 Multi-Rate audio codec</a> with patents which according to the
14791 Wikipedia article require an license agreement with
14792 <a href="http://www.voiceage.com/">VoiceAge</a>.  MP4 is
14793 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC#Patent_licensing">MPEG4 with
14794 H.264</a>, which according to Wikipedia require a licence agreement
14795 with <a href="http://www.mpegla.com/">MPEG-LA</a>.</p>
14796
14797 <p>I know why I prefer
14798 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and open
14799 standards</a> also for video.</p>
14800
14801       </div>
14802       <div class="tags">
14803
14804
14805         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/h264">h264</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>.
14806
14807
14808       </div>
14809     </div>
14810     <div class="padding"></div>
14811
14812     <div class="entry">
14813       <div class="title">
14814         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/RAND_terms___non_reasonable_and_discriminatory.html">RAND terms - non-reasonable and discriminatory</a>
14815       </div>
14816       <div class="date">
14817         19th April 2012
14818       </div>
14819       <div class="body">
14820         <p>Here in Norway, the
14821 <a href="http://www.regjeringen.no/nb/dep/fad.html?id=339"> Ministry of
14822 Government Administration, Reform and Church Affairs</a> is behind
14823 a <a href="http://standard.difi.no/forvaltningsstandarder">directory of
14824 standards</a> that are recommended or mandatory for use by the
14825 government.  When the directory was created, the people behind it made
14826 an effort to ensure that everyone would be able to implement the
14827 standards and compete on equal terms to supply software and solutions
14828 to the government.  Free software and non-free software could compete
14829 on the same level.</p>
14830
14831 <p>But recently, some standards with RAND
14832 (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_and_non-discriminatory_licensing">Reasonable
14833 And Non-Discriminatory</a>) terms have made their way into the
14834 directory.  And while this might not sound too bad, the fact is that
14835 standard specifications with RAND terms often block free software from
14836 implementing them.  The reasonable part of RAND mean that the cost per
14837 user/unit is low,and the non-discriminatory part mean that everyone
14838 willing to pay will get a license.  Both sound great in theory.  In
14839 practice, to get such license one need to be able to count users, and
14840 be able to pay a small amount of money per unit or user.  By
14841 definition, users of free software do not need to register their use.
14842 So counting users or units is not possible for free software projects.
14843 And given that people will use the software without handing any money
14844 to the author, it is not really economically possible for a free
14845 software author to pay a small amount of money to license the rights
14846 to implement a standard when the income available is zero.  The result
14847 in these situations is that free software are locked out from
14848 implementing standards with RAND terms.</p>
14849
14850 <p>Because of this, when I see someone claiming the terms of a
14851 standard is reasonable and non-discriminatory, all I can think of is
14852 how this really is non-reasonable and discriminatory.  Because free
14853 software developers are working in a global market, it does not really
14854 help to know that software patents are not supposed to be enforceable
14855 in Norway.  The patent regimes in other countries affect us even here.
14856 I really hope the people behind the standard directory will pay more
14857 attention to these issues in the future.</p>
14858
14859 <p>You can find more on the issues with RAND, FRAND and RAND-Z terms
14860 from Simon Phipps
14861 (<a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2010/11/rand-not-so-reasonable/">RAND:
14862 Not So Reasonable?</a>).</p>
14863
14864 <p>Update 2012-04-21: Just came across a
14865 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/of-microsoft-netscape-patents-and-open-standards/index.htm">blog
14866 post from Glyn Moody</a> over at Computer World UK warning about the
14867 same issue, and urging people to speak out to the UK government.  I
14868 can only urge Norwegian users to do the same for
14869 <a href="http://www.standard.difi.no/hoyring/hoyring-om-nye-anbefalte-it-standarder">the
14870 hearing taking place at the moment</a> (respond before 2012-04-27).
14871 It proposes to require video conferencing standards including
14872 specifications with RAND terms.</p>
14873
14874       </div>
14875       <div class="tags">
14876
14877
14878         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>.
14879
14880
14881       </div>
14882     </div>
14883     <div class="padding"></div>
14884
14885     <div class="entry">
14886       <div class="title">
14887         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Andreas_Mundt.html">Debian Edu interview: Andreas Mundt</a>
14888       </div>
14889       <div class="date">
14890         15th April 2012
14891       </div>
14892       <div class="body">
14893         <p>Behind <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
14894 Skolelinux</a> there are a lot of people doing the hard work of
14895 setting together all the pieces.  This time I present to you Andreas
14896 Mundt, who have been part of the technical development team several
14897 years.  He was also a key contributor in getting GOsa and Kerberos set
14898 up in the recently released
14899 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">Debian
14900 Edu Squeeze</a> version.</p>
14901
14902 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
14903
14904 <p>My name is Andreas Mundt, I grew up in south Germany.  After
14905 studying Physics I spent several years at university doing research in
14906 Quantum Optics.  After that I worked some years in an optics company.
14907 Finally I decided to turn over a new leaf in my life and started
14908 teaching 10 to 19 years old kids at school.  I teach math, physics,
14909 information technology and science/technology.</p>
14910
14911 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
14912 project?</strong></p>
14913
14914 <p>Already before I switched to teaching, I followed the Debian Edu
14915 project because of my interest in education and Debian.  Within the
14916 qualification/training period for the teaching, I started
14917 contributing.</p>
14918
14919 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
14920 Edu?</strong></p>
14921
14922 <p>The advantages of Debian Edu are the well known name, the
14923 out-of-the-box philosophy and of course the great free software of the
14924 Debian Project!</p>
14925
14926 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
14927 Edu?</strong></p>
14928
14929 <p>As every coin has two sides, the out-of-the-box philosophy has its
14930 downside, too.  In my opinion, it is hard to modify and tweak the
14931 setup, if you need or want that.  Further more, it is not easily
14932 possible to upgrade the system to a new release.  It takes much too
14933 long after a Debian release to prepare the -Edu release, perhaps
14934 because the number of developers working on the core of the code is
14935 rather small and often busy elsewhere.</p>
14936
14937 <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianLAN">Debian LAN</a>
14938 project might fill the use case of a more flexible system.</p>
14939
14940 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
14941
14942 <p>I am only using non-free software if I am forced to and run Debian
14943 on all my machines.  For documents I prefer LaTeX and PGF/TikZ, then
14944 mutt and iceweasel for email respectively web browsing.  At school I
14945 have Arduino and Fritzing in use for a micro controller project.</p>
14946
14947 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
14948 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
14949
14950 <p>One of the major problems is the vendor lock-in from top to bottom:
14951 Especially in combination with ignorant government employees and
14952 politicians, this works out great for the "market-leader".  The school
14953 administration here in Baden-Wuerttemberg is occupied by that vendor.
14954 Documents have to be prepared in non-free, proprietary formats.  Even
14955 free browsers do not work for the school administration.  Publishers
14956 of school books provide software only for proprietary platforms.</p>
14957
14958 <p>To change this, political work is very important.  Parts of the
14959 political spectrum have become aware of the problem in the last years.
14960 However it takes quite some time and courageous politicians to 'free'
14961 the system.  There is currently some discussion about "Open Data" and
14962 "Free/Open Standards".  I am not sure if all the involved parties have
14963 a clue about the potential of these ideas, and probably only a
14964 fraction takes them seriously.  However it might slowly make free
14965 software and the philosophy behind it more known and popular.</p>
14966
14967       </div>
14968       <div class="tags">
14969
14970
14971         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>.
14972
14973
14974       </div>
14975     </div>
14976     <div class="padding"></div>
14977
14978     <div class="entry">
14979       <div class="title">
14980         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Justin_B__Rye.html">Debian Edu interview: Justin B. Rye</a>
14981       </div>
14982       <div class="date">
14983          8th April 2012
14984       </div>
14985       <div class="body">
14986         <p>It take all kind of contributions to create a Linux distribution
14987 like <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>,
14988 and this time I lend the ear to Justin B. Rye, who is listed as a big
14989 contributor to the
14990 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">Debian
14991 Edu Squeeze release manual</a>.
14992
14993 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
14994
14995 <p>I'm a 44-year-old linguistics graduate living in Edinburgh who has
14996 occasionally been employed as a sysadmin.</p>
14997
14998 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
14999 project?</strong></p>
15000
15001 <p>I'm neither a developer nor a Skolelinux/Debian Edu user!  The only
15002 reason my name's in the credits for the documentation is that I hang
15003 around on debian-l10n-english waiting for people to mention things
15004 they'd like a native English speaker to proofread...  So I did a sweep
15005 through the wiki for typos and Norglish and inconsistent spellings of
15006 "localisation".</p>
15007
15008 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
15009 Edu?</strong></p>
15010
15011 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
15012 Edu?</strong></p>
15013
15014 <p>These questions are too hard for me - I don't use it!  In fact I
15015 had hardly any contact with I.T. until long after I'd got out of the
15016 education system.</p>
15017
15018 <p>I can tell you the advantages of Debian for me though: it soaks up
15019 as much of my free time as I want and no more, and lets me do
15020 everything I want a computer for without ever forcing me to spend
15021 money on the latest hardware.</p>
15022
15023 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
15024
15025 <p>I've been using Debian since Rex; popularity-contest says the
15026 software that I use most is xinit, xterm, and xulrunner (in other
15027 words, I use a distinctly retro sort of desktop).</p>
15028
15029 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
15030 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
15031
15032 <p>Well, I don't know.  I suppose I'd be inclined to try reasoning
15033 with the people who make the decisions, but obviously if that worked
15034 you would hardly need a strategy.</p>
15035
15036       </div>
15037       <div class="tags">
15038
15039
15040         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>.
15041
15042
15043       </div>
15044     </div>
15045     <div class="padding"></div>
15046
15047     <div class="entry">
15048       <div class="title">
15049         <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>
15050       </div>
15051       <div class="date">
15052          6th April 2012
15053       </div>
15054       <div class="body">
15055         <p>Recently I have spent time with
15056 <a href="http://www.slxdrift.no/">Skolelinux Drift AS</a> on speeding
15057 up a <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
15058 Lenny installation using LTSP diskless workstations, and in the
15059 process I discovered something very surprising.  The reason the KDE
15060 menu was responding slow when using it for the first time, was mostly
15061 due to the way KDE find application icons.  I discovered that showing
15062 the Multimedia menu would cause more than 20 000 IP packages to be
15063 passed between the LTSP client and the NFS server.  Most of these were
15064
15065 NFS LOOKUP calls, resulting in a NFS3ERR_NOENT response.  Because the
15066 ping times between the client and the server were in the range 2-20
15067 ms, the menus would be very slow.  Looking at the strace of kicker in
15068 Lenny (or plasma-desktop i Squeeze - same problem there), I see that
15069 the source of these NFS calls are access(2) system calls for
15070 non-existing files.  KDE can do hundreds of access(2) calls to find
15071 one icon file.  In my example, just finding the mplayer icon required
15072 around 230 access(2) calls.</p>
15073
15074 <p>The KDE code seem to search for icons using a list of icon
15075 directories, and the list of possible directories is large.  In
15076 (almost) each directory, it look for files ending in .png, .svgz, .svg
15077 and .xpm.  The result is a very slow KDE menu when /usr/ is NFS
15078 mounted.  Showing a single sub menu may result in thousands of NFS
15079 requests.  I am not the first one to discover this.  I found a
15080 <a href="https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=211416">KDE bug report
15081 from 2009</a> about this problem, and it is still unsolved.</p>
15082
15083 <p>My solution to speed up the KDE menu was to create a package
15084 kde-icon-cache that upon installation will look at all .desktop files
15085 used to generate the KDE menu, find their icons, search the icon paths
15086 for the file that KDE will end up finding at run time, and copying the
15087 icon file to /var/lib/kde-icon-cache/.  Finally, I add symlinks to
15088 these icon files in one of the first directories where KDE will look
15089 for them.  This cut down the number of file accesses required to find
15090 one icon from several hundred to less than 5, and make the KDE menu
15091 almost instantaneous.  I'm not quite sure where to make the package
15092 publicly available, so for now it is only available on request.</p>
15093
15094 <p>The bug report mention that this do not only affect the KDE menu
15095 and icon handling, but also the login process.  Not quite sure how to
15096 speed up that part without replacing NFS with for example NBD, and
15097 that is not really an option at the moment.</p>
15098
15099 <p>If you got feedback on this issue, please let us know on debian-edu
15100 (at) lists.debian.org.</p>
15101
15102 <p>Update 2015-08-04: The
15103 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/debian-edu/upstream/kde-icon-cache.git/">source
15104 of the scripts and associated Debian package</a> is available from the
15105 Debian Edu github repository.</p>
15106
15107       </div>
15108       <div class="tags">
15109
15110
15111         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>.
15112
15113
15114       </div>
15115     </div>
15116     <div class="padding"></div>
15117
15118     <div class="entry">
15119       <div class="title">
15120         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_in_the_Linux_Weekly_News.html">Debian Edu in the Linux Weekly News</a>
15121       </div>
15122       <div class="date">
15123          5th April 2012
15124       </div>
15125       <div class="body">
15126         <p>About two weeks ago, I was interviewed via email about
15127 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a> by
15128 Bruce Byfield in Linux Weekly News.  The result was made public for
15129 non-subscribers today.  I am pleased to see liked our Linux solution
15130 for schools.  Check out his article
15131 <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/488805/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux: A
15132 distribution for education</a> if you want to learn more.</p>
15133
15134       </div>
15135       <div class="tags">
15136
15137
15138         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>.
15139
15140
15141       </div>
15142     </div>
15143     <div class="padding"></div>
15144
15145     <div class="entry">
15146       <div class="title">
15147         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Wolfgang_Schweer.html">Debian Edu interview: Wolfgang Schweer</a>
15148       </div>
15149       <div class="date">
15150          1st April 2012
15151       </div>
15152       <div class="body">
15153         <p>Germany is a core area for the
15154 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
15155 user community, and this time I managed to get hold of Wolfgang
15156 Schweer, a valuable contributor to the project from Germany.
15157
15158 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
15159
15160 <p>I've studied Mathematics at the university 'Ruhr-Universität' in
15161 Bochum, Germany. Since 1981 I'm working as a teacher at the school
15162 "<a href="http://www.westfalenkolleg-dortmund.de/">Westfalen-Kolleg
15163 Dortmund</a>", a second chance school.  Here, young adults is given
15164 the opportunity to get further education in order to do the school
15165 examination 'Abitur', which will allow to study at a university. This
15166 second chance is of value for those who want a better job perspective
15167 or failed to get a higher school examination being teens.</p>
15168
15169 <p>Besides teaching I was involved in developing online courses for a
15170 blended learning project called 'abitur-online.nrw' and in some other
15171 information technology related projects. For about ten years I've been
15172 teacher and coordinator for the 'abitur-online' project at my
15173 school. Being now in my early sixties, I've decided to leave school at
15174 the end of April this year.</p>
15175
15176 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
15177 project?</strong></p>
15178
15179 <p>The first information about Skolelinux must have come to my
15180 attention years ago and somehow related to LTSP (Linux Terminal Server
15181 Project).  At school, we had set up a network at the beginning of 1997
15182 using Suse Linux on the desktop, replacing a Novell network. Since
15183 2002, we used old machines from the city council of Dortmund as thin
15184 clients (LTSP, later Ubuntu/Lessdisks) cause new hardware was out of
15185 reach. At home I'm using Debian since years and - subscribed to the
15186 Debian news letter - heard from time to time about Skolelinux. About
15187 two years ago I proposed to replace the (somehow undocumented and only
15188 known to me) system at school by a well known Debian based system:
15189 Skolelinux.</p>
15190
15191 <p>Students and teachers appreciated the new system because of a
15192 better look and feel and an enhanced access to local media on thin
15193 clients.  The possibility to alter and/or reset passwords using a GUI
15194 was welcomed, too. Being able to do administrative tasks using a GUI
15195 and to easily set up workstations using PXE was of very high value for
15196 the admin teachers.</p>
15197
15198 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
15199 Edu?</strong></p>
15200
15201 <p>It's open source, easy to set up, stable and flexible due to it's
15202 Debian base. It integrates LTSP out-of-the-box. And it is documented!
15203 So it was a perfect choice.</p>
15204
15205 <p>Being open source, there are no license problems and so it's
15206 possible to point teachers and students to programs like
15207 OpenOffice.org, ViewYourMind (mind mapping) and The Gimp.  It's of
15208 high value to be able to adapt parts of the system to special needs of
15209 a school and to choose where to get support for this.</p>
15210
15211 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
15212 Edu?</strong></p>
15213
15214 <p>Nothing yet.</p>
15215
15216 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
15217
15218 <p>At home (Debian Sid with Gnome Desktop): Iceweasel, LibreOffice,
15219 Mutt, Gedit, Document Viewer, Midnight Commander, flpsed (PDF
15220 Annotator).  At school (Skolelinux Lenny): Iceweasel, Gedit,
15221 LibreOffice.</p>
15222
15223 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
15224 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
15225
15226 <p>Some time ago I thought it was enough to tell people about it. But
15227 that doesn't seem to work quite well. Now I concentrate on those more
15228 interested and hope to get multiplicators that way.</p>
15229
15230       </div>
15231       <div class="tags">
15232
15233
15234         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>.
15235
15236
15237       </div>
15238     </div>
15239     <div class="padding"></div>
15240
15241     <div class="entry">
15242       <div class="title">
15243         <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>
15244       </div>
15245       <div class="date">
15246         25th March 2012
15247       </div>
15248       <div class="body">
15249         <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
15250
15251 <p>The same Debian Edu developer that did the last screen cast I
15252 published, Wolfgang Schweer, has created a new screen cast showing how
15253 to set up Kmail in Debian Edu Squeze to authenticate using Kerberos,
15254 allowing users to check their local email account without providing
15255 any password. The video is embedded here in quarter size,
15256 and also available from <a href="https://vimeo.com/38601767">vimeo</a>
15257 and download as a
15258 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv">Ogg
15259 Theora</a> file.  Check it out below.</p>
15260
15261 <p><video id="kmail-kerberos-movie" width="256" height="184" preload controls>
15262   <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"' />
15263     <p>Download video as
15264       <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv">Ogg</a>.</p>
15265 </video></p>
15266
15267       </div>
15268       <div class="tags">
15269
15270
15271         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>.
15272
15273
15274       </div>
15275     </div>
15276     <div class="padding"></div>
15277
15278     <div class="entry">
15279       <div class="title">
15280         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__John_Ingleby.html">Debian Edu interview: John Ingleby</a>
15281       </div>
15282       <div class="date">
15283         19th March 2012
15284       </div>
15285       <div class="body">
15286         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
15287 users are spread all across the globe.  The second inteview after
15288 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">the
15289 Squeeze release</a> was publised is with John Ingleby, a teacher and
15290 long time Linux user in United Kingdom.</p>
15291
15292 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
15293
15294 <p>I teach ICT part time at the Rudolf Steiner School in Kings
15295 Langley, near London, UK. Previously I worked as a technical
15296 author/trainer while my children attended the school, and I also
15297 contributed to the Schoolforge UK community with the aim of
15298 encouraging UK schools to adopt free/open source software. Five or six
15299 years ago we had about 50 schools interested in some way, but we
15300 weren't able to convert many of them into sustainable
15301 installations.</p>
15302
15303 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
15304 project?</strong></p>
15305
15306 <p>Skolelinux had two representatives at an early Edubuntu meeting in
15307 London which I attended. However at that time our school network had
15308 just been installed using CentOS, LTSP 4 and GNOME. When LTSP 5 came
15309 along we switched to Edubuntu thin client servers so now we have a
15310 mixed environment which includes Windows PCs and student laptops, as
15311 well as their MacBooks and iPads. However, the proprietary systems
15312 have always been rather problematic, and we never built a GUI for the
15313 LDAP server, so when I discovered Skolelinux is configured for all
15314 these things we decided to try it.</p>
15315
15316 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
15317 Edu?</strong></p>
15318
15319 <p>By far the biggest advantage is the Debian Edu community. Apart
15320 from that I have always believed in the same "sustainable computing"
15321 goals that Skolelinux is built on: installing Linux on computers which
15322 would otherwise be thrown away, to provide a reliable, secure and
15323 low-cost IT environment for schools. From my own experience I know
15324 that a part-time person can teach and manage a network of about 25
15325 Linux computers, but it would take much more of my time if we had
15326 proprietary software everywhere.</p>
15327
15328 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
15329 Edu?</strong></p>
15330
15331 <p>As a newcomer I'm just finding out who's who in the community and
15332 how you're organised, and what your procedures are for dealing with
15333 various things such as editing manual pages and so-on. The only
15334 English language mailing list seems to be for developers as well as
15335 users, so my inbox needs heavy pruning each day!</p>
15336
15337 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
15338
15339 <p>Besides the software already mentioned at school we use Samba,
15340 OpenLDAP, CUPS, Nagios and Dansguardian for the network, and on the
15341 desktops we have LibreOffice, Firefox, GIMP and Inkscape. At home I
15342 use Ubuntu and an Android 4 eePad Transformer (but I'm not sure if
15343 that counts...)</p>
15344
15345 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
15346 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
15347
15348 <p>That's a tough question! For very many years UK schools installed
15349 and taught only proprietary software, so that at the highest levels
15350 the notion of "computer" means simply "proprietary office
15351 applications".  However, schools today are experiencing budget
15352 constraints, and many are having to think hard about upgrading Windows
15353 XP.  At the same time, we have students showing teachers how to use
15354 iPads, MacBooks and Android, so the choice of operating system is no
15355 longer quite so automatic. What is more, our government at last
15356 realised that we need people with programming skills, so they're
15357 putting coding back in the curriculum! And it's encouraging that the
15358 first 10,000 Raspberry Pi units sold out in 2 hours.</p>
15359
15360 <p>I don't really know what strategy is going to get UK schools to use
15361 free software, but building an active community of Skolelinux/Debian
15362 Edu users in this country has to be part of it.</p>
15363
15364       </div>
15365       <div class="tags">
15366
15367
15368         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>.
15369
15370
15371       </div>
15372     </div>
15373     <div class="padding"></div>
15374
15375     <div class="entry">
15376       <div class="title">
15377         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Writing_and_translating_documentation_in_Debian_Edu.html">Writing and translating documentation in Debian Edu</a>
15378       </div>
15379       <div class="date">
15380         16th March 2012
15381       </div>
15382       <div class="body">
15383         <p>Documentation in Debian Edu is provided in several languages, and
15384 it is important to make it both easy to contribute and to keep the
15385 translated versions in sync.  To do this we have come up with what we
15386 believe is a very efficient work flow.</p>
15387
15388 <ol>
15389
15390 <li>The documentation is written in a
15391 <a href="http://moinmo.in">moinmoin wiki</a> (see for example
15392 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">the
15393 Squeeze release manual</a>) with support for exporting the content as
15394 docbook XML.</li>
15395
15396 <li>This docbook document is given to po4a to extract a gettext style
15397 .pot file with the content, which in turn is used to create .po files
15398 with the translated text.</li>
15399
15400 <li>The .po files are given to translators, and they can always tell
15401 which part of the original wiki document is new or changed.  They can
15402 use their normal translation tools like lokalize or poedit to write
15403 the translation.  There is even a system in place to handle translated
15404 images.</li>
15405
15406 <li>The translated .po files are combined with the original docbook
15407 XML document using po4a to create a translated docbook document.</li>
15408
15409 <li>The final step is to use all the generated docbook files and
15410 create PDF and HTML version of the original and translated documents.</li>
15411
15412 </ol>
15413
15414 <p>This setup work very well, but have a few issues.  The biggest
15415 issue is that <a href="http://moinmo.in/DocBook">the docbook support
15416 we use in moinmoin</a> is not actively maintained.  The docbook
15417 support is also buggy, and our build system contain workarounds to
15418 make sure the generated docbook is usable despite these bugs.</p>
15419
15420 <p>If you want to have a look at our setup, it is all there in the
15421 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-doc">debian-edu-doc
15422 package</a>.</p>
15423
15424       </div>
15425       <div class="tags">
15426
15427
15428         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>.
15429
15430
15431       </div>
15432     </div>
15433     <div class="padding"></div>
15434
15435     <div class="entry">
15436       <div class="title">
15437         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_is_out_.html">Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze is out!</a>
15438       </div>
15439       <div class="date">
15440         11th March 2012
15441       </div>
15442       <div class="body">
15443         <p>This weekend we finally published the first stable release of
15444 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a> based
15445 on Debian/Squeeze.  The full announcement is
15446 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">available</a>
15447 from the project announcement list.  Now is a good time to test if it
15448 you have not done so already.</p>
15449
15450 <p>I plan to present the new version at
15451 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20120313-skolelinux/">a NUUG
15452 meeting</a> on tuesday.  I look forward to seeing you there if you are
15453 in Oslo, Norway.</p>
15454
15455       </div>
15456       <div class="tags">
15457
15458
15459         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>.
15460
15461
15462       </div>
15463     </div>
15464     <div class="padding"></div>
15465
15466     <div class="entry">
15467       <div class="title">
15468         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Nigel_Barker.html">Debian Edu interview: Nigel Barker</a>
15469       </div>
15470       <div class="date">
15471          9th March 2012
15472       </div>
15473       <div class="body">
15474         <p>Inspired by <a href="http://raphaelhertzog.com/tag/interview/">the
15475 interview series</a> conducted by Raphael, I started a Norwegian
15476 interview series with people involved in the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
15477 community.  This was so popular that I believe it is time to move to a
15478 more international audience.</p>
15479
15480 <p>While <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
15481 Skolelinux</a> originated in France and Norway, and have most users in
15482 Europe, there are users all around the globe.  One of those far away
15483 from me is Nigel Barker, a long time Debian Edu system administrator
15484 and contributor.  It is thanks to him that Debian Edu is adjusted to
15485 work out of the box in Japan.  I got him to answer a few questions,
15486 and am happy to share the response with you. :)
15487
15488
15489 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
15490
15491 <p>My name is Nigel Barker, and I am British. I am married to Yumiko,
15492 and we have three lovely children, aged 15, 14 and 4(!) I am the IT
15493 Coordinator at Hiroshima International School, Japan. I am also a
15494 teacher, and in fact I spend most of my day teaching Mathematics,
15495 Science, IT, and Chemistry. I was originally a Chemistry teacher, but
15496 I have always had an interest in computers. Another teacher teaches
15497 primary school IT, but apart from that I am the only computer person,
15498 so that means I am the network manager, technician and webmaster,
15499 also, and I help people with their computer problems. I teach python
15500 to beginners in an after-school club. I am way too busy, so I really
15501 appreciate the simplicity of Skolelinux.</p>
15502
15503 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
15504 project?</strong></p>
15505
15506 <p>In around 2004 or 5 I discovered the ltsp project, and set up a
15507 server in the IT lab. I wanted some way to connect it to our central
15508 samba server, which I was also quite poor at configuring. I discovered
15509 Edubuntu when it came out, but it didn't really improve my setup. I
15510 did various desperate searches for things like "school Linux server"
15511 and ended up in a document called "Drift" something or other. Reading
15512 there it became clear that Skolelinux was going to solve all my
15513 problems in one go. I was very excited, but apprehensive, because my
15514 previous attempts to install Debian had ended in failure (I used
15515 Mandrake for everything - ltsp, samba, apache, mail, ns...). I
15516 downloaded a beta version, had some problems, so subscribed to the
15517 Debian Edu list for help. I have remained subscribed ever since, and
15518 my school has run a Skolelinux network since Sarge.</p>
15519
15520 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
15521 Edu?</strong></p>
15522
15523 <p>For me the integrated setup. This is not just the server, or the
15524 workstation, or the ltsp. Its all of them, and its all configured
15525 ready to go. I read somewhere in the early documentation that it is
15526 designed to be setup and managed by the Maths or Science teacher, who
15527 doesn't necessarily know much about computers, in a small Norwegian
15528 school. That describes me perfectly if you replace Norway with
15529 Japan.</p>
15530
15531 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
15532 Edu?</strong></p>
15533
15534 <p>The desktop is fairly plain. If you compare it with Edubuntu, who
15535 have fun themes for children, or with distributions such as Mint, who
15536 make the desktop beautiful. They create a good impression on people
15537 who don't need to understand how to use any of it, but who might be
15538 important to the school. School administrators or directors, for
15539 instance, or parents. Even kids. Debian itself usually has ugly
15540 default theme settings. It was my dream a few years back that some
15541 kind of integration would allow Edubuntu to do the desktop stuff and
15542 Debian Edu the servers, but now I realise how impossible that is.  A
15543 second disadvantage is that if something goes wrong, or you need to
15544 customise something, then suddenly the level of expertise required
15545 multiplies. For example, backup wasn't working properly in Lenny. It
15546 took me ages to learn how to set up my own server to do rsync backups.
15547 I am afraid of anything to do with ldap, but perhaps Gosa will
15548 help.</p>
15549
15550 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
15551
15552 <p>Nowadays I only use Debian on my personal computers. I have one for
15553 studio work (I play guitar and write songs), running AV Linux
15554 (customised Debian) a netbook running Squeeze, and a bigger laptop
15555 still running Skolelinux Lenny workstation. I have a Tjener in my
15556 house, that's very useful for the family photos and music.  At school
15557 the students only use Skolelinux. (Some teachers and the office still
15558 have windows). So that means we only use free software all day every
15559 day. Open office, The GIMP, Firefox/Iceweasel, VLC and Audacity are
15560 installed on every computer in school, irrespective of OS.  We also
15561 have Koha on Debian for the library, and Apache, Moodle, b2evolution
15562 and Etomite on Debian for the www. The firewall is Untangle.</p>
15563
15564 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
15565 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
15566
15567 <p>Current trends are in our favour. Open source is big in industry,
15568 and ordinary people have heard of it. The spread of Android and the
15569 popularity of Apple have helped to weaken the impression that you have
15570 to have Microsoft on everything. People complain to me much less about
15571 file formats and Word than they did 5 years ago.  The Edu aspect is
15572 also a selling point. This is all customised for schools. Where is the
15573 Windows-edu, or the Mac-edu?  But of course the main attraction is
15574 budget.The trick is to convince people that the quality is not
15575 compromised when you stop paying and use free software instead. That
15576 is one reason why I say the desktop experience is a weakness. People
15577 are not impressed when their USB drive doesn't work, or their browser
15578 doesn't play flash, for example.</p>
15579
15580       </div>
15581       <div class="tags">
15582
15583
15584         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>.
15585
15586
15587       </div>
15588     </div>
15589     <div class="padding"></div>
15590
15591     <div class="entry">
15592       <div class="title">
15593         <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>
15594       </div>
15595       <div class="date">
15596          7th March 2012
15597       </div>
15598       <div class="body">
15599         <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
15600
15601 <p>One of the Debian Edu developers, Wolfgang Schweer, just created a
15602 screen cast documenting how to create a lot of new users in LDAP on
15603 Debian Edu Squeeze.  The video is embedded here in quarter size, and
15604 also available from <a href="http://vimeo.com/37675399">vimeo</a> and
15605 download as a
15606 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg
15607 Theora</a> file.  Check it out below.</p>
15608
15609 <p><video id="gosa-mass-user-create-movie" width="256" height="184" preload controls>
15610   <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"' />
15611     <p>Download video as
15612       <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg</a>.</p>
15613 </video></p>
15614
15615       </div>
15616       <div class="tags">
15617
15618
15619         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>.
15620
15621
15622       </div>
15623     </div>
15624     <div class="padding"></div>
15625
15626     <div class="entry">
15627       <div class="title">
15628         <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>
15629       </div>
15630       <div class="date">
15631          4th March 2012
15632       </div>
15633       <div class="body">
15634         <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the third release
15635 candidate for <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
15636 Skolelinux</a> based on Squeeze.  The full announcement is
15637 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00000.html">available</a>
15638 from the project announcement list.  Check it out if you
15639 need a software solution for your school.</p>
15640
15641       </div>
15642       <div class="tags">
15643
15644
15645         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>.
15646
15647
15648       </div>
15649     </div>
15650     <div class="padding"></div>
15651
15652     <div class="entry">
15653       <div class="title">
15654         <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>
15655       </div>
15656       <div class="date">
15657          3rd March 2012
15658       </div>
15659       <div class="body">
15660         <p>Many years ago, the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
15661 / Debian Edu project</a> initiated a student project to create a tool
15662 for making stop motion movies.  The proposal came from a teacher
15663 needing such tool on Skolelinux.  The project, called "stopmotion",
15664 was manned by two extraordinary students and won a school award and a
15665 national aware with this great project.  The project was initiated and
15666 mentored by Herman Robak, and manned by the students Bjørn Erik Nilsen
15667 and Fredrik Berg Kjølstad.  They got in touch with people at Aardman
15668 Animation studio and received feedback on how professionals would like
15669 such stopmotion tool to work, and the end result was and is used by
15670 animators around the globe.  But as is usual after studying, both got
15671 jobs and went elsewhere, and did not have time to properly tend to the
15672 project, and it has been lingering for a few years now.  Until last
15673 year...</p>
15674
15675 <p>Last year some of the users got together with Herman, and moved the
15676 project to Sourceforge and in effect restarted the project under a new
15677 name,
15678 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/linuxstopmotion/">linuxstopmotion</a>.
15679 The name change was done to make it possible to find the project using
15680 Internet search engines (try to search for 'stopmotion' to see what I
15681 mean). I've been following
15682 <a href="https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/linuxstopmotion-community">the
15683 mailing list</a> and the improvement already in place and planned for
15684 the future is encouraging.  If you want to make stop motion movies.
15685 Check it out. :)</p>
15686
15687       </div>
15688       <div class="tags">
15689
15690
15691         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>.
15692
15693
15694       </div>
15695     </div>
15696     <div class="padding"></div>
15697
15698     <div class="entry">
15699       <div class="title">
15700         <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>
15701       </div>
15702       <div class="date">
15703         27th February 2012
15704       </div>
15705       <div class="body">
15706         <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the second release
15707 candidate for <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
15708 Skolelinux</a> based on Squeeze.  The full announcement did for some
15709 reason not make it the project announcement list, but is
15710 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2012/02/msg00015.html">available</a>
15711 from the Debian development announcement list.  Check it out if you
15712 need a software solution for your school.</p>
15713
15714       </div>
15715       <div class="tags">
15716
15717
15718         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>.
15719
15720
15721       </div>
15722     </div>
15723     <div class="padding"></div>
15724
15725     <div class="entry">
15726       <div class="title">
15727         <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>
15728       </div>
15729       <div class="date">
15730         19th February 2012
15731       </div>
15732       <div class="body">
15733         <p>One week delayed due to DVD build problems, we managed today to
15734 wrap up and publish the first release candidate for
15735 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
15736 on Squeeze.  The full announcement is
15737 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00001.html">available</a>
15738 on the project announcement list.  Check it out if you need a software
15739 solution for your school.</p>
15740
15741       </div>
15742       <div class="tags">
15743
15744
15745         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>.
15746
15747
15748       </div>
15749     </div>
15750     <div class="padding"></div>
15751
15752     <div class="entry">
15753       <div class="title">
15754         <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>
15755       </div>
15756       <div class="date">
15757         14th February 2012
15758       </div>
15759       <div class="body">
15760         <p>Once in a while my home server have disk problems.  Thanks to Linux
15761 Software RAID, I have not lost data yet (but
15762 <a href="http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.linux.raid/34532">I was
15763 close</a> this summer :).  But once a disk is starting to behave
15764 funny, a practical problem present itself.  How to get from the Linux
15765 device name (like /dev/sdd) to something that can be used to identify
15766 the disk when the computer is turned off?  In my case I have SATA
15767 disks with a unique ID printed on the label.  All I need is a way to
15768 figure out how to query the disk to get the ID out.</p>
15769
15770 <p>After fumbling a bit, I
15771 <a href="http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-getting-scsi-ide-harddisk-information/">found
15772 that hdparm -I</a> will report the disk serial number, which is
15773 printed on the disk label.  The following (almost) one-liner can be
15774 used to look up the ID of all the failed disks:</p>
15775
15776 <blockquote><pre>
15777 for d in $(cat /proc/mdstat |grep '(F)'|tr ' ' "\n"|grep '(F)'|cut -d\[ -f1|sort -u);
15778 do
15779     printf "Failed disk $d: "
15780     hdparm -I /dev/$d |grep 'Serial Num'
15781 done
15782 </blockquote></pre>
15783
15784 <p>Putting it here to make sure I do not have to search for it the
15785 next time, and in case other find it useful.</p>
15786
15787 <p>At the moment I have two failing disk. :(</p>
15788
15789 <blockquote><pre>
15790 Failed disk sdd1:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1860823
15791 Failed disk sdd2:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1860823
15792 Failed disk sde2:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1840589
15793 </blockquote></pre>
15794
15795 <p>The last time I had failing disks, I added the serial number on
15796 labels I printed and stuck on the short sides of each disk, to be able
15797 to figure out which disk to take out of the box without having to
15798 remove each disk to look at the physical vendor label.  The vendor
15799 label is at the top of the disk, which is hidden when the disks are
15800 mounted inside my box.</p>
15801
15802 <p>I really wish the check_linux_raid Nagios plugin for checking Linux
15803 Software RAID in the
15804 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nagios-plugins.html">nagios-plugins-standard</a>
15805 debian package would look up this value automatically, as it would
15806 make the plugin a lot more useful when my disks fail.  At the moment
15807 it only report a failure when there are no more spares left (it really
15808 should warn as soon as a disk is failing), and it do not tell me which
15809 disk(s) is failing when the RAID is running short on disks.</p>
15810
15811       </div>
15812       <div class="tags">
15813
15814
15815         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>.
15816
15817
15818       </div>
15819     </div>
15820     <div class="padding"></div>
15821
15822     <div class="entry">
15823       <div class="title">
15824         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_proxy_configuration_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux.html">Automatic proxy configuration with Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
15825       </div>
15826       <div class="date">
15827         13th February 2012
15828       </div>
15829       <div class="body">
15830         <p>New in the Squeeze version of
15831 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is the
15832 ability for clients to automatically configure their proxy settings
15833 based on their environment.  We want all systems on the client to use
15834 the WPAD based proxy definition fetched from <tt>http://wpad/wpad.dat</tt>, to
15835 allow sites to control the proxy setting from a central place and make
15836 sure clients do not have hard coded proxy settings.  The schools can
15837 change the global proxy setting by editing
15838 <tt>tjener:/etc/debian-edu/www/wpad.dat</tt> and the change propagate
15839 to all Debian Edu clients in the network.</p>
15840
15841 <p>The problem is that some systems do not understand the WPAD system.
15842 In other words, how do one get from a WPAD file like this (this is a
15843 simple one, they can run arbitrary code):</p>
15844
15845 <blockquote><pre>
15846 function FindProxyForURL(url, host)
15847 {
15848    if (!isResolvable(host) ||
15849        isPlainHostName(host) ||
15850        dnsDomainIs(host, ".intern"))
15851       return "DIRECT";
15852    else
15853       return "PROXY webcache:3128; DIRECT";
15854 }
15855 </pre></blockquote>
15856
15857 <p>to a proxy setting in the process environment looking like this:</p>
15858
15859 <blockquote><pre>
15860 http_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
15861 ftp_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
15862 </pre></blockquote>
15863
15864 <p>To do this conversion I developed a perl script that will execute
15865 the javascript fragment in the WPAD file and return the proxy that
15866 would be used for
15867 <tt><a href="http://www.debian.org/">http://www.debian.org/</a></tt>,
15868 and insert this extracted proxy URL in <tt>/etc/environment</tt> and
15869 <tt>/etc/apt/apt.conf</tt>.  The perl script wpad-extract work just
15870 fine in Squeeze, but in Wheezy the library it need to run the
15871 javascript code is <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/631045">no longer
15872 able to build</a> because the C library it depended on is now a C++
15873 library.  I hope someone find a solution to that problem before Wheezy
15874 is frozen.  An alternative would be for us to rewrite wpad-extract to
15875 use some other javascript library currently working in Wheezy, but no
15876 known alternative is known at the moment.</p>
15877
15878 <p>This automatic proxy system allow the roaming workstation (aka
15879 laptop) setup in Debian Edu/Squeeze to use the proxy when the laptop
15880 is connected to the backbone network in a Debian Edu setup, and to
15881 automatically use any proxy present and announced using the WPAD
15882 feature when it is connected to other networks.  And if no proxy is
15883 announced, direct connections will be used instead.</p>
15884
15885 <p>Silently using a proxy announced on the network might be a privacy
15886 or security problem.  But those controlling DHCP and DNS on a network
15887 could just as easily set up a transparent proxy, and force all HTTP
15888 and FTP connections to use a proxy anyway, so I consider that
15889 distinction to be academic.  If you are afraid of using the wrong
15890 proxy, you should avoid connecting to the network in question in the
15891 first place.  In Debian Edu, the proxy setup is updated using dhcp and
15892 ifupdown hooks, to make sure the configuration is updated every time
15893 the network setup changes.</p>
15894
15895 <p>The WPAD system is documented in a
15896 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-wrec-wpad-01">IETF
15897 draft</a> and a
15898 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Proxy_Autodiscovery_Protocol">Wikipedia
15899 page</a> for those that want to learn more.</p>
15900
15901       </div>
15902       <div class="tags">
15903
15904
15905         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>.
15906
15907
15908       </div>
15909     </div>
15910     <div class="padding"></div>
15911
15912     <div class="entry">
15913       <div class="title">
15914         <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>
15915       </div>
15916       <div class="date">
15917          5th February 2012
15918       </div>
15919       <div class="body">
15920         <p>Since the Lenny version of
15921 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>, a
15922 feature to save power have been included.  It is as simple as it is
15923 practical: Shut down unused clients at night, and turn them on again
15924 in the morning.  This is done using the
15925 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/shutdown-at-night.html">shutdown-at-night</a> Debian package.</p>
15926
15927 <p>To enable this feature on a client, the machine need to be added to
15928 the netgroup shutdown-at-night-hosts.  For Debian Edu, this is done in
15929 LDAP, and once this is in place, the machine in question will check
15930 every hour from 16:00 until 06:00 to see if the machine is unused, and
15931 shut it down if it is.  If the hardware in question is supported by
15932 the
15933 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nvram-wakeup.html">nvram-wakeup</a>
15934 package, the BIOS is told to turn the machine back on around 07:00 +-
15935 10 minutes.  If this isn't working, one can configure wake-on-lan to
15936 try to turn on the client.  The wake-on-lan option is only documented
15937 and not enabled by default in Debian Edu.</p>
15938
15939 <p>It is important to not turn all machines on at once, as this can
15940 blow a fuse if several computers are connected to the same fuse like
15941 the common setup for a classroom.  The nvram-wakeup method only work
15942 for machines with a functioning hardware/BIOS clock.  I've seen old
15943 machines where the BIOS battery were dead and the hardware clock were
15944 starting from 0 (or was it 1990?) every boot.  If you have one of
15945 those, you have to turn on the computer manually.</p>
15946
15947 <p>The shutdown-at-night package is completely self contained, and can
15948 also be used outside the Debian Edu environment.  For those without a
15949 central LDAP server with netgroups, one can instead touch the file
15950 <tt>/etc/shutdown-at-night/shutdown-at-night</tt> to enable it.
15951 Perhaps you too can use it to save some power?</p>
15952
15953       </div>
15954       <div class="tags">
15955
15956
15957         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>.
15958
15959
15960       </div>
15961     </div>
15962     <div class="padding"></div>
15963
15964     <div class="entry">
15965       <div class="title">
15966         <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>
15967       </div>
15968       <div class="date">
15969          4th February 2012
15970       </div>
15971       <div class="body">
15972         <p>I am happy to announce that finally we managed today to wrap up and
15973 publish the third beta version of
15974 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
15975 on Squeeze.  If you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with
15976 out of the box PXE configuration for running diskless machines and
15977 installing new machines, check it out.  If you need a software
15978 solution for your school, check it out too.  The full announcement is
15979 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00000.html">available</a>
15980 on the project announcement list.</p>
15981
15982 <p>I am very happy to report these changes and improvements since
15983 beta2 (there are more, see announcement for full list):</p>
15984
15985 <ul>
15986
15987 <li>It is now possible to change the pre-configured IP subnet from
15988   10.0.0.0/8 to something else by using the subnet-change tool after
15989   the installation.</li>
15990
15991 <li>Too full partitions are now automatically extended on the Main
15992   Server, based on the rules specified in /etc/fsautoresizetab.</li>
15993
15994 <li>The CUPS queues are now automatically flushed every night, and all
15995   disabled queues are restarted every hour.  This should cut down on
15996   the amount of manual administration needed for printers.</li>
15997
15998 <li>The set of initial users have been changed.  Now a personal user
15999   for the local system administrator is created during installation
16000   instead of the previously created localadmin and super-admin users,
16001   and this user is granted administrative privileges using group
16002   membership.  This reduces the number of passwords one need to keep
16003   up to date on the system.</li>
16004
16005 </ul>
16006
16007 <p>The new main server seem to work so well that I am testing it as my
16008 private DNS/LDAP/Kerberos/PXE/LTSP server at home.  I will use it look
16009 for issues we could fix to polish Debian Edu even further before the
16010 final Squeeze release is published.</p>
16011
16012 <p>Next weekend the project organise a
16013 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00001.html">developer
16014 gathering</a> in Oslo.  We will continue the work on the Squeeze
16015 version, and start initial planning for the Wheezy version.  Perhaps I
16016 will see you there?</p>
16017
16018       </div>
16019       <div class="tags">
16020
16021
16022         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>.
16023
16024
16025       </div>
16026     </div>
16027     <div class="padding"></div>
16028
16029     <div class="entry">
16030       <div class="title">
16031         <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>
16032       </div>
16033       <div class="date">
16034         27th January 2012
16035       </div>
16036       <div class="body">
16037         <p>With some computer hardware, one need non-free firmware blobs.
16038 This is the sad fact of todays computers.  In the next version of
16039 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
16040 on Squeeze, we provide several scripts and modifications to make
16041 firmware blobs easier to handle.  The common use case I run into is a
16042 laptop with a wireless network card requiring non-free firmware to
16043 work, but there are other use cases as well.</p>
16044
16045 <p>First and foremost, Debian Edu provide ISO images for DVD and CD
16046 with all firmware packages in the Debian sections main and non-free
16047 included, to ensure debian-installer find and can install all of them
16048 during installation.  This take care firmware for network devices used
16049 by the installer when installing from from local media.  But for
16050 example multimedia devices are not activated in the installer and are
16051 not taken care of by this.</p>
16052
16053 <p>For non-network devices, we provide the script
16054 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/auto-addfirmware</tt> which
16055 search through the <tt>dmesg</tt> output for drivers requesting extra
16056 firmware.  The firmware file name is looked up in the Contents-ARCH.gz
16057 file available in the package repository, and the packages providing
16058 the requested firmware file(s) is installed.  I have proposed to do
16059 something similar in debian-installer (BTS report
16060 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">#655507</a>), to allow PXE
16061 installs of Debian to handle firmware installation better.  Run the
16062 script as root from the command line to fetch and install the needed
16063 firmware packages.</p>
16064
16065 <p>Debian Edu provide PXE installation of Debian out of the box, and
16066 because some machines need firmware to get their network cards
16067 working, the installation initrd some times need extra firmware
16068 included to be able to install at all.  To fill the PXE installation
16069 initrd with extra firmware, the
16070 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/pxe-addfirmware</tt> script is
16071 provided.  Again, just run it as root on the command line to fill the
16072 PXE initrd with firmware packages.</p>
16073
16074 <p>Last, some LTSP clients might also need firmware to get their
16075 network cards working.  For this,
16076 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/ltsp-addfirmware</tt> is
16077 provided to update the LTSP initrd with firmware blobs.  It is used
16078 the same way as the other firmware related tools.</p>
16079
16080 <p>At the moment, we do not run any of these during installation.  We
16081 do not know if this is acceptable for the local administrator to use
16082 non-free software, and it is their choice.</p>
16083
16084 <p>We plan to release beta3 this weekend.  You might want to give it a
16085 try.</p>
16086
16087       </div>
16088       <div class="tags">
16089
16090
16091         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>.
16092
16093
16094       </div>
16095     </div>
16096     <div class="padding"></div>
16097
16098     <div class="entry">
16099       <div class="title">
16100         <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>
16101       </div>
16102       <div class="date">
16103         25th January 2012
16104       </div>
16105       <div class="body">
16106         <p>The next version of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu
16107 / Skolelinux</a> will include a new tool
16108 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp</tt>, which can be used to quickly set up all
16109 the computers in a school without much manual labour.  Here is a short
16110 summary on how to use it to set up a new school.</p>
16111
16112 <p>First, install a combined Main Server and Thin Client Server as the
16113 central server in the network.  Next, PXE boot all the client machines
16114 as thin clients and wait 5 minutes after the last client booted to
16115 allow the clients to report their existence to the central server.  When
16116 this is done, log on to the central server and run
16117 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a</tt> in the <tt>konsole</tt> to use the
16118 collected information to generate system objects in LDAP.  The output
16119 will look similar to this:</p>
16120
16121 <p><blockquote><pre>
16122 % sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a
16123 info: Updating machine tjener.intern [10.0.2.2] id ether-00:01:02:03:04:05.
16124 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.
16125
16126 Enter password if you want to activate these changes, and ^c to abort.
16127
16128 Connecting to LDAP as cn=admin,ou=ldap-access,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
16129 enter password: *******
16130 %
16131 </pre></blockquote></p>
16132
16133 <p>After providing the LDAP administrative password (the same as the
16134 root password set during installation), the LDAP database will be
16135 populated with system objects for each PXE booted machine with
16136 automatically generated names.  The final step to set up the school is
16137 then to log into <a href="https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/">GOsa</a>,
16138 the web based user, group and system administration system to change
16139 system names, add systems to the correct host groups and finally
16140 enable DHCP and DNS for the systems.  All clients that should be used
16141 as diskless workstations should be added to the workstation-hosts
16142 group.  After this is done, all computers can be booted again via PXE
16143 and get their assigned names and group based configuration
16144 automatically.</p>
16145
16146 <p>We plan to release beta3 with the updated version of this feature
16147 enabled this weekend.  You might want to give it a try.</p>
16148
16149 <p>Update 2012-01-28: When calling sitesummary2ldapdhcp to add new
16150 hosts, one need to add the option -a.  I forgot to mention this in my
16151 original text, and have added it to the text now.</p>
16152
16153       </div>
16154       <div class="tags">
16155
16156
16157         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>.
16158
16159
16160       </div>
16161     </div>
16162     <div class="padding"></div>
16163
16164     <div class="entry">
16165       <div class="title">
16166         <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>
16167       </div>
16168       <div class="date">
16169         10th January 2012
16170       </div>
16171       <div class="body">
16172         <p>In the Squeeze version of
16173 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> soon
16174 to be released, users of the system will get their default browser
16175 start page set from LDAP, allowing the system administrator to point
16176 all users to the school web page by updating one setting in LDAP.  In
16177 addition to setting the default start page when a machine boots, users
16178 are shown the same page as a welcome page when they log in for the
16179 first time.</p>
16180
16181 <p>The LDAP object dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no have an attribute
16182 labeledURI with "http://www/ LDAP for Debian Edu/Skolelinux" as the
16183 default content.  By changing this value to another URL, all users get
16184 to see the page behind this new URL.</p>
16185
16186 <p>An easy way to update it is by using the ldapvi tool.  It can be
16187 called as "<tt>ldapvi -ZD '(cn=admin)'</tt>' to update LDAP with the
16188 new setting.</p>
16189
16190 <p>We have written the code to adjust the default start page and show
16191 the welcome page, and I wonder if there is an easier way to do this
16192 from within Iceweasel instead.</p>
16193
16194       </div>
16195       <div class="tags">
16196
16197
16198         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>.
16199
16200
16201       </div>
16202     </div>
16203     <div class="padding"></div>
16204
16205     <div class="entry">
16206       <div class="title">
16207         <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>
16208       </div>
16209       <div class="date">
16210          7th January 2012
16211       </div>
16212       <div class="body">
16213         <p>I am happy to announce that today we managed to wrap up and publish
16214 the second beta version of
16215 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>.  If
16216 you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with out of the box PXE
16217 configuration for running diskless machines and installing new
16218 machines, check it out.  If you need a software solution for your
16219 school, check it out too.  The full announcement is
16220 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00000.html">available</a>
16221 on the project announcement list.</p>
16222
16223       </div>
16224       <div class="tags">
16225
16226
16227         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>.
16228
16229
16230       </div>
16231     </div>
16232     <div class="padding"></div>
16233
16234     <div class="entry">
16235       <div class="title">
16236         <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>
16237       </div>
16238       <div class="date">
16239          3rd January 2012
16240       </div>
16241       <div class="body">
16242         <p>During christmas, I have been working getting the next version of
16243 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ready
16244 for release.  The initial problem I looked at was particularly
16245 interesting.</p>
16246
16247 <P>The installer would hang at the end when it was doing it
16248 post-installation configuration, and whatevery I did to try to find
16249 the cause and fix it always worked while I tested it, but never when I
16250 integrated it into the installer and ran the installation from
16251 scratch.  I would try to restart processes, close file descriptors,
16252 remove or create files, and the installer would always unblock and
16253 wrap up its tasks.</p>
16254
16255 <p>Eventually the cause was found.  The kernel was simply running out
16256 of entropy, causing the Kerberos setup to hang waiting for more.
16257 Pressing keys was adding entropy to the kernel, and thus all my tries
16258 to fix the problem worked not because what I was typing to fix it, but
16259 because I was typing.</P>
16260
16261 <p>The fix I implemented was to add a background process looking at
16262 the level of entropy in the kernel (by checking
16263 /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail), and if it was too small, the
16264 installer will flush the kernel file buffers and do 'find /' to
16265 generate some disk IO.  Disk IO generate entropy in the kernel, and is
16266 one of the few things that can be initated from within the system to
16267 generate entropy.</p>
16268
16269 <p>The fix is in
16270 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/Installation">beta1
16271 of the Debian Edu/Squeeze</a> version, and we
16272 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu">welcome more testers and
16273 developers</a>.  We plan to release beta2 this weekend.</p>
16274
16275       </div>
16276       <div class="tags">
16277
16278
16279         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>.
16280
16281
16282       </div>
16283     </div>
16284     <div class="padding"></div>
16285
16286     <div class="entry">
16287       <div class="title">
16288         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html">Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge</a>
16289       </div>
16290       <div class="date">
16291         21st November 2011
16292       </div>
16293       <div class="body">
16294         <p>At work we have heaps of servers.  I believe the total count is
16295 around 1000 at the moment.  To be able to get help from the vendors
16296 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
16297 up to date.  If the firmware isn't the latest and greatest, the
16298 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
16299 firmware is upgraded.  So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
16300 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
16301 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
16302 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
16303 the tools to do so.</p>
16304
16305 <p>To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
16306 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got.  Most of
16307 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
16308 so far.  This blog post is about the Dell part.</P>
16309
16310 <p>On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
16311 <a href="ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz">an XML file</a>
16312 with firmware information for all 11th generation servers, listing
16313 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
16314 site I can find it.  Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
16315 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
16316 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
16317 be activated on the first reboot.</p>
16318
16319 <p>This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
16320 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
16321 servers at a site?  Please get in touch and lets share resources.</p>
16322
16323 <p><pre>
16324 #!/usr/bin/perl
16325 use strict;
16326 use warnings;
16327 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
16328 BEGIN {
16329     # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
16330     my %rhelmodules = (
16331         'XML::Simple' => 'perl-XML-Simple',
16332         );
16333     for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
16334         eval "use $module;";
16335         if ($@) {
16336             my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
16337             system("yum install -y $pkg");
16338             eval "use $module;";
16339         }
16340     }
16341 }
16342 my $errorsto = 'pere@hungry.com';
16343
16344 upgrade_dell();
16345
16346 exit 0;
16347
16348 sub run_firmware_script {
16349     my ($opts, $script) = @_;
16350     unless ($script) {
16351         print STDERR "fail: missing script name\n";
16352         exit 1
16353     }
16354     print STDERR "Running $script\n\n";
16355
16356     if (0 == system("sh $script $opts")) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
16357         print STDERR "success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n";
16358     } else {
16359         print STDERR "fail: firmware script returned error\n";
16360     }
16361 }
16362
16363 sub run_firmware_scripts {
16364     my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
16365     # Run firmware packages
16366     for my $dir (@dirs) {
16367         print STDERR "info: Running scripts in $dir\n";
16368         opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die "Unable to open directory $dir: $!";
16369         while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
16370             next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
16371             run_firmware_script($opts, "$dir/$s");
16372         }
16373         closedir $dh;
16374     }
16375 }
16376
16377 sub download {
16378     my $url = shift;
16379     print STDERR "info: Downloading $url\n";
16380     system("wget --quiet \"$url\"");
16381 }
16382
16383 sub upgrade_dell {
16384     my @dirs;
16385     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
16386     chomp $product;
16387
16388     if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
16389
16390         # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
16391         system('yum install -y compat-libstdc++-33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail');
16392
16393         my $tmpdir = tempdir(
16394             CLEANUP => 1
16395             );
16396         chdir($tmpdir);
16397         fetch_dell_fw('catalog/Catalog.xml.gz');
16398         system('gunzip Catalog.xml.gz');
16399         my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list('Catalog.xml');
16400         # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
16401         my $fwopts = "-q";
16402         if (@paths) {
16403             for my $url (@paths) {
16404                 fetch_dell_fw($url);
16405             }
16406             run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
16407         } else {
16408             print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
16409             print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
16410         }
16411         chdir('/');
16412     } else {
16413         print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
16414         print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
16415     }
16416 }
16417
16418 sub fetch_dell_fw {
16419     my $path = shift;
16420     my $url = "ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path";
16421     download($url);
16422 }
16423
16424 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
16425 # firmware packages to download from Dell.  Only work for Linux
16426 # machines and 11th generation Dell servers.
16427 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
16428     my $filename = shift;
16429
16430     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
16431     chomp $product;
16432     my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
16433
16434     print STDERR "Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n";
16435
16436     my $xml = XMLin($filename);
16437     my @paths;
16438     for my $bundle (@{$xml->{SoftwareBundle}}) {
16439         my $brand = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Display}->{content};
16440         my $model = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Model}->{Display}->{content};
16441         my $oscode;
16442         if ("ARRAY" eq ref $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}) {
16443             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}[0]->{osCode};
16444         } else {
16445             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}->{osCode};
16446         }
16447         if ($mybrand eq $brand && $mymodel eq $model && "LIN" eq $oscode)
16448         {
16449             @paths = map { $_->{path} } @{$bundle->{Contents}->{Package}};
16450         }
16451     }
16452     for my $component (@{$xml->{SoftwareComponent}}) {
16453         my $componenttype = $component->{ComponentType}->{value};
16454
16455         # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
16456         next if 'APAC' eq $componenttype;
16457
16458         my $cpath = $component->{path};
16459         for my $path (@paths) {
16460             if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
16461                 push(@paths, $cpath);
16462             }
16463         }
16464     }
16465     return @paths;
16466 }
16467 </pre>
16468
16469 <p>The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
16470 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking.  Anyone know a
16471 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers?  At the
16472 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
16473 outdated.</p>
16474
16475       </div>
16476       <div class="tags">
16477
16478
16479         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>.
16480
16481
16482       </div>
16483     </div>
16484     <div class="padding"></div>
16485
16486     <div class="entry">
16487       <div class="title">
16488         <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>
16489       </div>
16490       <div class="date">
16491          7th October 2011
16492       </div>
16493       <div class="body">
16494         <p>Here in Norway the public libraries are debating with the
16495 publishing houses how to handle electronic books.  Surprisingly, the
16496 libraries seem to be willing to accept digital restriction mechanisms
16497 (DRM) on books and renting e-books with artificial scarcity from the
16498 publishing houses.  Time limited renting (2-3 years) is one proposed
16499 model, and only allowing X borrowers for each book is another.
16500 Personally I find it amazing that libraries are even considering such
16501 models.</p>
16502
16503 <p>Anyway, while reading <a href="http://boklaben.no/?p=220">part of
16504 this debate</a>, it occurred to me that someone should present a more
16505 sensible approach to the libraries, to allow its borrowers to get used
16506 to a better model.  The idea is simple:</p>
16507
16508 <p>Create a computer system for the libraries, either in the form of a
16509 Live DVD or a installable distribution, that provide a simple kiosk
16510 solution to hand out free e-books.  As a start, the books distributed
16511 by <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/">Project Gutenberg</a> (about
16512 36,000 books), <a href="http://runeberg.org/">Project Runenberg</a>
16513 (1149 books) and <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/texts">The
16514 Internet Archive</a> (3,033,748 books) could be included, but any book
16515 where the copyright has expired or with a free licence could be
16516 distributed.</p>
16517
16518 <p>The computer system would make it easy to:</p>
16519
16520 <ul>
16521
16522 <li>Copy e-books into a USB stick, reading tablets, cell phones and
16523   other relevant equipment.</li>
16524
16525 <li>Show the books for reading on the the screen in the library.</li>
16526
16527 </ul>
16528
16529 <p>In addition to such kiosk solution, there should probably be a web
16530 site as well to allow people easy access to these books without
16531 visiting the library.  The site would be the distribution point for
16532 the kiosk systems, which would connect regularly to fetch any new
16533 books available.</p>
16534
16535 <p>Are there anyone working on a system like this?  I guess it would
16536 fit any library in the world, and not just the Norwegian public
16537 libraries. :)</p>
16538
16539       </div>
16540       <div class="tags">
16541
16542
16543         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>.
16544
16545
16546       </div>
16547     </div>
16548     <div class="padding"></div>
16549
16550     <div class="entry">
16551       <div class="title">
16552         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ripping_problematic_DVDs_using_dvdbackup_and_genisoimage.html">Ripping problematic DVDs using dvdbackup and genisoimage</a>
16553       </div>
16554       <div class="date">
16555         17th September 2011
16556       </div>
16557       <div class="body">
16558         <p>For convenience, I want to store copies of all my DVDs on my file
16559 server.  It allow me to save shelf space flat while still having my
16560 movie collection easily available.  It also make it possible to let
16561 the kids see their favourite DVDs without wearing the physical copies
16562 down.  I prefer to store the DVDs as ISOs to keep the DVD menu and
16563 subtitle options intact.  It also ensure that the entire film is one
16564 file on the disk.  As this is for personal use, the ripping is
16565 perfectly legal here in Norway.</p>
16566
16567 <p>Normally I rip the DVDs using dd like this:</p>
16568
16569 <blockquote><pre>
16570 #!/bin/sh
16571 # apt-get install lsdvd
16572 title=$(lsdvd 2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $3}')
16573 dd if=/dev/dvd of=/storage/dvds/$title.iso bs=1M
16574 </pre></blockquote>
16575
16576 <p>But some DVDs give a input/output error when I read it, and I have
16577 been looking for a better alternative.  I have no idea why this I/O
16578 error occur, but suspect my DVD drive, the Linux kernel driver or
16579 something fishy with the DVDs in question.  Or perhaps all three.</p>
16580
16581 <p>Anyway, I believe I found a solution today using dvdbackup and
16582 genisoimage.  This script gave me a working ISO for a problematic
16583 movie by first extracting the DVD file system and then re-packing it
16584 back as an ISO.
16585
16586 <blockquote><pre>
16587 #!/bin/sh
16588 # apt-get install lsdvd dvdbackup genisoimage
16589 set -e
16590 tmpdir=/storage/dvds/
16591 title=$(lsdvd 2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $3}')
16592 dvdbackup -i /dev/dvd -M -o $tmpdir -n$title
16593 genisoimage -dvd-video -o $tmpdir/$title.iso $tmpdir/$title
16594 rm -rf $tmpdir/$title
16595 </pre></blockquote>
16596
16597 <p>Anyone know of a better way available in Debian/Squeeze?</p>
16598
16599 <p>Update 2011-09-18: I got a tip from Konstantin Khomoutov about the
16600 readom program from the wodim package.  It is specially written to
16601 read optical media, and is called like this: <tt>readom dev=/dev/dvd
16602 f=image.iso</tt>.  It got 6 GB along with the problematic Cars DVD
16603 before it failed, and failed right away with a Timmy Time DVD.</p>
16604
16605 <p>Next, I got a tip from Bastian Blank about
16606 <a href="http://bblank.thinkmo.de/blog/new-software-python-dvdvideo">his
16607 program python-dvdvideo</a>, which seem to be just what I am looking
16608 for.  Tested it with my problematic Timmy Time DVD, and it succeeded
16609 creating a ISO image.  The git source built and installed just fine in
16610 Squeeze, so I guess this will be my tool of choice in the future.</p>
16611
16612       </div>
16613       <div class="tags">
16614
16615
16616         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>.
16617
16618
16619       </div>
16620     </div>
16621     <div class="padding"></div>
16622
16623     <div class="entry">
16624       <div class="title">
16625         <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>
16626       </div>
16627       <div class="date">
16628          4th August 2011
16629       </div>
16630       <div class="body">
16631         <p>Wouter Verhelst have some
16632 <a href="http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot">interesting
16633 comments and opinions</a> on my blog post on
16634 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">the
16635 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian</a> and my blog post about
16636 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">the
16637 default KDE desktop in Debian</a>.  I only have time to address one
16638 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
16639 misunderstanding he bring forward:</p>
16640
16641 <p><blockquote>
16642 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
16643 single-user system (by adding 'single' to the kernel command line;
16644 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
16645 </blockquote></p>
16646
16647 <p>This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
16648 and booting into runlevel 1 is the same.  I am not surprised he
16649 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
16650 thing to believe.  But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
16651 runlevel 1 do not work properly and it isn't the same as single user
16652 mode.  I'll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
16653 hard to explain.</p>
16654
16655 <p>Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
16656 "<tt>~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin</tt>".  This means the only thing that is
16657 executed in single user mode is sulogin.  Single user mode is a boot
16658 state "between" the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
16659 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
16660 enters the single user state.  When switching to runlevel 1, the state
16661 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
16662 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
16663 runs "init -t1 S" to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
16664 1.  It is confusing that the 'S' (single user) init mode is not the
16665 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
16666 mode).</p>
16667
16668 <p>This summary might make it clearer.  When booting for the first
16669 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
16670 "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  When booting into
16671 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc
16672 S; /etc/init.d/rc 1; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  A problem show up when
16673 trying to continue after visiting single user mode.  Not all services
16674 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
16675 unpredicatble state.  This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
16676 after visiting single user mode.</p>
16677
16678 <p>A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
16679 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/.  When switching from say runlevel 2
16680 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
16681 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
16682 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
16683 2-5.  I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
16684 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not <strong>required</strong> to get a
16685 functioning single user mode during boot.</p>
16686
16687 <p>I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
16688 and discovered this problem a few years ago.  I suspect it originates
16689 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.</p>
16690
16691       </div>
16692       <div class="tags">
16693
16694
16695         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>.
16696
16697
16698       </div>
16699     </div>
16700     <div class="padding"></div>
16701
16702     <div class="entry">
16703       <div class="title">
16704         <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>
16705       </div>
16706       <div class="date">
16707         30th July 2011
16708       </div>
16709       <div class="body">
16710         <p>In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
16711 are started from /etc/rcS.d/.  In fact, there is a bite more of them
16712 than make sense, and this causes a few problems.  What kind of
16713 problems, you might ask.  There are at least two problems.  The first
16714 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
16715 runlevel 1.  One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
16716 the expected state.  The other is that single user boot will sometimes
16717 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
16718 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
16719 machine from a problem in that subsystem.  A minor additional point is
16720 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
16721 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
16722 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.</p>
16723
16724 <p>So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/.  In short, only the
16725 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
16726 presented during a single user boot should go there.  Everything else
16727 should go into the numeric runlevels.  This means things like
16728 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
16729 the numeric runlevels.  Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
16730 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
16731 out.  Do your package have one of them?  Please help us make single
16732 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.</p>
16733
16734 <p>Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
16735 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
16736 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
16737 is presented.</p>
16738
16739 <p>As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound.  To keep
16740 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
16741 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
16742 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
16743 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
16744 moved first.  This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
16745 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
16746 the system state correct.  This will require some coordination when it
16747 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
16748 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
16749 on them.  Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
16750 package, while others are still left to do.  I wish I had time to work
16751 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
16752 find time to push this forward.</p>
16753
16754       </div>
16755       <div class="tags">
16756
16757
16758         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>.
16759
16760
16761       </div>
16762     </div>
16763     <div class="padding"></div>
16764
16765     <div class="entry">
16766       <div class="title">
16767         <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>
16768       </div>
16769       <div class="date">
16770         29th July 2011
16771       </div>
16772       <div class="body">
16773         <p>While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
16774 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
16775 desktop to be useful for more people.  The use case for this is my
16776 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
16777 issues.</p>
16778
16779 <p>I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
16780 implement.  After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
16781 do this in Debian we would have a source.</p>
16782
16783 <ol>
16784
16785 <li><strong>Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.</strong> When there
16786 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
16787 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
16788 tool to handle it.  I have no problem guiding both of my parents
16789 through the process over the phone.  If a kernel reboot is required,
16790 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool.  Last
16791 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
16792 Debian.</li>
16793
16794 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
16795 plugins.</strong> When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
16796 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
16797 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
16798 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
16799 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
16800 Packages file in the APT archive).  If one or more packages are found,
16801 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
16802 type.  If the package require the user to accept some non-free
16803 license, this is explained to the user.  The entire process make it
16804 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
16805 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
16806 not the browser for any missing features.</li>
16807
16808 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
16809 handlers.</strong> When the media players encounter a format or codec
16810 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
16811 should search for a package that would add support for it.  This
16812 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264.  The selection
16813 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
16814 plugin handling.  This is as far as I know implemented using a
16815 gstreamer hook.  The end result is that the user easily get access to
16816 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
16817 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.</li>
16818
16819 <li><strong>Better browser handling of some MIME types.</strong> When
16820 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
16821 start emacs to show it.  If I remember correctly, when doing the same
16822 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser.  At least I
16823 know Opera will show text files within the browser.  I much prefer the
16824 latter behaviour.</li>
16825
16826 </ol>
16827
16828 <p>There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
16829 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
16830 it do not matter much.</p>
16831
16832 <p>I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
16833 Debian release.  It would require the coordinated effort of several
16834 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.</p>
16835
16836       </div>
16837       <div class="tags">
16838
16839
16840         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
16841
16842
16843       </div>
16844     </div>
16845     <div class="padding"></div>
16846
16847     <div class="entry">
16848       <div class="title">
16849         <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>
16850       </div>
16851       <div class="date">
16852         26th July 2011
16853       </div>
16854       <div class="body">
16855         <p>The Norwegian <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</A>
16856 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
16857 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
16858 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
16859 security support for a few years.</p>
16860
16861 <p>The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
16862 that are missing in Debian at the moment.  It would be great if these
16863 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
16864 their own <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com">FixMyStreet</a> clone
16865 in their own country using only Debian packages.  The list of modules
16866 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn't very long, and I hope the perl group
16867 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
16868 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
16869 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
16870 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
16871 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
16872 easier in the future.</p>
16873
16874 <p>Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
16875 installed on my server was a simple call to 'cpan2deb Module::Name'
16876 and 'dpkg -i' to install the resulting package.  But this leave me
16877 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
16878 do not have time for.</p>
16879
16880       </div>
16881       <div class="tags">
16882
16883
16884         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>.
16885
16886
16887       </div>
16888     </div>
16889     <div class="padding"></div>
16890
16891     <div class="entry">
16892       <div class="title">
16893         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Software_vs__proprietary_softare___.html">Free Software vs. proprietary softare...</a>
16894       </div>
16895       <div class="date">
16896         20th June 2011
16897       </div>
16898       <div class="body">
16899         <p>Reading
16900 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2011/06/20/open-source-vs-closed-source-eulas/">the
16901 thingiverse blog</a>, I came across two highlights of interesting
16902 parts of the
16903 <a href="http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Autodesk_EULA">Autodesk</a>
16904 and
16905 <a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2011/06/things-you-cant-do-with-the-microsoft-kinect-sdk.html">Microsoft
16906 Kinect</a> End User License Agreements (EULAs), which illustrates
16907 quite well why I stay away from software with EULAs.  Whenever I take
16908 the time to read their content, the terms are simply unacceptable.</p>
16909
16910       </div>
16911       <div class="tags">
16912
16913
16914         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>.
16915
16916
16917       </div>
16918     </div>
16919     <div class="padding"></div>
16920
16921     <div class="entry">
16922       <div class="title">
16923         <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>
16924       </div>
16925       <div class="date">
16926         30th April 2011
16927       </div>
16928       <div class="body">
16929         <p>Today, the first draft implementation of an
16930 <a href="http://www.open311.org/">Open311 API</a> for the Norwegian
16931 service <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> started to
16932 work.  It is only available on the developer server for now, and I
16933 have not tested it using any existing Open311 client (I lack the
16934 platforms needed to run the clients I have found so far), but it is
16935 able to query the database and extract a list of open and closed
16936 requests within a given category and reported to a given municipality.
16937 I believe that is a good start to create a useful service for those
16938 that want to do data mining on the requests submitted so far.</p>
16939
16940 <p>Where is it?  Visit
16941 <a href="http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/">http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/</a>
16942 to have a look.  Please send feedback to the
16943 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami">fiksgatami
16944 (at) nuug.no</a> mailing list.</p>
16945
16946       </div>
16947       <div class="tags">
16948
16949
16950         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>.
16951
16952
16953       </div>
16954     </div>
16955     <div class="padding"></div>
16956
16957     <div class="entry">
16958       <div class="title">
16959         <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>
16960       </div>
16961       <div class="date">
16962         29th April 2011
16963       </div>
16964       <div class="body">
16965         <p>The last few days I have spent some time trying to add support for
16966 the <a href="http://www.open311.org/">Open311 API</a> in the
16967 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">Norwegian FixMyStreet service</a>.
16968 Earlier I believed Open311 would be a useful API to use to submit
16969 reports to the municipalities, but when I noticed that the
16970 <a href="http://fixmystreet.org.nz/">New Zealand version</a> of
16971 FixMyStreet had implemented Open311 on the server side, it occurred to
16972 me that this was a nice way to allow the public, press and
16973 municipalities to do data mining directly in the FixMyStreet service.
16974 Thus I went to work implementing the Open311 specification for
16975 FixMyStreet.  The implementation is not yet ready, but I am starting
16976 to get a draft limping along.  In the process, I have discovered a few
16977 issues with the Open311 specification.</p>
16978
16979 <p>One obvious missing feature is the lack of natural language
16980 handling in the specification.  The specification seem to assume all
16981 reports will be written in English, and do not provide a way for the
16982 receiving end to specify which languages are understood there.  To be
16983 able to use the same client and submit to several Open311 receivers,
16984 it would be useful to know which language to use when writing reports.
16985 I believe the specification should be extended to allow the receivers
16986 of problem reports to specify which language they accept, and the
16987 submitter to specify which language the report is written in.
16988 Language of a text can also be automatically guessed using statistical
16989 methods, but for multi-lingual persons like myself, it is useful to
16990 know which language to use when writing a problem report.  I suspect
16991 some lang=nb,nn kind of attribute would solve it.</p>
16992
16993 <p>A key part of the Open311 API is the list of services provided,
16994 which is similar to the categories used by FixMyStreet.  One issue I
16995 run into is the need to specify both name and unique identifier for
16996 each category.  The specification do not state that the identifier
16997 should be numeric, but all example implementations have used numbers
16998 here.  In FixMyStreet, there is no number associated with each
16999 category.  As the specification do not forbid it, I will use the name
17000 as the unique identifier for now and see how open311 clients handle
17001 it.</p>
17002
17003 <p>The report format in open311 and the report format in FixMyStreet
17004 differ in a key part.  FixMyStreet have a title and a description,
17005 while Open311 only have a description and lack the title.  I'm not
17006 quite sure how to best handle this yet.  When asking for a FixMyStreet
17007 report in Open311 format, I just merge title an description into the
17008 open311 description, but this is not going to work if the open311 API
17009 should be used for submitting new reports to FixMyStreet.</p>
17010
17011 <p>The search feature in Open311 is missing a way to ask for problems
17012 near a geographic location.  I believe this is important if one is to
17013 use Open311 as the query language for mobile units.  The specification
17014 should be extended to handle this, probably using some new lat=, lon=
17015 and range= options.</p>
17016
17017 <p>The final challenge I see is that the FixMyStreet code handle
17018 several administrations in one interface, while the Open311 API seem
17019 to assume only one administration.  For FixMyStreet, this mean a
17020 report can be sent to several administrations, and the categories
17021 available depend on the location of the problem.  Not quite sure how
17022 to best handle this.  I've noticed
17023 <a href="http://seeclickfix.com/open311/">SeeClickFix</a> added
17024 latitude and longitude options to the services request, but it do not
17025 solve the problem of what to return when no location is specified.
17026 Will have to investigate this a bit more.</p>
17027
17028 <p>My distaste for web forums have kept me from bringing these issues
17029 up with the open311 developer group.  I really wish they had a email
17030 list available via <a href="http://www.gmane.org/">Gmane</a> to use for
17031 discussions instead of only
17032 <a href="http://lists.open311.org/groups/discuss">a forum<a/>.  Oh,
17033 well.  That will probably resolve itself, one way or another.  I've
17034 also tried visiting the IRC channel #open311 on FreeNode, but no-one
17035 seem to reply to my questions there.  This make me wonder if I just
17036 fail to understand how the open311 community work.  It sure do not
17037 work like the free software project communities I am used to.</p>
17038
17039       </div>
17040       <div class="tags">
17041
17042
17043         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>.
17044
17045
17046       </div>
17047     </div>
17048     <div class="padding"></div>
17049
17050     <div class="entry">
17051       <div class="title">
17052         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_enteres_Google_Summer_of_Code_2011.html">Gnash enteres Google Summer of Code 2011</a>
17053       </div>
17054       <div class="date">
17055          6th April 2011
17056       </div>
17057       <div class="body">
17058         <p><a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">The Gnash project</a> is still
17059 the most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation.
17060 A few days ago the project
17061 <a href="http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnash-dev/2011-04/msg00011.html">announced</a>
17062 that it will participate in Google Summer of Code.  I hope many
17063 students apply, and that some of them succeed in getting AVM2 support
17064 into Gnash.</p>
17065
17066       </div>
17067       <div class="tags">
17068
17069
17070         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>.
17071
17072
17073       </div>
17074     </div>
17075     <div class="padding"></div>
17076
17077     <div class="entry">
17078       <div class="title">
17079         <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>
17080       </div>
17081       <div class="date">
17082          3rd April 2011
17083       </div>
17084       <div class="body">
17085         <p>Here is a small update for my English readers.  Most of my blog
17086 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
17087 update in English.</p>
17088
17089 <p>The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
17090 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
17091 of the British service
17092 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> up and running,
17093 and it has been running for a month now.  The entire project has been
17094 organised by me and two others.  Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
17095 to fund the development work.  In January I drafted a contract with
17096 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a> on what to develop,
17097 and in February the development took place.  Most of it involved
17098 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
17099 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
17100 running in any country by now.  The Norwegian
17101 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is using
17102 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> as the map
17103 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
17104 support for this had to be added/fixed.</p>
17105
17106 <p>The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
17107 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th.  The system is
17108 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
17109 problem reports in a few weeks.  Soon we hope to announce the Android
17110 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
17111 public infrastructure.</p>
17112
17113 <p>Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
17114 such service?</p>
17115
17116       </div>
17117       <div class="tags">
17118
17119
17120         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>.
17121
17122
17123       </div>
17124     </div>
17125     <div class="padding"></div>
17126
17127     <div class="entry">
17128       <div class="title">
17129         <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>
17130       </div>
17131       <div class="date">
17132         28th January 2011
17133       </div>
17134       <div class="body">
17135         <p>The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
17136 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo.  My idea is that
17137 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
17138 available on the Internet, and check our locally
17139 maintained/distributed software against this information.  It should
17140 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten.  The
17141 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
17142 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
17143 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
17144 out which security holes were present in our free software
17145 collection.</p>
17146
17147 <p>After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
17148 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
17149 consistent way across data sources.  I considered several ways to do
17150 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
17151 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
17152 existing naming scheme.  And it seem like I am not the first one to
17153 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
17154 solution.  Enter the <a href="http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html">Common
17155 Platform Enumeration</a> dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
17156 software, hardware and other platform components.  The CPE ids are
17157 mapped to CVEs in the <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/">National
17158 Vulnerability Database</a>, allowing me to look up know security
17159 issues for any CPE name.  With this in place, all I need to do is to
17160 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
17161 This is fairly trivial (I google for 'cve cpe $package' and check the
17162 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).</p>
17163
17164 <p>To give you an example.  The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
17165 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip.  If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
17166 check out, one could look up
17167 <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
17168 in NVD</a> and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
17169 The most recent one is
17170 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2010-0001">CVE-2010-0001</a>,
17171 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
17172 list of affected versions is provided.</p>
17173
17174 <p>The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
17175 for offline processing of issues.  Using this dump, I've written a
17176 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
17177 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs.  One give it CPEs
17178 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
17179 security issues out.</p>
17180
17181 <p>Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
17182 information need to be high.  For that to happen, I believe as many as
17183 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database.  I notice
17184 RHEL is providing
17185 <a href="https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt">a
17186 map from CVE to CPE</a>, indicating that they are using the CPE
17187 information.  I'm not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.</p>
17188
17189 <p>To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
17190 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
17191 the CVE database in NVD.  The result look fairly good, but there are
17192 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
17193 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
17194 Debian believe are affected by a CVE).  Hope to find time to improve
17195 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
17196 someone maintaining it.  So far my three emails with questions and
17197 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
17198 established soon.</p>
17199
17200 <p>An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
17201 mapping.  It would be useful to know which packages in for example
17202 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
17203 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
17204 for their packages.</p>
17205
17206       </div>
17207       <div class="tags">
17208
17209
17210         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>.
17211
17212
17213       </div>
17214     </div>
17215     <div class="padding"></div>
17216
17217     <div class="entry">
17218       <div class="title">
17219         <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>
17220       </div>
17221       <div class="date">
17222         23rd January 2011
17223       </div>
17224       <div class="body">
17225         <p>In the
17226 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data">discover-data</a>
17227 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
17228 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
17229 information.  One part of this script that I find very useful when
17230 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
17231 to the PCI device it claims.  It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
17232 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with.  To see
17233 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
17234 <tt>/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3>&1</tt>.  The relevant output on
17235 one of my machines like this:</p>
17236
17237 <pre>
17238 loaded modules:
17239 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
17240 10de:03f1 ohci_hcd
17241 10de:03f2 ehci_hcd
17242 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
17243 10de:03ec pata_amd
17244 10de:03f6 sata_nv
17245 1022:1103 k8temp
17246 109e:036e bttv
17247 109e:0878 snd_bt87x
17248 11ab:4364 sky2
17249 </pre>
17250
17251 <p>The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
17252 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:</p>
17253
17254 <pre>
17255 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
17256     echo loaded pci modules:
17257     (
17258         cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
17259         for address in * ; do
17260             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
17261                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
17262                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
17263                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
17264                     id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $3}'`
17265                     echo "$id $module"
17266                 fi
17267             fi
17268         done
17269     )
17270     echo
17271 fi
17272 </pre>
17273
17274 <p>Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
17275 mappings:</p>
17276
17277 <pre>
17278 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
17279     echo loaded usb modules:
17280     (
17281         cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
17282         for address in * ; do
17283             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
17284                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
17285                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
17286                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
17287                     id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $6}')
17288                     if [ "$id" ] ; then
17289                         echo "$id $module"
17290                     fi
17291                 fi
17292             fi
17293         done
17294     )
17295     echo
17296 fi
17297 </pre>
17298
17299 <p>This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
17300 well.</p>
17301
17302       </div>
17303       <div class="tags">
17304
17305
17306         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>.
17307
17308
17309       </div>
17310     </div>
17311     <div class="padding"></div>
17312
17313     <div class="entry">
17314       <div class="title">
17315         <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>
17316       </div>
17317       <div class="date">
17318         16th January 2011
17319       </div>
17320       <div class="body">
17321         <p>The video format struggle on the web continues, and the three
17322 contenders seem to be Ogg Theora, H.264 and WebM.  Most video sites
17323 seem to use H.264, while others use Ogg Theora.  Interestingly enough,
17324 the comments I see give me the feeling that a lot of people believe
17325 H.264 is the most supported video format in browsers, but according to
17326 the Wikipedia article on
17327 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video">HTML5 video</a>,
17328 this is not true.  Check out the nice table of supprted formats in
17329 different browsers there.  The format supported by most browsers is
17330 Ogg Theora, supported by released versions of Mozilla Firefox, Google
17331 Chrome, Chromium, Opera, Konqueror, Epiphany, Origyn Web Browser and
17332 BOLT browser, while not supported by Internet Explorer nor Safari.
17333 The runner up is WebM supported by released versions of Google Chrome
17334 Chromium Opera and Origyn Web Browser, and test versions of Mozilla
17335 Firefox.  H.264 is supported by released versions of Safari, Origyn
17336 Web Browser and BOLT browser, and the test version of Internet
17337 Explorer.  Those wanting Ogg Theora support in Internet Explorer and
17338 Safari can install plugins to get it.</p>
17339
17340 <p>To me, the simple conclusion from this is that to reach most users
17341 without any extra software installed, one uses Ogg Theora with the
17342 HTML5 video tag.   Of course to reach all those without a browser
17343 handling HTML5, one need fallback mechanisms.  In
17344 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a>, we provide first fallback to a
17345 plugin capable of playing MPEG1 video, and those without such support
17346 we have a second fallback to the Cortado java applet playing Ogg
17347 Theora.  This seem to work quite well, as can be seen in an <a
17348 href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20110111-semantic-web/">example
17349 from last week</a>.</p>
17350
17351 <p>The reason Ogg Theora is the most supported format, and H.264 is
17352 the least supported is simple.  Implementing and using H.264
17353 require royalty payment to MPEG-LA, and the terms of use from MPEG-LA
17354 are incompatible with free software licensing.  If you believed H.264
17355 was without royalties and license terms, check out
17356 "<a href="http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H.264 – Not The Kind Of
17357 Free That Matters</a>" by Simon Phipps.</p>
17358
17359 <p>A incomplete list of sites providing video in Ogg Theora is
17360 available from
17361 <a href="http://wiki.xiph.org/index.php/List_of_Theora_videos">the
17362 Xiph.org wiki</a>, if you want to have a look.  I'm not aware of a
17363 similar list for WebM nor H.264.</p>
17364
17365 <p>Update 2011-01-16 09:40: A question from Tollef on IRC made me
17366 realise that I failed to make it clear enough this text is about the
17367 &lt;video&gt; tag support in browsers and not the video support
17368 provided by external plugins like the Flash plugins.</p>
17369
17370       </div>
17371       <div class="tags">
17372
17373
17374         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/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>.
17375
17376
17377       </div>
17378     </div>
17379     <div class="padding"></div>
17380
17381     <div class="entry">
17382       <div class="title">
17383         <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 &lt;video&gt;</a>
17384       </div>
17385       <div class="date">
17386         12th January 2011
17387       </div>
17388       <div class="body">
17389         <p>Today I discovered
17390 <a href="http://www.digi.no/860070/google-dropper-h264-stotten-i-chrome">via
17391 digi.no</a> that the Chrome developers, in a surprising announcement,
17392 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/html-video-codec-support-in-chrome.html">yesterday
17393 announced</a> plans to drop H.264 support for HTML5 &lt;video&gt; in
17394 the browser.  The argument used is that H.264 is not a "completely
17395 open" codec technology.  If you believe H.264 was free for everyone
17396 to use, I recommend having a look at the essay
17397 "<a href="http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H.264 – Not The Kind Of
17398 Free That Matters</a>".  It is not free of cost for creators of video
17399 tools, nor those of us that want to publish on the Internet, and the
17400 terms provided by MPEG-LA excludes free software projects from
17401 licensing the patents needed for H.264.  Some background information
17402 on the Google announcement is available from
17403 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/24243/Google_To_Drop_H264_Support_from_Chrome">OSnews</a>.
17404 A good read. :)</p>
17405
17406 <p>Personally, I believe it is great that Google is taking a stand to
17407 promote equal terms for everyone when it comes to video publishing on
17408 the Internet.  This can only be done by publishing using free and open
17409 standards, which is only possible if the web browsers provide support
17410 for these free and open standards.  At the moment there seem to be two
17411 camps in the web browser world when it come to video support.  Some
17412 browsers support H.264, and others support
17413 <a href="http://www.theora.org/">Ogg Theora</a> and
17414 <a href="http://www.webmproject.org/">WebM</a>
17415 (<a href="http://www.diracvideo.org/">Dirac</a> is not really an option
17416 yet), forcing those of us that want to publish video on the Internet
17417 and which can not accept the terms of use presented by MPEG-LA for
17418 H.264 to not reach all potential viewers.
17419 Wikipedia keep <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video">an
17420 updated summary</a> of the current browser support.</p>
17421
17422 <p>Not surprising, several people would prefer Google to keep
17423 promoting H.264, and John Gruber
17424 <a href="http://daringfireball.net/2011/01/simple_questions">presents
17425 the mind set</a> of these people quite well.  His rhetorical questions
17426 provoked a reply from Thom Holwerda with another set of questions
17427 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/24245/10_Questions_for_John_Gruber_Regarding_H_264_WebM">presenting
17428 the issues with H.264</a>. Both are worth a read.</p>
17429
17430 <p>Some argue that if Google is dropping H.264 because it isn't free,
17431 they should also drop support for the Adobe Flash plugin.  This
17432 argument was covered by Simon Phipps in
17433 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2011/01/google-and-h264---far-from-hypocritical/index.htm">todays
17434 blog post</a>, which I find to put the issue in context.  To me it
17435 make perfect sense to drop native H.264 support for HTML5 in the
17436 browser while still allowing plugins.</p>
17437
17438 <p>I suspect the reason this announcement make so many people protest,
17439 is that all the users and promoters of H.264 suddenly get an uneasy
17440 feeling that they might be backing the wrong horse.  A lot of TV
17441 broadcasters have been moving to H.264 the last few years, and a lot
17442 of money has been invested in hardware based on the belief that they
17443 could use the same video format for both broadcasting and web
17444 publishing.  Suddenly this belief is shaken.</p>
17445
17446 <p>An interesting question is why Google is doing this.  While the
17447 presented argument might be true enough, I believe Google would only
17448 present the argument if the change make sense from a business
17449 perspective.  One reason might be that they are currently negotiating
17450 with MPEG-LA over royalties or usage terms, and giving MPEG-LA the
17451 feeling that dropping H.264 completely from Chroome, Youtube and
17452 Google Video would improve the negotiation position of Google.
17453 Another reason might be that Google want to save money by not having
17454 to pay the video tax to MPEG-LA at all, and thus want to move to a
17455 video format not requiring royalties at all.  A third reason might be
17456 that the Chrome development team simply want to avoid the
17457 Chrome/Chromium split to get more help with the development of Chrome.
17458 I guess time will tell.</p>
17459
17460 <p>Update 2011-01-15: The Google Chrome team provided
17461 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/more-about-chrome-html-video-codec.html">more
17462 background and information on the move</a> it a blog post yesterday.</p>
17463
17464       </div>
17465       <div class="tags">
17466
17467
17468         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
17469
17470
17471       </div>
17472     </div>
17473     <div class="padding"></div>
17474
17475     <div class="entry">
17476       <div class="title">
17477         <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>
17478       </div>
17479       <div class="date">
17480         30th December 2010
17481       </div>
17482       <div class="body">
17483         <p>After trying to
17484 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Ogg_Theora_a_free_and_open_standard_.html">compare
17485 Ogg Theora</a> to
17486 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">the Digistan
17487 definition</a> of a free and open standard, I concluded that this need
17488 to be done for more standards and started on a framework for doing
17489 this.  As a start, I want to get the status for all the standards in
17490 the Norwegian reference directory, which include UTF-8, HTML, PDF, ODF,
17491 JPEG, PNG, SVG and others.  But to be able to complete this in a
17492 reasonable time frame, I will need help.</p>
17493
17494 <p>If you want to help out with this work, please visit
17495 <a href="http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/standard/digistan-analyse">the
17496 wiki pages I have set up for this</a>, and let me know that you want
17497 to help out.  The IRC channel #nuug on irc.freenode.net is a good
17498 place to coordinate this for now, as it is the IRC channel for the
17499 NUUG association where I have created the framework (I am the leader
17500 of the Norwegian Unix User Group).</p>
17501
17502 <p>The framework is still forming, and a lot is left to do.  Do not be
17503 scared by the sketchy form of the current pages. :)</p>
17504
17505       </div>
17506       <div class="tags">
17507
17508
17509         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>.
17510
17511
17512       </div>
17513     </div>
17514     <div class="padding"></div>
17515
17516     <div class="entry">
17517       <div class="title">
17518         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_many_definitions_of_a_open_standard.html">The many definitions of a open standard</a>
17519       </div>
17520       <div class="date">
17521         27th December 2010
17522       </div>
17523       <div class="body">
17524         <p>One of the reasons I like the Digistan definition of
17525 "<a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">Free and
17526 Open Standard</a>" is that this is a new term, and thus the meaning of
17527 the term has been decided by Digistan.  The term "Open Standard" has
17528 become so misunderstood that it is no longer very useful when talking
17529 about standards.  One end up discussing which definition is the best
17530 one and with such frame the only one gaining are the proponents of
17531 de-facto standards and proprietary solutions.</p>
17532
17533 <p>But to give us an idea about the diversity of definitions of open
17534 standards, here are a few that I know about.  This list is not
17535 complete, but can be a starting point for those that want to do a
17536 complete survey.  More definitions are available on the
17537 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard">wikipedia
17538 page</a>.</p>
17539
17540 <p>First off is my favourite, the definition from the European
17541 Interoperability Framework version 1.0.  Really sad to notice that BSA
17542 and others has succeeded in getting it removed from version 2.0 of the
17543 framework by stacking the committee drafting the new version with
17544 their own people.  Anyway, the definition is still available and it
17545 include the key properties needed to make sure everyone can use a
17546 specification on equal terms.</p>
17547
17548 <blockquote>
17549
17550 <p>The following are the minimal characteristics that a specification
17551 and its attendant documents must have in order to be considered an
17552 open standard:</p>
17553
17554 <ul>
17555
17556 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
17557 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
17558 open decision-making procedure available to all interested parties
17559 (consensus or majority decision etc.).</li>
17560
17561 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
17562 document is available either freely or at a nominal charge. It must be
17563 permissible to all to copy, distribute and use it for no fee or at a
17564 nominal fee.</li>
17565
17566 <li>The intellectual property - i.e. patents possibly present - of
17567 (parts of) the standard is made irrevocably available on a royalty-
17568 free basis.</li>
17569
17570 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.</li>
17571
17572 </ul>
17573 </blockquote>
17574
17575 <p>Another one originates from my friends over at
17576 <a href="http://www.dkuug.dk/">DKUUG</a>, who coined and gathered
17577 support for <a href="http://www.aaben-standard.dk/">this
17578 definition</a> in 2004.  It even made it into the Danish parlament as
17579 <a href="http://www.ft.dk/dokumenter/tingdok.aspx?/samling/20051/beslutningsforslag/B103/som_fremsat.htm">their
17580 definition of a open standard</a>.  Another from a different part of
17581 the Danish government is available from the wikipedia page.</p>
17582
17583 <blockquote>
17584
17585 <p>En åben standard opfylder følgende krav:</p>
17586
17587 <ol>
17588
17589 <li>Veldokumenteret med den fuldstændige specifikation offentligt
17590 tilgængelig.</li>
17591
17592 <li>Frit implementerbar uden økonomiske, politiske eller juridiske
17593 begrænsninger på implementation og anvendelse.</li>
17594
17595 <li>Standardiseret og vedligeholdt i et åbent forum (en såkaldt
17596 "standardiseringsorganisation") via en åben proces.</li>
17597
17598 </ol>
17599
17600 </blockquote>
17601
17602 <p>Then there is <a href="http://www.fsfe.org/projects/os/def.html">the
17603 definition</a> from Free Software Foundation Europe.</p>
17604
17605 <blockquote>
17606
17607 <p>An Open Standard refers to a format or protocol that is</p>
17608
17609 <ol>
17610
17611 <li>subject to full public assessment and use without constraints in a
17612 manner equally available to all parties;</li>
17613
17614 <li>without any components or extensions that have dependencies on
17615 formats or protocols that do not meet the definition of an Open
17616 Standard themselves;</li>
17617
17618 <li>free from legal or technical clauses that limit its utilisation by
17619 any party or in any business model;</li>
17620
17621 <li>managed and further developed independently of any single vendor
17622 in a process open to the equal participation of competitors and third
17623 parties;</li>
17624
17625 <li>available in multiple complete implementations by competing
17626 vendors, or as a complete implementation equally available to all
17627 parties.</li>
17628
17629 </ol>
17630
17631 </blockquote>
17632
17633 <p>A long time ago, SUN Microsystems, now bought by Oracle, created
17634 its
17635 <a href="http://blogs.sun.com/dennisding/resource/Open%20Standard%20Definition.pdf">Open
17636 Standards Checklist</a> with a fairly detailed description.</p>
17637
17638 <blockquote>
17639 <p>Creation and Management of an Open Standard
17640
17641 <ul>
17642
17643 <li>Its development and management process must be collaborative and
17644   democratic:
17645
17646          <ul>
17647
17648          <li>Participation must be accessible to all those who wish to
17649             participate and can meet fair and reasonable criteria
17650             imposed by the organization under which it is developed
17651             and managed.</li>
17652
17653          <li>The processes must be documented and, through a known
17654             method, can be changed through input from all
17655             participants.</li>
17656
17657          <li>The process must be based on formal and binding commitments for
17658             the disclosure and licensing of intellectual property rights.</li>
17659
17660          <li>Development and management should strive for consensus,
17661             and an appeals process must be clearly outlined.</li>
17662
17663          <li>The standard specification must be open to extensive
17664             public review at least once in its life-cycle, with
17665             comments duly discussed and acted upon, if required.</li>
17666
17667          </ul>
17668
17669 </li>
17670
17671 </ul>
17672
17673 <p>Use and Licensing of an Open Standard</p>
17674 <ul>
17675
17676 <li>The standard must describe an interface, not an implementation,
17677   and the industry must be capable of creating multiple, competing
17678   implementations to the interface described in the standard without
17679   undue or restrictive constraints.  Interfaces include APIs,
17680   protocols, schemas, data formats and their encoding.</li>
17681
17682 <li> The standard must not contain any proprietary "hooks" that create
17683   a technical or economic barriers</li>
17684
17685 <li>Faithful implementations of the standard must
17686   interoperate. Interoperability means the ability of a computer
17687   program to communicate and exchange information with other computer
17688   programs and mutually to use the information which has been
17689   exchanged. This includes the ability to use, convert, or exchange
17690   file formats, protocols, schemas, interface information or
17691   conventions, so as to permit the computer program to work with other
17692   computer programs and users in all the ways in which they are
17693   intended to function.</li>
17694
17695 <li>It must be permissible for anyone to copy, distribute and read the
17696   standard for a nominal fee, or even no fee. If there is a fee, it
17697   must be low enough to not preclude widespread use.</li>
17698
17699 <li>It must be possible for anyone to obtain free (no royalties or
17700   fees; also known as "royalty free"), worldwide, non-exclusive and
17701   perpetual licenses to all essential patent claims to make, use and
17702   sell products based on the standard.  The only exceptions are
17703   terminations per the reciprocity and defensive suspension terms
17704   outlined below. Essential patent claims include pending, unpublished
17705   patents, published patents, and patent applications. The license is
17706   only for the exact scope of the standard in question.
17707
17708       <ul>
17709
17710       <li> May be conditioned only on reciprocal licenses to any of
17711         licensees' patent claims essential to practice that standard
17712         (also known as a reciprocity clause)</li>
17713
17714       <li> May be terminated as to any licensee who sues the licensor
17715         or any other licensee for infringement of patent claims
17716         essential to practice that standard (also known as a
17717         "defensive suspension" clause)</li>
17718
17719       <li> The same licensing terms are available to every potential
17720         licensor</li>
17721
17722       </ul>
17723 </li>
17724
17725 <li>The licensing terms of an open standards must not preclude
17726   implementations of that standard under open source licensing terms
17727   or restricted licensing terms</li>
17728
17729 </ul>
17730
17731 </blockquote>
17732
17733 <p>It is said that one of the nice things about standards is that
17734 there are so many of them.  As you can see, the same holds true for
17735 open standard definitions.  Most of the definitions have a lot in
17736 common, and it is not really controversial what properties a open
17737 standard should have, but the diversity of definitions have made it
17738 possible for those that want to avoid a level marked field and real
17739 competition to downplay the significance of open standards.  I hope we
17740 can turn this tide by focusing on the advantages of Free and Open
17741 Standards.</p>
17742
17743       </div>
17744       <div class="tags">
17745
17746
17747         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>.
17748
17749
17750       </div>
17751     </div>
17752     <div class="padding"></div>
17753
17754     <div class="entry">
17755       <div class="title">
17756         <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>
17757       </div>
17758       <div class="date">
17759         25th December 2010
17760       </div>
17761       <div class="body">
17762         <p><a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">The
17763 Digistan definition</a> of a free and open standard reads like this:</p>
17764
17765 <blockquote>
17766
17767 <p>The Digital Standards Organization defines free and open standard
17768 as follows:</p>
17769
17770 <ol>
17771
17772 <li>A free and open standard is immune to vendor capture at all stages
17773 in its life-cycle. Immunity from vendor capture makes it possible to
17774 freely use, improve upon, trust, and extend a standard over time.</li>
17775
17776 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
17777 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
17778 open decision-making procedure available to all interested
17779 parties.</li>
17780
17781 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
17782 document is available freely. It must be permissible to all to copy,
17783 distribute, and use it freely.</li>
17784
17785 <li>The patents possibly present on (parts of) the standard are made
17786 irrevocably available on a royalty-free basis.</li>
17787
17788 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.</li>
17789
17790 </ol>
17791
17792 <p>The economic outcome of a free and open standard, which can be
17793 measured, is that it enables perfect competition between suppliers of
17794 products based on the standard.</p>
17795 </blockquote>
17796
17797 <p>For a while now I have tried to figure out of Ogg Theora is a free
17798 and open standard according to this definition.  Here is a short
17799 writeup of what I have been able to gather so far.  I brought up the
17800 topic on the Xiph advocacy mailing list
17801 <a href="http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/advocacy/2009-July/001632.html">in
17802 July 2009</a>, for those that want to see some background information.
17803 According to Ivo Emanuel Gonçalves and Monty Montgomery on that list
17804 the Ogg Theora specification fulfils the Digistan definition.</p>
17805
17806 <p><strong>Free from vendor capture?</strong></p>
17807
17808 <p>As far as I can see, there is no single vendor that can control the
17809 Ogg Theora specification.  It can be argued that the
17810 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/">Xiph foundation</A> is such vendor, but
17811 given that it is a non-profit foundation with the expressed goal
17812 making free and open protocols and standards available, it is not
17813 obvious that this is a real risk.  One issue with the Xiph
17814 foundation is that its inner working (as in board member list, or who
17815 control the foundation) are not easily available on the web.  I've
17816 been unable to find out who is in the foundation board, and have not
17817 seen any accounting information documenting how money is handled nor
17818 where is is spent in the foundation.  It is thus not obvious for an
17819 external observer who control The Xiph foundation, and for all I know
17820 it is possible for a single vendor to take control over the
17821 specification.  But it seem unlikely.</p>
17822
17823 <p><strong>Maintained by open not-for-profit organisation?</strong></p>
17824
17825 <p>Assuming that the Xiph foundation is the organisation its web pages
17826 claim it to be, this point is fulfilled.  If Xiph foundation is
17827 controlled by a single vendor, it isn't, but I have not found any
17828 documentation indicating this.</p>
17829
17830 <p>According to
17831 <a href="http://media.hiof.no/diverse/fad/rapport_4.pdf">a report</a>
17832 prepared by Audun Vaaler og Børre Ludvigsen for the Norwegian
17833 government, the Xiph foundation is a non-commercial organisation and
17834 the development process is open, transparent and non-Discrimatory.
17835 Until proven otherwise, I believe it make most sense to believe the
17836 report is correct.</p>
17837
17838 <p><strong>Specification freely available?</strong></p>
17839
17840 <p>The specification for the <a href="http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/">Ogg
17841 container format</a> and both the
17842 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/vorbis/doc/">Vorbis</a> and
17843 <a href="http://theora.org/doc/">Theora</a> codeces are available on
17844 the web.  This are the terms in the Vorbis and Theora specification:
17845
17846 <blockquote>
17847
17848 Anyone may freely use and distribute the Ogg and [Vorbis/Theora]
17849 specifications, whether in private, public, or corporate
17850 capacity. However, the Xiph.Org Foundation and the Ogg project reserve
17851 the right to set the Ogg [Vorbis/Theora] specification and certify
17852 specification compliance.
17853
17854 </blockquote>
17855
17856 <p>The Ogg container format is specified in IETF
17857 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/rfc3533.txt">RFC 3533</a>, and
17858 this is the term:<p>
17859
17860 <blockquote>
17861
17862 <p>This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
17863 others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it
17864 or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published and
17865 distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any kind,
17866 provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are
17867 included on all such copies and derivative works.  However, this
17868 document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing
17869 the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other
17870 Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of developing
17871 Internet standards in which case the procedures for copyrights defined
17872 in the Internet Standards process must be followed, or as required to
17873 translate it into languages other than English.</p>
17874
17875 <p>The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be
17876 revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns.</p>
17877 </blockquote>
17878
17879 <p>All these terms seem to allow unlimited distribution and use, an
17880 this term seem to be fulfilled.  There might be a problem with the
17881 missing permission to distribute modified versions of the text, and
17882 thus reuse it in other specifications.  Not quite sure if that is a
17883 requirement for the Digistan definition.</p>
17884
17885 <p><strong>Royalty-free?</strong></p>
17886
17887 <p>There are no known patent claims requiring royalties for the Ogg
17888 Theora format.
17889 <a href="http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=65782">MPEG-LA</a>
17890 and
17891 <a href="http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/04/30/237238/Steve-Jobs-Hints-At-Theora-Lawsuit">Steve
17892 Jobs</a> in Apple claim to know about some patent claims (submarine
17893 patents) against the Theora format, but no-one else seem to believe
17894 them.  Both Opera Software and the Mozilla Foundation have looked into
17895 this and decided to implement Ogg Theora support in their browsers
17896 without paying any royalties.  For now the claims from MPEG-LA and
17897 Steve Jobs seem more like FUD to scare people to use the H.264 codec
17898 than any real problem with Ogg Theora.</p>
17899
17900 <p><strong>No constraints on re-use?</strong></p>
17901
17902 <p>I am not aware of any constraints on re-use.</p>
17903
17904 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
17905
17906 <p>3 of 5 requirements seem obviously fulfilled, and the remaining 2
17907 depend on the governing structure of the Xiph foundation.  Given the
17908 background report used by the Norwegian government, I believe it is
17909 safe to assume the last two requirements are fulfilled too, but it
17910 would be nice if the Xiph foundation web site made it easier to verify
17911 this.</p>
17912
17913 <p>It would be nice to see other analysis of other specifications to
17914 see if they are free and open standards.</p>
17915
17916       </div>
17917       <div class="tags">
17918
17919
17920         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/h264">h264</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>.
17921
17922
17923       </div>
17924     </div>
17925     <div class="padding"></div>
17926
17927     <div class="entry">
17928       <div class="title">
17929         <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>
17930       </div>
17931       <div class="date">
17932         25th December 2010
17933       </div>
17934       <div class="body">
17935         <p>A few days ago
17936 <a href="http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article189879.ece">an
17937 article</a> in the Norwegian Computerworld magazine about how version
17938 2.0 of
17939 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Interoperability_Framework">European
17940 Interoperability Framework</a> has been successfully lobbied by the
17941 proprietary software industry to remove the focus on free software.
17942 Nothing very surprising there, given
17943 <a href="http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/03/29/2115235/Open-Source-Open-Standards-Under-Attack-In-Europe">earlier
17944 reports</a> on how Microsoft and others have stacked the committees in
17945 this work.  But I find this very sad.   The definition of
17946 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/dokumenter/standard-presse-def-200506.txt">an
17947 open standard from version 1</a> was very good, and something I
17948 believe should be used also in the future, alongside
17949 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">the
17950 definition from Digistan</A>.  Version 2 have removed the open
17951 standard definition from its content.</p>
17952
17953 <p>Anyway, the news reminded me of the great reply sent by Dr. Edgar
17954 Villanueva, congressman in Peru at the time, to Microsoft as a reply
17955 to Microsofts attack on his proposal regarding the use of free software
17956 in the public sector in Peru.  As the text was not available from a
17957 few of the URLs where it used to be available, I copy it here from
17958 <a href="http://gnuwin.epfl.ch/articles/en/reponseperou/villanueva_to_ms.html">my
17959 source</a> to ensure it is available also in the future.  Some
17960 background information about that story is available in
17961 <a href="http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6099">an article</a> from
17962 Linux Journal in 2002.</p>
17963
17964 <blockquote>
17965 <p>Lima, 8th of April, 2002<br>
17966 To: Señor JUAN ALBERTO GONZÁLEZ<br>
17967 General Manager of Microsoft Perú</p>
17968
17969 <p>Dear Sir:</p>
17970
17971 <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>
17972
17973 <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>
17974
17975 <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>
17976
17977 <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>
17978
17979 <p>
17980 <ul>
17981 <li>Free access to public information by the citizen. </li>
17982 <li>Permanence of public data. </li>
17983 <li>Security of the State and citizens.</li>
17984 </ul>
17985 </p>
17986
17987 <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>
17988
17989 <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>
17990
17991 <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>
17992
17993 <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>
17994
17995 <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>
17996
17997
17998 <p>From reading the Bill it will be clear that once passed:<br>
17999 <li>the law does not forbid the production of proprietary software</li>
18000 <li>the law does not forbid the sale of proprietary software</li>
18001 <li>the law does not specify which concrete software to use</li>
18002 <li>the law does not dictate the supplier from whom software will be bought</li>
18003 <li>the law does not limit the terms under which a software product can be licensed.</li>
18004
18005 </p>
18006
18007 <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>
18008
18009 <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>
18010
18011 <p>As for the observations you have made, we will now go on to analyze them in detail:</p>
18012
18013 <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>
18014
18015 <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>
18016
18017 <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>
18018
18019 <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>
18020
18021 <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>
18022
18023 <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>
18024
18025 <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>
18026
18027 <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>
18028
18029 <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>
18030
18031 <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>
18032
18033 <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>
18034
18035 <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>
18036
18037 <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>
18038
18039 <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>
18040
18041 <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>
18042
18043 <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>
18044
18045 <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>
18046
18047 <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>
18048
18049 <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>
18050
18051 <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>
18052
18053 <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>
18054
18055 <p>On security:</p>
18056
18057 <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>
18058
18059 <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>
18060
18061 <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>
18062
18063 <p>In respect of the guarantee:</p>
18064
18065 <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>
18066
18067 <p>On Intellectual Property:</p>
18068
18069 <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>
18070
18071 <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>
18072
18073 <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>
18074
18075 <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>
18076
18077 <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>
18078
18079 <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>
18080
18081 <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>
18082
18083 <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>
18084
18085 <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>
18086
18087 <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>
18088
18089 <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>
18090
18091 <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>
18092
18093 <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>
18094
18095 <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>
18096
18097 <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>
18098
18099 <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>
18100
18101 <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>
18102
18103 <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>
18104
18105 <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>
18106
18107 <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>
18108
18109 <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>
18110
18111 <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>
18112
18113 <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>
18114
18115 <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>
18116
18117 <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>
18118
18119 <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>
18120
18121 <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>
18122
18123 <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>
18124
18125 <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>
18126
18127 <p>Cordially,<br>
18128 DR. EDGAR DAVID VILLANUEVA NUÑEZ<br>
18129 Congressman of the Republic of Perú.</p>
18130 </blockquote>
18131
18132       </div>
18133       <div class="tags">
18134
18135
18136         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>.
18137
18138
18139       </div>
18140     </div>
18141     <div class="padding"></div>
18142
18143     <div class="entry">
18144       <div class="title">
18145         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_still_going_strong.html">Officeshots still going strong</a>
18146       </div>
18147       <div class="date">
18148         25th December 2010
18149       </div>
18150       <div class="body">
18151         <p>Half a year ago I
18152 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html">wrote
18153 a bit</a> about <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">OfficeShots</a>,
18154 a web service to allow anyone to test how ODF documents are handled by
18155 the different programs reading and writing the ODF format.</p>
18156
18157 <p>I just had a look at the service, and it seem to be going strong.
18158 Very interesting to see the results reported in the gallery, how
18159 different Office implementations handle different ODF features.  Sad
18160 to see that KOffice was not doing it very well, and happy to see that
18161 LibreOffice has been tested already (but sadly not listed as a option
18162 for OfficeShots users yet).  I am glad to see that the ODF community
18163 got such a great test tool available.</p>
18164
18165       </div>
18166       <div class="tags">
18167
18168
18169         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>.
18170
18171
18172       </div>
18173     </div>
18174     <div class="padding"></div>
18175
18176     <div class="entry">
18177       <div class="title">
18178         <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>
18179       </div>
18180       <div class="date">
18181         22nd December 2010
18182       </div>
18183       <div class="body">
18184         <p>The last few days I have spent at work here at the <a
18185 href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> testing if the new
18186 batch of computers will work with Linux.  Every year for the last few
18187 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
18188 computers, and this year HP won the bid.  Two different desktops and
18189 five different laptops are on the list this year.  We in the UNIX
18190 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
18191 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
18192 university.</p>
18193
18194 <p>My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
18195 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well.  To test, I PXE
18196 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
18197 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware.  When
18198 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
18199 on.  If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
18200 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
18201 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.</p>
18202
18203 <p>Anyway, to get to the point of this post.  Here is the simple tests
18204 I perform on a new model.</p>
18205
18206 <ul>
18207
18208 <li>Is PXE installation working?  I'm testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
18209 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment.  If I feel like it, I also test with
18210 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.</li>
18211
18212 <li>Is X.org working?  If the graphical login screen show up after
18213 installation, X.org is working.</li>
18214
18215 <li>Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working?  Running glxgears (in
18216 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
18217 reported by the program.</li>
18218
18219 <li>Is sound working?  With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
18220 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful.  If there
18221 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
18222 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound.  I
18223 normally test this by playing
18224 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ ">a HTML5
18225 video</a> in Firefox/Iceweasel.</li>
18226
18227 <li>Is the USB subsystem working?  I test this by plugging in a USB
18228 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
18229
18230 <li>Is the CD/DVD player working?  I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
18231 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
18232
18233 <li>Is any built in camera working?  Test using cheese, and see if a
18234 picture from the v4l device show up.</li>
18235
18236 <li>Is bluetooth working?  Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
18237 any bluetooth devices are discovered.  In my office, I normally see a
18238 few.</li>
18239
18240 <li>For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working.  I have
18241 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
18242 notice this.</li>
18243
18244 <li>For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working?  I'm testing if the
18245 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
18246 resume.</li>
18247
18248 <li>For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
18249 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
18250 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc?  The set of buttons differ from
18251 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
18252 not.</li>
18253
18254 <li>Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
18255 acceleration sensors etc.  I rarely test these, as I do not know how
18256 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
18257 existence.</li>
18258
18259 </ul>
18260
18261 <p>By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
18262 for the HP machines I am testing.  I'm not done yet, so I will report
18263 the test results later.  For now I can report that HP 8100 Elite work
18264 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook 8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
18265 and audio fail on RHEL6.  Ubuntu Maverik worked with 8440p.  As you
18266 can see, I have most machines left to test.  One interesting
18267 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
18268 RHEL6 with glxgears.  No idea why.</p>
18269
18270       </div>
18271       <div class="tags">
18272
18273
18274         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>.
18275
18276
18277       </div>
18278     </div>
18279     <div class="padding"></div>
18280
18281     <div class="entry">
18282       <div class="title">
18283         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html">Some thoughts on BitCoins</a>
18284       </div>
18285       <div class="date">
18286         11th December 2010
18287       </div>
18288       <div class="body">
18289         <p>As I continue to explore
18290 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>, I've starting to wonder
18291 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
18292 and regulations here in Norway.  Here are some random notes.</p>
18293
18294 <p>One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
18295 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
18296 is known to everyone.  This means that if a BitCoin address has been
18297 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
18298 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
18299 that address.  There is even a web service to look at the details for
18300 all transactions.  There I can see that my address
18301 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a>
18302 have received 16.06 Bitcoin, the
18303 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3">1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3</a>
18304 address of Simon Phipps have received 181.97 BitCoin and the address
18305 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt">1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt</A>
18306 of EFF have received 2447.38 BitCoins so far.  Thank you to each and
18307 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
18308 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
18309 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
18310 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction.  I'm told
18311 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
18312 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
18313 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.</p>
18314
18315 <p>In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
18316 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
18317 without declaring it.  There are money laundering, tax and accounting
18318 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
18319 If the Skolelinux foundation
18320 (<a href="http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">SLX
18321 Debian Labs</a>) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
18322 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
18323 Given that it is impossible to know if money can cross the border or
18324 not, should everything or nothing be declared?  What exchange rate
18325 should be used when calculating taxes?  Would receivers have to pay
18326 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
18327 BitCoin?  I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.</p>
18328
18329 <p>For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
18330 accepted by a lot of users.  It must be possible to get easy access to
18331 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
18332 easy to spend it.  At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
18333 access to, but there are very few places to spend it.  I am not really
18334 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
18335 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins.  I
18336 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
18337 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
18338 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
18339 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular.  I'm sure they
18340 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
18341 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
18342 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
18343 currencies.</p>
18344
18345 <p>The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
18346 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
18347 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
18348 to see which one get the next lump of cash).  The "winner" get 50
18349 BitCoin when this happen.  Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
18350 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
18351 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
18352 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the 50
18353 BitCoins.  Check out
18354 <a href="http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/">BitCoin Pool</a>
18355 if this sounds interesting.  I have not had time to try to set up a
18356 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
18357 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
18358 yet.</p>
18359
18360 <p>Update 2010-12-15: Found an <a
18361 href="http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi">interesting
18362 criticism</a> of bitcoin.  Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
18363 it was interesting to read.  The arguments presented seem to be
18364 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.</p>
18365
18366       </div>
18367       <div class="tags">
18368
18369
18370         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>.
18371
18372
18373       </div>
18374     </div>
18375     <div class="padding"></div>
18376
18377     <div class="entry">
18378       <div class="title">
18379         <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>
18380       </div>
18381       <div class="date">
18382         10th December 2010
18383       </div>
18384       <div class="body">
18385         <p>With this weeks lawless
18386 <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html">governmental
18387 attacks</a> on Wikileak and
18388 <a href="http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech">free
18389 speech</a>, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
18390 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
18391 A blog post from
18392 <a href="http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/">Simon
18393 Phipps on bitcoin</a> reminded me about a project that a friend of
18394 mine mentioned earlier.  I decided to follow Simon's example, and get
18395 involved with <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>.  I got
18396 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
18397 some bitcoins to get started.  I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
18398 for helping me remember BitCoin.</p>
18399
18400 <p>So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder?  It is a digital
18401 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
18402 networks.  It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
18403 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
18404 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions.  The
18405 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets 2.9
18406 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
18407 line client builds just fine.  Hopefully Jonas
18408 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/578157">will get the package into
18409 Debian</a> soon.</p>
18410
18411 <p>Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
18412 There are <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/trade">companies accepting
18413 bitcoins</a> when selling services and goods, and there are even
18414 currency "stock" markets where the exchange rate is decided.  There
18415 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising.  If you
18416 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
18417 you can even get
18418 <a href="https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/">some for free</a> (0.05
18419 bitcoin at the time of writing).  Use
18420 <a href="http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/">BitcoinWatch</a> to keep an eye
18421 on the current exchange rates.</p>
18422
18423 <p>As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
18424 machines.  If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
18425 donations to the address
18426 <b>15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</b>.  Thank you!</p>
18427
18428       </div>
18429       <div class="tags">
18430
18431
18432         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>.
18433
18434
18435       </div>
18436     </div>
18437     <div class="padding"></div>
18438
18439     <div class="entry">
18440       <div class="title">
18441         <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>
18442       </div>
18443       <div class="date">
18444          9th December 2010
18445       </div>
18446       <div class="body">
18447         <p>A few days ago, I was introduces to some students in the robot
18448 student assosiation <a href="http://www.robotica.no/">Robotica
18449 Osloensis</a> at the University of Oslo where I work, who planned to
18450 get their own 3D printer.  They wanted to learn from me based on my
18451 work in the area.  After having a short lunch meeting with them, I
18452 offered them to borrow my reprap kit, as I never had time to complete
18453 the build and this seem unlike to change any time soon.  I look
18454 forward to see how this goes.  This monday their volunteer driver
18455 picked up my kit and drove it to their lab, and tomorrow I am told the
18456 last exam is over so they can start work on getting the 3D printer
18457 operational.</p>
18458
18459 <p>The robotic group have already build several robots on their own,
18460 and seem capable of getting the reprap operational.  I really look
18461 forward to being able to print all the cool 3D designs published on
18462 <a href="http://www.thingiverse.com/">Thingiverse</a>.  I even got
18463 some 3D scans I got made during Dagen@IFI when one of the groups at
18464 the computer science department at the university demonstrated their
18465 very cool 3D scanner.</p>
18466
18467       </div>
18468       <div class="tags">
18469
18470
18471         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>.
18472
18473
18474       </div>
18475     </div>
18476     <div class="padding"></div>
18477
18478     <div class="entry">
18479       <div class="title">
18480         <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>
18481       </div>
18482       <div class="date">
18483         29th November 2010
18484       </div>
18485       <div class="body">
18486         <p>On friday, the first Debian Edu / Skolelinux
18487 <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2010-12-03-05-Oslo">development
18488 gathering</a> in a long time take place here in Oslo, Norway.  I
18489 really look forward to seeing all the good people working on the
18490 Squeeze release.  The gathering is open for everyone interested in
18491 learning more about Debian Edu / Skolelinux.</p>
18492
18493 <p>On Saturday, the Norwegian member organization taking care of
18494 organizing these development gatherings, Fri Programvare i Skolen,
18495 will hold its
18496 <a href="http://friprogramvareiskolen.no/Genfors/2010">General Assembly
18497 for 2010</a>.  Membership is open for all, and currently there are 388
18498 people registered as members.  Last year 32 members cast their vote in
18499 the memberdb based election system.  I hope more people find time to
18500 vote this year.</p>
18501
18502       </div>
18503       <div class="tags">
18504
18505
18506         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>.
18507
18508
18509       </div>
18510     </div>
18511     <div class="padding"></div>
18512
18513     <div class="entry">
18514       <div class="title">
18515         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html">Why isn't Debian Edu using VLC?</a>
18516       </div>
18517       <div class="date">
18518         27th November 2010
18519       </div>
18520       <div class="body">
18521         <p>In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
18522 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
18523 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
18524 to play a video file or stream.  Only if VLC fail will I drag out
18525 gmplayer to see if it can do better.  The reason is mostly the failure
18526 model and trust.  When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
18527 reporting the problem.  When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
18528 just hangs.  The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.<p>
18529
18530 <p>But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
18531 mplayer in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
18532 Edu/Skolelinux</a>.  The reason is simple.  We need a good browser
18533 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
18534 not very good.  For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
18535 is no way for the user to pause the video.  Also, when I
18536 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">last
18537 tested the browser plugins</a> available in Debian, the VLC plugin
18538 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked.  If
18539 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
18540 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.</P>
18541
18542 <p>While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
18543 annoying.  The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
18544 keyboard shortcuts.  When the player is in full screen mode, its
18545 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
18546 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode.  I
18547 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
18548 window mode.  Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
18549 the current video.  It is very nice when playing short videos from the
18550 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
18551 what is going on.</p>
18552
18553       </div>
18554       <div class="tags">
18555
18556
18557         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>.
18558
18559
18560       </div>
18561     </div>
18562     <div class="padding"></div>
18563
18564     <div class="entry">
18565       <div class="title">
18566         <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>
18567       </div>
18568       <div class="date">
18569         22nd November 2010
18570       </div>
18571       <div class="body">
18572         <p>Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
18573 upgrade testing of the
18574 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
18575 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a> to do <tt>apt-get autoremove</tt> when using apt-get.
18576 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
18577 can now present the updated result from today:</p>
18578
18579 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
18580
18581 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
18582
18583 <blockquote><p>
18584   apache2.2-bin
18585   aptdaemon
18586   baobab
18587   binfmt-support
18588   browser-plugin-gnash
18589   cheese-common
18590   cli-common
18591   cups-pk-helper
18592   dmz-cursor-theme
18593   empathy
18594   empathy-common
18595   freedesktop-sound-theme
18596   freeglut3
18597   gconf-defaults-service
18598   gdm-themes
18599   gedit-plugins
18600   geoclue
18601   geoclue-hostip
18602   geoclue-localnet
18603   geoclue-manual
18604   geoclue-yahoo
18605   gnash
18606   gnash-common
18607   gnome
18608   gnome-backgrounds
18609   gnome-cards-data
18610   gnome-codec-install
18611   gnome-core
18612   gnome-desktop-environment
18613   gnome-disk-utility
18614   gnome-screenshot
18615   gnome-search-tool
18616   gnome-session-canberra
18617   gnome-system-log
18618   gnome-themes-extras
18619   gnome-themes-more
18620   gnome-user-share
18621   gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
18622   gstreamer0.10-tools
18623   gtk2-engines
18624   gtk2-engines-pixbuf
18625   gtk2-engines-smooth
18626   hamster-applet
18627   libapache2-mod-dnssd
18628   libapr1
18629   libaprutil1
18630   libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
18631   libaprutil1-ldap
18632   libart2.0-cil
18633   libboost-date-time1.42.0
18634   libboost-python1.42.0
18635   libboost-thread1.42.0
18636   libchamplain-0.4-0
18637   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0
18638   libcheese-gtk18
18639   libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
18640   libcryptui0
18641   libdiscid0
18642   libelf1
18643   libepc-1.0-2
18644   libepc-common
18645   libepc-ui-1.0-2
18646   libfreerdp-plugins-standard
18647   libfreerdp0
18648   libgconf2.0-cil
18649   libgdata-common
18650   libgdata7
18651   libgdu-gtk0
18652   libgee2
18653   libgeoclue0
18654   libgexiv2-0
18655   libgif4
18656   libglade2.0-cil
18657   libglib2.0-cil
18658   libgmime2.4-cil
18659   libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
18660   libgnome2.24-cil
18661   libgnomepanel2.24-cil
18662   libgpod-common
18663   libgpod4
18664   libgtk2.0-cil
18665   libgtkglext1
18666   libgtksourceview2.0-common
18667   libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
18668   libmono-addins0.2-cil
18669   libmono-cairo2.0-cil
18670   libmono-corlib2.0-cil
18671   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
18672   libmono-posix2.0-cil
18673   libmono-security2.0-cil
18674   libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
18675   libmono-system2.0-cil
18676   libmtp8
18677   libmusicbrainz3-6
18678   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
18679   libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
18680   libopal3.6.8
18681   libpolkit-gtk-1-0
18682   libpt2.6.7
18683   libpython2.6
18684   librpm1
18685   librpmio1
18686   libsdl1.2debian
18687   libsrtp0
18688   libssh-4
18689   libtelepathy-farsight0
18690   libtelepathy-glib0
18691   libtidy-0.99-0
18692   media-player-info
18693   mesa-utils
18694   mono-2.0-gac
18695   mono-gac
18696   mono-runtime
18697   nautilus-sendto
18698   nautilus-sendto-empathy
18699   p7zip-full
18700   pkg-config
18701   python-aptdaemon
18702   python-aptdaemon-gtk
18703   python-axiom
18704   python-beautifulsoup
18705   python-bugbuddy
18706   python-clientform
18707   python-coherence
18708   python-configobj
18709   python-crypto
18710   python-cupshelpers
18711   python-elementtree
18712   python-epsilon
18713   python-evolution
18714   python-feedparser
18715   python-gdata
18716   python-gdbm
18717   python-gst0.10
18718   python-gtkglext1
18719   python-gtksourceview2
18720   python-httplib2
18721   python-louie
18722   python-mako
18723   python-markupsafe
18724   python-mechanize
18725   python-nevow
18726   python-notify
18727   python-opengl
18728   python-openssl
18729   python-pam
18730   python-pkg-resources
18731   python-pyasn1
18732   python-pysqlite2
18733   python-rdflib
18734   python-serial
18735   python-tagpy
18736   python-twisted-bin
18737   python-twisted-conch
18738   python-twisted-core
18739   python-twisted-web
18740   python-utidylib
18741   python-webkit
18742   python-xdg
18743   python-zope.interface
18744   remmina
18745   remmina-plugin-data
18746   remmina-plugin-rdp
18747   remmina-plugin-vnc
18748   rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
18749   rhythmbox-plugins
18750   rpm-common
18751   rpm2cpio
18752   seahorse-plugins
18753   shotwell
18754   software-center
18755   system-config-printer-udev
18756   telepathy-gabble
18757   telepathy-mission-control-5
18758   telepathy-salut
18759   tomboy
18760   totem
18761   totem-coherence
18762   totem-mozilla
18763   totem-plugins
18764   transmission-common
18765   xdg-user-dirs
18766   xdg-user-dirs-gtk
18767   xserver-xephyr
18768 </p></blockquote>
18769
18770 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
18771
18772 <blockquote><p>
18773   cheese
18774   ekiga
18775   eog
18776   epiphany-extensions
18777   evolution-exchange
18778   fast-user-switch-applet
18779   file-roller
18780   gcalctool
18781   gconf-editor
18782   gdm
18783   gedit
18784   gedit-common
18785   gnome-games
18786   gnome-games-data
18787   gnome-nettool
18788   gnome-system-tools
18789   gnome-themes
18790   gnuchess
18791   gucharmap
18792   guile-1.8-libs
18793   libavahi-ui0
18794   libdmx1
18795   libgalago3
18796   libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
18797   libgtksourceview2.0-0
18798   liblircclient0
18799   libsdl1.2debian-alsa
18800   libspeexdsp1
18801   libsvga1
18802   rhythmbox
18803   seahorse
18804   sound-juicer
18805   system-config-printer
18806   totem-common
18807   transmission-gtk
18808   vinagre
18809   vino
18810 </p></blockquote>
18811
18812 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
18813
18814 <blockquote><p>
18815   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
18816 </p></blockquote>
18817
18818 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
18819
18820 <blockquote><p>
18821 [nothing]
18822 </p></blockquote>
18823
18824 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
18825
18826 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
18827
18828 <blockquote><p>
18829   ksmserver
18830 </p></blockquote>
18831
18832 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
18833
18834 <blockquote><p>
18835   kwin
18836   network-manager-kde
18837 </p></blockquote>
18838
18839 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
18840
18841 <blockquote><p>
18842   arts
18843   dolphin
18844   freespacenotifier
18845   google-gadgets-gst
18846   google-gadgets-xul
18847   kappfinder
18848   kcalc
18849   kcharselect
18850   kde-core
18851   kde-plasma-desktop
18852   kde-standard
18853   kde-window-manager
18854   kdeartwork
18855   kdeartwork-emoticons
18856   kdeartwork-style
18857   kdeartwork-theme-icon
18858   kdebase
18859   kdebase-apps
18860   kdebase-workspace
18861   kdebase-workspace-bin
18862   kdebase-workspace-data
18863   kdeeject
18864   kdelibs
18865   kdeplasma-addons
18866   kdeutils
18867   kdewallpapers
18868   kdf
18869   kfloppy
18870   kgpg
18871   khelpcenter4
18872   kinfocenter
18873   konq-plugins-l10n
18874   konqueror-nsplugins
18875   kscreensaver
18876   kscreensaver-xsavers
18877   ktimer
18878   kwrite
18879   libgle3
18880   libkde4-ruby1.8
18881   libkonq5
18882   libkonq5-templates
18883   libnetpbm10
18884   libplasma-ruby
18885   libplasma-ruby1.8
18886   libqt4-ruby1.8
18887   marble-data
18888   marble-plugins
18889   netpbm
18890   nuvola-icon-theme
18891   plasma-dataengines-workspace
18892   plasma-desktop
18893   plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
18894   plasma-runners-addons
18895   plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
18896   plasma-scriptengine-python
18897   plasma-scriptengine-qedje
18898   plasma-scriptengine-ruby
18899   plasma-scriptengine-webkit
18900   plasma-scriptengines
18901   plasma-wallpapers-addons
18902   plasma-widget-folderview
18903   plasma-widget-networkmanagement
18904   ruby
18905   sweeper
18906   update-notifier-kde
18907   xscreensaver-data-extra
18908   xscreensaver-gl
18909   xscreensaver-gl-extra
18910   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
18911 </p></blockquote>
18912
18913 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
18914
18915 <blockquote><p>
18916   ark
18917   google-gadgets-common
18918   google-gadgets-qt
18919   htdig
18920   kate
18921   kdebase-bin
18922   kdebase-data
18923   kdepasswd
18924   kfind
18925   klipper
18926   konq-plugins
18927   konqueror
18928   ksysguard
18929   ksysguardd
18930   libarchive1
18931   libcln6
18932   libeet1
18933   libeina-svn-06
18934   libggadget-1.0-0b
18935   libggadget-qt-1.0-0b
18936   libgps19
18937   libkdecorations4
18938   libkephal4
18939   libkonq4
18940   libkonqsidebarplugin4a
18941   libkscreensaver5
18942   libksgrd4
18943   libksignalplotter4
18944   libkunitconversion4
18945   libkwineffects1a
18946   libmarblewidget4
18947   libntrack-qt4-1
18948   libntrack0
18949   libplasma-geolocation-interface4
18950   libplasmaclock4a
18951   libplasmagenericshell4
18952   libprocesscore4a
18953   libprocessui4a
18954   libqalculate5
18955   libqedje0a
18956   libqtruby4shared2
18957   libqzion0a
18958   libruby1.8
18959   libscim8c2a
18960   libsmokekdecore4-3
18961   libsmokekdeui4-3
18962   libsmokekfile3
18963   libsmokekhtml3
18964   libsmokekio3
18965   libsmokeknewstuff2-3
18966   libsmokeknewstuff3-3
18967   libsmokekparts3
18968   libsmokektexteditor3
18969   libsmokekutils3
18970   libsmokenepomuk3
18971   libsmokephonon3
18972   libsmokeplasma3
18973   libsmokeqtcore4-3
18974   libsmokeqtdbus4-3
18975   libsmokeqtgui4-3
18976   libsmokeqtnetwork4-3
18977   libsmokeqtopengl4-3
18978   libsmokeqtscript4-3
18979   libsmokeqtsql4-3
18980   libsmokeqtsvg4-3
18981   libsmokeqttest4-3
18982   libsmokeqtuitools4-3
18983   libsmokeqtwebkit4-3
18984   libsmokeqtxml4-3
18985   libsmokesolid3
18986   libsmokesoprano3
18987   libtaskmanager4a
18988   libtidy-0.99-0
18989   libweather-ion4a
18990   libxklavier16
18991   libxxf86misc1
18992   okteta
18993   oxygencursors
18994   plasma-dataengines-addons
18995   plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
18996   plasma-widget-lancelot
18997   plasma-widgets-addons
18998   plasma-widgets-workspace
18999   polkit-kde-1
19000   ruby1.8
19001   systemsettings
19002   update-notifier-common
19003 </p></blockquote>
19004
19005 <p>Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
19006 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
19007 differences.  I have no idea what packages should be installed after
19008 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.</p>
19009
19010       </div>
19011       <div class="tags">
19012
19013
19014         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>.
19015
19016
19017       </div>
19018     </div>
19019     <div class="padding"></div>
19020
19021     <div class="entry">
19022       <div class="title">
19023         <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>
19024       </div>
19025       <div class="date">
19026         22nd November 2010
19027       </div>
19028       <div class="body">
19029         <p>Most of the computers in use by the
19030 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux project</a>
19031 are virtual machines.  And they have been Xen machines running on a
19032 fairly old IBM eserver xseries 345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
19033 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge 2950 host machine.  This was a
19034 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
19035 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
19036 know is not supported by KVM.  So to migrate, we had to convert
19037 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.</p>
19038
19039 <p>I found
19040 <a href="http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM">a
19041 nice recipe</a> to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
19042 migration.  It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
19043 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
19044 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data.  I NFS mounted the
19045 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.</p>
19046
19047 <pre>
19048 #!/bin/sh
19049
19050 # Based on
19051 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
19052
19053 set -e
19054 set -x
19055
19056 if [ -z "$1" ] ; then
19057     echo "Usage: $0 &lt;hostname&gt;"
19058     exit 1
19059 else
19060     host="$1"
19061 fi
19062
19063 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
19064     echo "error: unable to find LVM volume for $host"
19065     exit 1
19066 fi
19067
19068 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs.  not sure why.
19069 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
19070 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
19071 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
19072
19073 img=$host.img
19074 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
19075 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
19076
19077 parted $img mklabel msdos
19078 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap 0 $disksize
19079 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
19080 parted $img set 1 boot on
19081
19082 modprobe dm-mod
19083 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
19084 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
19085
19086 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=1M
19087 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
19088 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
19089
19090 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
19091 losetup -d /dev/loop0
19092 </pre>
19093
19094 <p>The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
19095 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.</p>
19096
19097 <p>After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
19098 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-686 and
19099 set up grub to boot from the disk image.  After this, the KVM machines
19100 seem to work just fine.</p>
19101
19102       </div>
19103       <div class="tags">
19104
19105
19106         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>.
19107
19108
19109       </div>
19110     </div>
19111     <div class="padding"></div>
19112
19113     <div class="entry">
19114       <div class="title">
19115         <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>
19116       </div>
19117       <div class="date">
19118         20th November 2010
19119       </div>
19120       <div class="body">
19121         <p>I'm still running upgrade testing of the
19122 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
19123 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a>, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
19124 status.  Here is a short update based on a test I ran 20101118.</p>
19125
19126 <p>I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
19127 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
19128 can see if anything should be changed.</p>
19129
19130 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
19131
19132 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
19133
19134 <blockquote><p>
19135   apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
19136   browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-4.3 cups-pk-helper
19137   dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
19138   freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
19139   gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
19140   geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
19141   gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
19142   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
19143   gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
19144   gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
19145   gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
19146   gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
19147   gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
19148   libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
19149   libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-0 libboost-date-time1.42.0
19150   libboost-python1.42.0 libboost-thread1.42.0 libchamplain-0.4-0
19151   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
19152   libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-1.0-2
19153   libepc-common libepc-ui-1.0-2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
19154   libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
19155   libgdl-1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-0 libgif4
19156   libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
19157   libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
19158   libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
19159   libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
19160   libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
19161   libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
19162   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
19163   libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
19164   libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-6
19165   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6.8
19166   libpolkit-gtk-1-0 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
19167   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
19168   libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-4
19169   libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-0.99-0
19170   libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
19171   mono-2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
19172   nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
19173   openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-4suite-xml
19174   python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
19175   python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
19176   python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
19177   python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
19178   python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
19179   python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
19180   python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
19181   python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
19182   python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
19183   python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
19184   python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
19185   python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
19186   python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
19187   remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
19188   rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
19189   software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
19190   telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut tomboy
19191   totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
19192   transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
19193   zip
19194 </p></blockquote>
19195
19196 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
19197
19198 <blockquote><p>
19199   arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
19200   epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
19201   fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
19202   gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
19203   gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
19204   gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
19205   guile-1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
19206   libavahi-ui0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7
19207   libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
19208   libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1
19209   libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3 libfaad0 libgadu3
19210   libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
19211   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
19212   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
19213   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
19214   libgtkhtml2-0 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgtksourceview2.0-0
19215   libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
19216   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
19217   libmagick++10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
19218   libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
19219   libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9
19220   libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8
19221   libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
19222   libspeexdsp1 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libsvga1
19223   libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
19224   libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
19225   libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
19226   sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
19227   totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
19228 </p></blockquote>
19229
19230 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
19231
19232 <blockquote><p>
19233   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
19234 </p></blockquote>
19235
19236 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
19237
19238 <blockquote><p>
19239 [nothing]
19240 </p></blockquote>
19241
19242 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
19243
19244 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
19245
19246 <blockquote><p>
19247   autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-4.3 dcoprss
19248   edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
19249   ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
19250   gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
19251   kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
19252   kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
19253   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
19254   kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
19255   kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
19256   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
19257   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
19258   kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
19259   killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
19260   kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
19261   ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42.0
19262   libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
19263   libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
19264   libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
19265   libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
19266   libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
19267   libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
19268   libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
19269   libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
19270   libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
19271   lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
19272   openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
19273   parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
19274   pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
19275   speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
19276   ttf-sazanami-gothic
19277 </p></blockquote>
19278
19279 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
19280
19281 <blockquote><p>
19282   amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
19283   dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
19284   kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
19285   kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
19286   keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
19287   kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
19288   kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
19289   klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
19290   kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
19291   kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
19292   kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
19293   ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
19294   ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
19295   kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
19296   kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
19297   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
19298   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2
19299   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
19300   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
19301   libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0 libicu38
19302   libiec61883-0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
19303   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
19304   libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
19305   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
19306   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
19307   libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
19308   libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
19309   libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 librss1 libsensors3
19310   libsmbios2 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90
19311   libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
19312   mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
19313   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
19314   ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
19315 </p></blockquote>
19316
19317 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
19318
19319 <blockquote><p>
19320   dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
19321   kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
19322   kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
19323   kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
19324   netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
19325   xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
19326   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
19327 </p></blockquote>
19328
19329 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
19330
19331 <blockquote><p>
19332   kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
19333 </p></blockquote>
19334
19335       </div>
19336       <div class="tags">
19337
19338
19339         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>.
19340
19341
19342       </div>
19343     </div>
19344     <div class="padding"></div>
19345
19346     <div class="entry">
19347       <div class="title">
19348         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html">Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd</a>
19349       </div>
19350       <div class="date">
19351         20th November 2010
19352       </div>
19353       <div class="body">
19354         <p>Answering
19355 <a href="http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html">the
19356 call from the Gnash project</a> for
19357 <a href="http://www.gnashdev.org:8010">buildbot</a> slaves to test the
19358 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
19359 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
19360 Debian/Squeeze.  I hope this can help the developers in getting new
19361 releases out more often.</p>
19362
19363 <p>As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
19364 I have considered setting up a <a
19365 href="http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/">Debian/kfreebsd</a>
19366 machine as well.  I have also considered using the kfreebsd
19367 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the 5
19368 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video.  Because of this, I
19369 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
19370 kfreebsd.  Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
19371 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
19372 screen at random locations).  Have not gotten very far with the
19373 testing.  Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
19374 fatal problem.  Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
19375 useful as a file server for NUUG.  Will try to find time to set up a
19376 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.</p>
19377
19378       </div>
19379       <div class="tags">
19380
19381
19382         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>.
19383
19384
19385       </div>
19386     </div>
19387     <div class="padding"></div>
19388
19389     <div class="entry">
19390       <div class="title">
19391         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html">Debian in 3D</a>
19392       </div>
19393       <div class="date">
19394          9th November 2010
19395       </div>
19396       <div class="body">
19397         <p><img src="http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg"></p>
19398
19399 <p>3D printing is just great.  I just came across this Debian logo in
19400 3D linked in from
19401 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/">the
19402 thingiverse blog</a>.</p>
19403
19404       </div>
19405       <div class="tags">
19406
19407
19408         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>.
19409
19410
19411       </div>
19412     </div>
19413     <div class="padding"></div>
19414
19415     <div class="entry">
19416       <div class="title">
19417         <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>
19418       </div>
19419       <div class="date">
19420          7th November 2010
19421       </div>
19422       <div class="body">
19423         <p>Prioritising packages for the Debian Edu /
19424 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> DVD, which is
19425 supposed provide a school with all the services and user applications
19426 needed on the pupils computer network has always been hard.  Even
19427 schools without Internet connections should be able to get Debian Edu
19428 working using this DVD.</p>
19429
19430 <p>The job became a lot harder when apt and aptitude started
19431 installing recommended packages by default.  We want the same set of
19432 packages to be installed when using the DVD and the netinst CD, and
19433 that means all recommended packages need to be on the DVD.  I created
19434 a patch for debian-cd in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/601203">BTS
19435 report #601203</a> to do this, and since this change was applied to
19436 the Debian Edu DVD build, we have been seriously short on space.</p>
19437
19438 <p>A few days ago we decided to drop blender, wxmaxima and kicad from
19439 the default installation to save space on the DVD, believing that
19440 those needing these applications are few and can get them from the
19441 Debian archive.</p>
19442
19443 <p>Yesterday, I had a look what source packages to see which packages
19444 were using most space.  A few large packages are well know;
19445 openoffice.org, openclipart and fluid-soundfont.  But I also
19446 discovered that lilypond used 106 MiB and fglrx-driver used 53 MiB.
19447 The lilypond package is pulled in as a dependency for rosegarden, and
19448 when looking a bit closer I discovered that 99 MiB of the 106 MiB were
19449 the documentation package, which is recommended by the binary package.
19450 I decided to drop this documentation package from our DVD, as most of
19451 our users will use the GUI front-ends and do not need the lilypond
19452 documentation.  Similarly, I dropped the non-free fglrx-driver package
19453 which might be installed by d-i when its hardware is detected, as the
19454 free X driver should work.</p>
19455
19456 <p>With this change, we finally got space for the LXDE and Gnome
19457 desktop packages as well as the language specific packages making the
19458 DVD more useful again.</p>
19459
19460       </div>
19461       <div class="tags">
19462
19463
19464         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>.
19465
19466
19467       </div>
19468     </div>
19469     <div class="padding"></div>
19470
19471     <div class="entry">
19472       <div class="title">
19473         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html">Software updates 2010-10-24</a>
19474       </div>
19475       <div class="date">
19476         24th October 2010
19477       </div>
19478       <div class="body">
19479         <p>Some updates.</p>
19480
19481 <p>My <a href="http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">gnash pledge</a> to
19482 raise money for the project is going well.  The lower limit of 10
19483 signers was reached in 24 hours, and so far 13 people have signed it.
19484 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
19485 how far we can get before the time limit of December 24 is reached.
19486 :)</p>
19487
19488 <p>On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
19489 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
19490 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
19491 It is called
19492 <a href="http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html">kcov</a>,
19493 and can be used using <tt>kcov &lt;directory&gt; &lt;binary&gt;</tt>.
19494 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
19495 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
19496 libglib2.0-dev.  Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
19497 solvable.  I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.</p>
19498
19499 <p>Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for <a
19500 href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html">a
19501 new alpha release of Debian Edu</a>, and just published the second
19502 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
19503 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>
19504 release.  Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
19505 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
19506 client servers and diskless workstations.  A nice touch added
19507 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
19508 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.</p>
19509
19510       </div>
19511       <div class="tags">
19512
19513
19514         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>.
19515
19516
19517       </div>
19518     </div>
19519     <div class="padding"></div>
19520
19521     <div class="entry">
19522       <div class="title">
19523         <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>
19524       </div>
19525       <div class="date">
19526         19th October 2010
19527       </div>
19528       <div class="body">
19529         <p><a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">The Gnash project</a> is the
19530 most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation. It
19531 has done great so far, but there is still far to go, and recently its
19532 funding has dried up.  I believe AVM2 support in Gnash is vital to the
19533 continued progress of the project, as more and more sites show up with
19534 AVM2 flash files.</p>
19535
19536 <p>To try to get funding for developing such support, I have started
19537 <a href="http://www.pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">a pledge</a> with the
19538 following text:</P>
19539
19540 <p><blockquote>
19541
19542   <p>"I will pay 100$ to the Gnash project to develop AVM2 support but
19543   only if 10 other people will do the same."</p>
19544
19545   <p>- Petter Reinholdtsen, free software developer</p>
19546
19547   <p>Deadline to sign up by: 24th December 2010</p>
19548
19549   <p>The Gnash project need to get support for the new Flash file
19550   format AVM2 to work with a lot of sites using Flash on the
19551   web. Gnash already work with a lot of Flash sites using the old AVM1
19552   format, but more and more sites are using the AVM2 format these
19553   days. The project web page is available from
19554   http://www.getgnash.org/ . Gnash is a free software implementation
19555   of Adobe Flash, allowing those of us that do not accept the terms of
19556   the Adobe Flash license to get access to Flash sites.</p>
19557
19558   <p>The project need funding to get developers to put aside enough
19559   time to develop the AVM2 support, and this pledge is my way to try
19560   to get this to happen.</p>
19561
19562   <p>The project accept donations via the OpenMediaNow foundation,
19563   <a href="http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32">http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32</a> .</p>
19564
19565 </blockquote></p>
19566
19567 <p>I hope you will support this effort too.  I hope more than 10
19568 people will participate to make this happen.  The more money the
19569 project gets, the more features it can develop using these funds.
19570 :)</p>
19571
19572       </div>
19573       <div class="tags">
19574
19575
19576         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>.
19577
19578
19579       </div>
19580     </div>
19581     <div class="padding"></div>
19582
19583     <div class="entry">
19584       <div class="title">
19585         <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>
19586       </div>
19587       <div class="date">
19588          9th October 2010
19589       </div>
19590       <div class="body">
19591         <p>This summer I got the chance to buy cheap Spykee robots, and since
19592 then I have worked on getting Linux software in place to control them.
19593 The firmware for the robot is available from the producer, and using
19594 that source it was trivial to figure out the protocol specification.
19595 I've started on a perl library to control it, and made some demo
19596 programs using this perl library to allow one to control the
19597 robots.</p>
19598
19599 <p>The library is quite functional already, and capable of controlling
19600 the driving, fetching video, uploading MP3s and play them.  There are
19601 a few less important features too.</p>
19602
19603 <p>Since a few weeks ago, I ran out of time to spend on this project,
19604 but I never got around to releasing the current source.  I decided
19605 today that it was time to do something about it, and uploaded the
19606 source to my Debian package store at people.skolelinux.org.</p>
19607
19608 <p>Because it was simpler for me, I made a Debian package and
19609 published the source and deb.  If you got a spykee robot, grab the
19610 source or binary package:</p>
19611
19612 <p><ul>
19613 <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>
19614 <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>
19615 <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>
19616 </ul></p>
19617
19618 <p>If you are interested in helping out with developing this library,
19619 please let me know.</p>
19620
19621       </div>
19622       <div class="tags">
19623
19624
19625         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>.
19626
19627
19628       </div>
19629     </div>
19630     <div class="padding"></div>
19631
19632     <div class="entry">
19633       <div class="title">
19634         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Links_for_2010_10_03.html">Links for 2010-10-03</a>
19635       </div>
19636       <div class="date">
19637          3rd October 2010
19638       </div>
19639       <div class="body">
19640         <p><ul>
19641
19642 <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
19643 is no Plan B: why the IPv4-to-IPv6 transition will be ugly</a></li>
19644
19645 <li>Scanner looking under clothes
19646 <a href="http://www.dagbladet.no/2010/10/03/nyheter/utenriks/reise/overvakingskamera/flyplasser/13667192/">has
19647 already been misused at Heathrow</a>.</li>
19648
19649 <li><a href="http://wiki.softwarelivre.org/Landell">Landell
19650 Webcasting</a> - interesting alternative for
19651 <ahref="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/wiki/">DVSwitch</a> with
19652 simple setup.
19653
19654 </ul></p>
19655
19656       </div>
19657       <div class="tags">
19658
19659
19660         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>.
19661
19662
19663       </div>
19664     </div>
19665     <div class="padding"></div>
19666
19667     <div class="entry">
19668       <div class="title">
19669         <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>
19670       </div>
19671       <div class="date">
19672          9th September 2010
19673       </div>
19674       <div class="body">
19675         <p>A few days ago I had the mixed pleasure of bying a new digital
19676 camera, a Canon IXUS 130.  It was instructive and very disturbing to
19677 be able to verify that also this camera producer have the nerve to
19678 specify how I can or can not use the videos produced with the camera.
19679 Even thought I was aware of the issue, the options with new cameras
19680 are limited and I ended up bying the camera anyway.  What is the
19681 problem, you might ask?  It is software patents, MPEG-4, H.264 and the
19682 MPEG-LA that is the problem, and our right to record our experiences
19683 without asking for permissions that is at risk.
19684
19685 <p>On page 27 of the Danish instruction manual, this section is
19686 written:</p>
19687
19688 <blockquote>
19689 <p>This product is licensed under AT&T patents for the MPEG-4 standard
19690 and may be used for encoding MPEG-4 compliant video and/or decoding
19691 MPEG-4 compliant video that was encoded only (1) for a personal and
19692 non-commercial purpose or (2) by a video provider licensed under the
19693 AT&T patents to provide MPEG-4 compliant video.</p>
19694
19695 <p>No license is granted or implied for any other use for MPEG-4
19696 standard.</p>
19697 </blockquote>
19698
19699 <p>In short, the camera producer have chosen to use technology
19700 (MPEG-4/H.264) that is only provided if I used it for personal and
19701 non-commercial purposes, or ask for permission from the organisations
19702 holding the knowledge monopoly (patent) for technology used.</p>
19703
19704 <p>This issue has been brewing for a while, and I recommend you to
19705 read
19706 "<a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/23236/Why_Our_Civilization_s_Video_Art_and_Culture_is_Threatened_by_the_MPEG-LA">Why
19707 Our Civilization's Video Art and Culture is Threatened by the
19708 MPEG-LA</a>" by Eugenia Loli-Queru and
19709 "<a href="http://webmink.com/2010/09/03/h-264-and-foss/">H.264 Is Not
19710 The Sort Of Free That Matters</a>" by Simon Phipps to learn more about
19711 the issue.  The solution is to support the
19712 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and
19713 open standards</a> for video, like <a href="http://www.theora.org/">Ogg
19714 Theora</a>, and avoid MPEG-4 and H.264 if you can.</p>
19715
19716       </div>
19717       <div class="tags">
19718
19719
19720         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/h264">h264</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>.
19721
19722
19723       </div>
19724     </div>
19725     <div class="padding"></div>
19726
19727     <div class="entry">
19728       <div class="title">
19729         <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>
19730       </div>
19731       <div class="date">
19732          4th September 2010
19733       </div>
19734       <div class="body">
19735         <p>In the <a href="http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote">Debian
19736 popularity-contest numbers</a>, the adobe-flashplugin package the
19737 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian.  The sixth
19738 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla.  This is a clear indication that
19739 working flash is important for Debian users.  Around 10 percent of the
19740 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
19741 installed.</p>
19742
19743 <p>In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
19744 («<a href="http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf">Skolelinux
19745 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
19746 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs</a>»), one of the most important problems
19747 schools experienced with <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
19748 Edu/Skolelinux</a> was the lack of working Flash.  A lot of educational
19749 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
19750 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
19751 good reason to stay with Windows.</p>
19752
19753 <p>I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
19754 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
19755 everything you told him but could work fairly well.  This was a
19756 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
19757 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
19758 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
19759 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
19760 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
19761 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
19762 pages they want to visit.</p>
19763
19764 <p>This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
19765 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
19766 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
19767 Video to working out of the box.  For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
19768 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
19769 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
19770 unstable.  The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
19771 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
19772 release team have not had time to reply to it yet.  I hope they agree
19773 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
19774 accept the new package into Squeeze.</p>
19775
19776       </div>
19777       <div class="tags">
19778
19779
19780         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>.
19781
19782
19783       </div>
19784     </div>
19785     <div class="padding"></div>
19786
19787     <div class="entry">
19788       <div class="title">
19789         <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>
19790       </div>
19791       <div class="date">
19792          1st September 2010
19793       </div>
19794       <div class="body">
19795         <p>This evening I made my first Perl GUI application.  The last few
19796 days I have worked on a Perl module for controlling my recently
19797 aquired Spykee robots, and the module is now getting complete enought
19798 that it is possible to use it to control the robot driving at least.
19799 It was now time to figure out how to use it to create some GUI to
19800 allow me to drive the robot around.  I picked PerlQt as I have had
19801 positive experiences with the Qt API before, and spent a few minutes
19802 browsing the web for examples.  Using Qt Designer seemed like a short
19803 cut, so I ended up writing the perl GUI using Qt Designer and
19804 compiling it into a perl program using the puic program from
19805 libqt-perl.  Nothing fancy yet, but it got buttons to connect and
19806 drive around.</p>
19807
19808 <p>The perl module I have written provide a object oriented API for
19809 controlling the robot.  Here is an small example on how to use it:</p>
19810
19811 <p><pre>
19812 use Spykee;
19813 Spykee::discover(sub {$robot{$_[0]} = $_[1]});
19814 my $host = (keys %robot)[0];
19815 my $spykee = Spykee->new();
19816 $spykee->contact($host, "admin", "admin");
19817 $spykee->left();
19818 sleep 2;
19819 $spykee->right();
19820 sleep 2;
19821 $spykee->forward();
19822 sleep 2;
19823 $spykee->back();
19824 sleep 2;
19825 $spykee->stop();
19826 </pre></p>
19827
19828 <p>Thanks to the release of the source of the robot firmware, I could
19829 peek into the implementation at the other end to figure out how to
19830 implement the protocol used by the robot.  I've implemented several of
19831 the commands the robot understand, but is still missing the camera
19832 support to make it possible to control the robot from remote.  First I
19833 want to implement support for uploading new firmware and configuring
19834 the wireless network, to make it possible to bootstrap a Spykee robot
19835 without the producers Windows and MacOSX software (I only have Linux,
19836 so I had to ask a friend to come over to get the robot testing
19837 going. :).</p>
19838
19839 <p>Will release the source to the public soon, but need to figure out
19840 where to make it available first.  I will add a link to
19841 <a href="http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/robot/">the NUUG wiki</a> for
19842 those that want to check back later to find it.</p>
19843
19844       </div>
19845       <div class="tags">
19846
19847
19848         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>.
19849
19850
19851       </div>
19852     </div>
19853     <div class="padding"></div>
19854
19855     <div class="entry">
19856       <div class="title">
19857         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_hard_link_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken hard link handling with sshfs</a>
19858       </div>
19859       <div class="date">
19860         30th August 2010
19861       </div>
19862       <div class="body">
19863         <p>Just got an email from Tobias Gruetzmacher as a followup on my
19864 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">previous
19865 post about sshfs</a>.  He reported another problem with sshfs.  It
19866 fail to handle hard links properly.  A simple way to spot this is to
19867 look at the . and .. entries in the directory tree.  These should have
19868 a link count >1, but on sshfs the count is 1.  I just tested to see
19869 what happen when trying to hardlink, and this fail as well:</p>
19870
19871 <pre>
19872 % ln foo bar
19873 ln: creating hard link `bar' => `foo': Function not implemented
19874 %
19875 </pre>
19876
19877 <p>I have not yet found time to implement a test for this in my file
19878 system test code, but believe having working hard links is useful to
19879 avoid surprised unix programs.  Not as useful as working file locking
19880 and symlinks, which are required to get a working desktop, but useful
19881 nevertheless. :)</p>
19882
19883 <p>The latest version of the file system test code is available via
19884 git from
19885 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a></p>
19886
19887       </div>
19888       <div class="tags">
19889
19890
19891         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>.
19892
19893
19894       </div>
19895     </div>
19896     <div class="padding"></div>
19897
19898     <div class="entry">
19899       <div class="title">
19900         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken umask handling with sshfs</a>
19901       </div>
19902       <div class="date">
19903         26th August 2010
19904       </div>
19905       <div class="body">
19906         <p>My file system sematics program
19907 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">presented
19908 a few days ago</a> is very useful to verify that a file system can
19909 work as a unix home directory,and today I had to extend it a bit.  I'm
19910 looking into alternatives for home directory access here at the
19911 University of Oslo, and one of the options is sshfs.  My friend
19912 Finn-Arne mentioned a while back that they had used sshfs with Debian
19913 Edu, but stopped because of problems.  I asked today what the problems
19914 where, and he mentioned that sshfs failed to handle umask properly.
19915 Trying to detect the problem I wrote this addition to my fs testing
19916 script:</p>
19917
19918 <pre>
19919 mode_t touch_get_mode(const char *name, mode_t mode) {
19920   mode_t retval = 0;
19921   int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, mode);
19922   if (-1 != fd) {
19923     unlink(name);
19924     struct stat statbuf;
19925     if (-1 != fstat(fd, &statbuf)) {
19926       retval = statbuf.st_mode & 0x1ff;
19927     }
19928     close(fd);
19929   }
19930   return retval;
19931 }
19932
19933 /* Try to detect problem discovered using sshfs */
19934 int test_umask(void) {
19935   printf("info: testing umask effect on file creation\n");
19936
19937   mode_t orig_umask = umask(000);
19938   mode_t newmode;
19939   if (0666 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar", 0666))) {
19940     printf("  error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode 666 and umask 000\n",
19941            newmode);
19942   }
19943   umask(007);
19944   if (0660 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar", 0666))) {
19945     printf("  error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode 666 and umask 007\n",
19946            newmode);
19947   }
19948
19949   umask (orig_umask);
19950   return 0;
19951 }
19952
19953 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
19954   [...]
19955   test_umask();
19956   return 0;
19957 }
19958 </pre>
19959
19960 <p>Sure enough.  On NFS to a netapp, I get this result:</p>
19961
19962 <pre>
19963 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
19964 info: testing symlink creation
19965 info: testing subdirectory creation
19966 info: testing fcntl locking
19967   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
19968   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
19969   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
19970   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
19971   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
19972   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
19973 info: testing umask effect on file creation
19974 </pre>
19975
19976 <p>When mounting the same directory using sshfs, I get this
19977 result:</p>
19978
19979 <pre>
19980 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
19981 info: testing symlink creation
19982 info: testing subdirectory creation
19983 info: testing fcntl locking
19984   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
19985   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
19986   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
19987   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
19988   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
19989   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
19990 info: testing umask effect on file creation
19991   error: Wrong file mode 644 when creating using mode 666 and umask 000
19992   error: Wrong file mode 640 when creating using mode 666 and umask 007
19993 </pre>
19994
19995 <p>So, I can conclude that sshfs is better than smb to a Netapp or a
19996 Windows server, but not good enough to be used as a home
19997 directory.</p>
19998
19999 <p>Update 2010-08-26: Reported the issue in
20000 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/594498">BTS report #594498</a></p>
20001
20002 <p>Update 2010-08-27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
20003 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
20004 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a>.</p>
20005
20006       </div>
20007       <div class="tags">
20008
20009
20010         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>.
20011
20012
20013       </div>
20014     </div>
20015     <div class="padding"></div>
20016
20017     <div class="entry">
20018       <div class="title">
20019         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Rob_Weir__How_to_Crush_Dissent.html">Rob Weir: How to Crush Dissent</a>
20020       </div>
20021       <div class="date">
20022         15th August 2010
20023       </div>
20024       <div class="body">
20025         <p>I found the notes from Rob Weir on
20026 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/VGb23-kta8c/how-to-crush-dissent.html">how
20027 to crush dissent</a> matching my own thoughts on the matter quite
20028 well.  Highly recommended for those wondering which road our society
20029 should go down.  In my view we have been heading the wrong way for a
20030 long time.</p>
20031
20032       </div>
20033       <div class="tags">
20034
20035
20036         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>.
20037
20038
20039       </div>
20040     </div>
20041     <div class="padding"></div>
20042
20043     <div class="entry">
20044       <div class="title">
20045         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/No_hardcoded_config_on_Debian_Edu_clients.html">No hardcoded config on Debian Edu clients</a>
20046       </div>
20047       <div class="date">
20048          9th August 2010
20049       </div>
20050       <div class="body">
20051         <p>As reported earlier, the last few days I have looked at how Debian
20052 Edu clients are configured, and tried to get rid of all hardcoded
20053 configuration settings on the clients.  I believe the work to be
20054 mostly done, and the clients seem to work just fine with dynamically
20055 generated configuration.</p>
20056
20057 <p>What is the point, you might ask?  The point is to allow a Debian
20058 Edu desktop to integrate into an existing network infrastructure
20059 without any manual configuration.</p>
20060
20061 <p>This is what happens when installing a Debian Edu client here at
20062 the University of Oslo using PXE.  With the PXE installation, I am
20063 asked for language (Norwegian Bokmål), locality (Norway) and keyboard
20064 layout (no-latin1), Debian Edu profile (Roaming Workstation), if I
20065 accept to reformat the hard drive (yes), if I want to submit info to
20066 popcon.debian.org (no) and root password (secret).  After answering
20067 these questions, the installer goes ahead and does its thing, and
20068 after around 50 minutes it is done.  I press enter to finish the
20069 installation, and the machine reboots into KDE.  When the machine is
20070 ready and kdm asks for login information, I enter my university
20071 username and password, am told by kdm that a local home directory has
20072 been created and that I must log in again, and finally log in with the
20073 same username and password to the KDE 4.4 desktop.  At no point during
20074 this process did it ask for university specific settings, and all the
20075 required configuration was dynamically detected using information
20076 fetched via DHCP and DNS.  The roaming workstation is now ready for
20077 use.</p>
20078
20079 <p>How was this done, you might wonder?  First of all, here is the
20080 list of things that need to be configured on the client to get it
20081 working properly out of the box:</p>
20082
20083 <ul>
20084 <li>IP address/netmask and DNS server.</li>
20085 <li>Web proxy URL.</li>
20086 <li>LDAP server for NSS directory information (user, group, etc).</li>
20087 <li>Kerberos server for PAM password checking.</li>
20088 <li>SMB mount point to access the network home directory. (*)</li>
20089 <li>Central syslog server to send syslog messages to. (*)</li>
20090 <li>Sitesummary collector URL to submit info to central server. (*)</li>
20091 </ul>
20092
20093 <p>(Hm, did I forget anything?  Let me knew if I did.)</p>
20094
20095 <p>The points marked (*) are not required to be able to use the
20096 machine, but needed to provide central storage and allowing system
20097 administrators to track their machines.  Since yesterday, everything
20098 but the sitesummary collector URL is dynamically discovered at boot
20099 and installation time in the svn version of Debian Edu.</p>
20100
20101 <p>The IP and DNS setup is fetched during boot using DHCP as usual.
20102 When a DHCP update arrives, the proxy setup is updated by looking for
20103 http://wpat/wpad.dat and using the content of this WPAD file to
20104 configure the http and ftp proxy in /etc/environment and
20105 /etc/apt/apt.conf.  I decided to update the proxy setup using a DHCP
20106 hook to ensure that the client stops using the Debian Edu proxy when
20107 it is moved outside the Debian Edu network, and instead uses any local
20108 proxy present on the new network when it moves around.</p>
20109
20110 <p>The DNS names of the LDAP, Kerberos and syslog server and related
20111 configuration are generated using DNS information at boot.  First the
20112 installer looks for a host named ldap in the current DNS domain.  If
20113 not found, it looks for _ldap._tcp SRV records in DNS instead.  If an
20114 LDAP server is found, its root DSE entry is requested and the
20115 attributes namingContexts and defaultNamingContext are used to
20116 determine which LDAP base to use for NSS.  If there are several
20117 namingContexts attibutes and the defaultNamingContext is present, that
20118 LDAP subtree is used as the base.  If defaultNamingContext is missing,
20119 the subtrees listed as namingContexts are searched in sequence for any
20120 object with class posixAccount or posixGroup, and the first one with
20121 such an object is used as the LDAP base.  For Kerberos, a similar
20122 search is done by first looking for a host named kerberos, and then
20123 for the _kerberos._tcp SRV record.  I've been unable to find a way to
20124 look up the Kerberos realm, so for this the upper case string of the
20125 current DNS domain is used.</p>
20126
20127 <p>For the syslog server, the hosts syslog and loghost are searched
20128 for, and the _syslog._udp SRV record is consulted if no such host is
20129 found.  This algorithm works for both Debian Edu and the University of
20130 Oslo.  A similar strategy would work for locating the sitesummary
20131 server, but have not been implemented yet.  I decided to fetch and
20132 save these settings during installation, to make sure moving to a
20133 different network does not change the set of users being allowed to
20134 log in nor the passwords required to log in.  Usernames and passwords
20135 will be cached by sssd when the user logs in on the Debian Edu
20136 network, and will not change as the laptop move around.  For a
20137 non-roaming machine, there is no caching, but given that it is
20138 supposed to stay in place it should not matter much.  Perhaps we
20139 should switch those to use sssd too?</p>
20140
20141 <p>The user's SMB mount point for the network home directory is
20142 located when the user logs in for the first time.  The LDAP server is
20143 consulted to look for the user's LDAP object and the sambaHomePath
20144 attribute is used if found.  If it isn't found, the home directory
20145 path fetched from NSS is used instead.  Assuming the path is of the
20146 form /site/server/directory/username, the second part is looked up in
20147 DNS and used to generate a SMB URL of the form
20148 smb://server.domain/username.  This algorithm works for both Debian
20149 edu and the University of Oslo.  Perhaps there are better attributes
20150 to use or a better algorithm that works for more sites, but this will
20151 do for now. :)</p>
20152
20153 <p>This work should make it easier to integrate the Debian Edu clients
20154 into any LDAP/Kerberos infrastructure, and make the current setup even
20155 more flexible than before.  I suspect it will also work for thin
20156 client servers, allowing one to easily set up LTSP and hook it into a
20157 existing network infrastructure, but I have not had time to test this
20158 yet.</p>
20159
20160 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
20161 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
20162
20163 <p>Update 2010-08-09: Simon Farnsworth gave me a heads-up on how to
20164 detect Kerberos realm from DNS, by looking for _kerberos TXT entries
20165 before falling back to the upper case DNS domain name.  Will have to
20166 implement it for Debian Edu. :)</p>
20167
20168       </div>
20169       <div class="tags">
20170
20171
20172         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>.
20173
20174
20175       </div>
20176     </div>
20177     <div class="padding"></div>
20178
20179     <div class="entry">
20180       <div class="title">
20181         <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>
20182       </div>
20183       <div class="date">
20184          8th August 2010
20185       </div>
20186       <div class="body">
20187         <p>A few years ago, I was involved in a project planning to use
20188 Windows file servers as home directory servers for Debian
20189 Edu/Skolelinux machines.  This was thought to be no problem, as the
20190 access would be through the SMB network file system protocol, and we
20191 knew other sites used SMB with unix and samba as the file server to
20192 mount home directories without any problems.  But, after months of
20193 struggling, we had to conclude that our goal was impossible.</p>
20194
20195 <p>The reason is simply that while SMB can be used for home
20196 directories when the file server is Samba running on Unix, this only
20197 work because of Samba have some extensions and the fact that the
20198 underlying file system is a unix file system.  When using a Windows
20199 file server, the underlying file system do not have POSIX semantics,
20200 and several programs will fail if the users home directory where they
20201 want to store their configuration lack POSIX semantics.</p>
20202
20203 <p>As part of this work, I wrote a small C program I want to share
20204 with you all, to replicate a few of the problematic applications (like
20205 OpenOffice.org and GCompris) and see if the file system was working as
20206 it should.  If you find yourself in spooky file system land, it might
20207 help you find your way out again.  This is the fs-test.c source:</p>
20208
20209 <pre>
20210 /*
20211  * Some tests to check the file system sematics.  Used to verify that
20212  * CIFS from a windows server do not work properly as a linux home
20213  * directory.
20214  * License: GPL v2 or later
20215  *
20216  * needs libsqlite3-dev and build-essential installed
20217  * compile with: gcc -Wall -lsqlite3 -DTEST_SQLITE fs-test.c -o fs-test
20218 */
20219
20220 #define _FILE_OFFSET_BITS 64
20221 #define _LARGEFILE_SOURCE 1
20222 #define _LARGEFILE64_SOURCE 1
20223
20224 #define _GNU_SOURCE /* for asprintf() */
20225
20226 #include &lt;errno.h>
20227 #include &lt;fcntl.h>
20228 #include &lt;stdio.h>
20229 #include &lt;string.h>
20230 #include &lt;stdlib.h>
20231 #include &lt;sys/file.h>
20232 #include &lt;sys/stat.h>
20233 #include &lt;sys/types.h>
20234 #include &lt;unistd.h>
20235
20236 #ifdef TEST_SQLITE
20237 /*
20238  * Test sqlite open, as done by gcompris require the libsqlite3-dev
20239  * package and linking with -lsqlite3.  A more low level test is
20240  * below.
20241  * See also &lt;URL: http://www.sqlite.org./faq.html#q5 >.
20242  */
20243 #include &lt;sqlite3.h>
20244 #define CREATE_TABLE_USERS                                              \
20245   "CREATE TABLE users (user_id INT UNIQUE, login TEXT, lastname TEXT, firstname TEXT, birthdate TEXT, class_id INT ); "
20246 int test_sqlite_open(void) {
20247   char *zErrMsg;
20248   char *name = "testsqlite.db";
20249   sqlite3 *db=NULL;
20250   unlink(name);
20251   int rc = sqlite3_open(name, &db);
20252   if( rc ){
20253     printf("error: sqlite open of %s failed: %s\n", name, sqlite3_errmsg(db));
20254     sqlite3_close(db);
20255     return -1;
20256   }
20257
20258   /* create tables */
20259   rc = sqlite3_exec(db,CREATE_TABLE_USERS, NULL,  0, &zErrMsg);
20260   if( rc != SQLITE_OK ){
20261     printf("error: sqlite table create failed: %s\n", zErrMsg);
20262     sqlite3_close(db);
20263     return -1;
20264   }
20265   printf("info: sqlite worked\n");
20266   sqlite3_close(db);
20267   return 0;
20268 }
20269 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
20270
20271 /*
20272  * Demonstrate locking issue found in gcompris using sqlite3.  This
20273  * work with ext3, but not with cifs server on Windows 2003.  This is
20274  * done in the sqlite3 library.
20275  * See also
20276  * &lt;URL:http://www.cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2001-08/msg00854.html> and the
20277  * POSIX specification
20278  * &lt;URL:http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/functions/fcntl.html>.
20279  */
20280 int test_gcompris_locking(void) {
20281   struct flock fl;
20282   char *name = "testsqlite.db";
20283   unlink(name);
20284   int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, 0644);
20285   printf("info: testing fcntl locking\n");
20286
20287   fl.l_whence = SEEK_SET;
20288   fl.l_pid    = getpid();
20289   printf("  Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824");
20290   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
20291   fl.l_len    = 1;
20292   fl.l_type   = F_RDLCK;
20293   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
20294
20295   printf("  Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826");
20296   fl.l_start  = 1073741826;
20297   fl.l_len    = 510;
20298   fl.l_type   = F_RDLCK;
20299   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
20300
20301   printf("  Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824");
20302   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
20303   fl.l_len    = 1;
20304   fl.l_type   = F_UNLCK;
20305   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
20306
20307   printf("  Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824");
20308   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
20309   fl.l_len    = 1;
20310   fl.l_type   = F_WRLCK;
20311   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
20312
20313   printf("  Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826");
20314   fl.l_start  = 1073741826;
20315   fl.l_len    = 510;
20316   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
20317
20318   printf("  Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824");
20319   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
20320   fl.l_len    = 2;
20321   fl.l_type   = F_UNLCK;
20322   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
20323
20324   close(fd);
20325   return 0;
20326 }
20327
20328 /*
20329  * Test if permissions of freshly created directories allow entries
20330  * below them.  This was a problem with OpenOffice.org and gcompris.
20331  * Mounting with option 'sync' seem to solve this problem while
20332  * slowing down file operations.
20333  */
20334 int test_subdirectory_creation(void) {
20335 #define LEVELS 5
20336   char *path = strdup("test");
20337   char *dirs[LEVELS];
20338   int level;
20339   printf("info: testing subdirectory creation\n");
20340   for (level = 0; level &lt; LEVELS; level++) {
20341     char *newpath = NULL;
20342     if (-1 == mkdir(path, 0777)) {
20343       printf("  error: Unable to create directory '%s': %s\n",
20344              path, strerror(errno));
20345       break;
20346     }
20347     asprintf(&newpath, "%s/%s", path, "test");
20348     free(path);
20349     path = newpath;
20350   }
20351   return 0;
20352 }
20353
20354 /*
20355  * Test if symlinks can be created.  This was a problem detected with
20356  * KDE.
20357  */
20358 int test_symlinks(void) {
20359   printf("info: testing symlink creation\n");
20360   unlink("symlink");
20361   if (-1 == symlink("file", "symlink"))
20362     printf("  error: Unable to create symlink\n");
20363   return 0;
20364 }
20365
20366 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
20367   printf("Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system\n");
20368   test_symlinks();
20369   test_subdirectory_creation();
20370 #ifdef TEST_SQLITE
20371   test_sqlite_open();
20372 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
20373   test_gcompris_locking();
20374   return 0;
20375 }
20376 </pre>
20377
20378 <p>When everything is working, it should print something like
20379 this:</p>
20380
20381 <pre>
20382 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
20383 info: testing symlink creation
20384 info: testing subdirectory creation
20385 info: sqlite worked
20386 info: testing fcntl locking
20387   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
20388   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
20389   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
20390   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
20391   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
20392   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
20393 </pre>
20394
20395 <p>I do not remember the exact details of the problems we saw, but one
20396 of them was with locking, where if I remember correctly, POSIX allow a
20397 read-only lock to be upgraded to a read-write lock without unlocking
20398 the read-only lock (while Windows do not).  Another was a bug in the
20399 CIFS/SMB client implementation in the Linux kernel where directory
20400 meta information would be wrong for a fraction of a second, making
20401 OpenOffice.org fail to create its deep directory tree because it was
20402 not allowed to create files in its freshly created directory.</p>
20403
20404 <p>Anyway, here is a nice tool for your tool box, might you never need
20405 it. :)</p>
20406
20407 <p>Update 2010-08-27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
20408 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
20409 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a>.</p>
20410
20411       </div>
20412       <div class="tags">
20413
20414
20415         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>.
20416
20417
20418       </div>
20419     </div>
20420     <div class="padding"></div>
20421
20422     <div class="entry">
20423       <div class="title">
20424         <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>
20425       </div>
20426       <div class="date">
20427          7th August 2010
20428       </div>
20429       <div class="body">
20430         <p>A few days ago, I
20431 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_roaming_workstation___at_the_university_of_Oslo.html">tried
20432 to install</a> a Roaming workation profile from Debian Edu/Squeeze
20433 while on the university network here at the University of Oslo, and
20434 noticed how much had to change to get it operational using the
20435 university infrastructure.  It was fairly easy, but it occured to me
20436 that Debian Edu would improve a lot if I could get the client to
20437 connect without any changes at all, and thus let the client configure
20438 itself during installation and first boot to use the infrastructure
20439 around it.  Now I am a huge step further along that road.</p>
20440
20441 <p>With our current squeeze-test packages, I can select the roaming
20442 workstation profile and get a working laptop connecting to the
20443 university LDAP server for user and group and our active directory
20444 servers for Kerberos authentication.  All this without any
20445 configuration at all during installation.  My users home directory got
20446 a bookmark in the KDE menu to mount it via SMB, with the correct URL.
20447 In short, openldap and sssd is correctly configured.  In addition to
20448 this, the client look for http://wpad/wpad.dat to configure a web
20449 proxy, and when it fail to find it no proxy settings are stored in
20450 /etc/environment and /etc/apt/apt.conf.  Iceweasel and KDE is
20451 configured to look for the same wpad configuration and also do not use
20452 a proxy when at the university network.  If the machine is moved to a
20453 network with such wpad setup, it would automatically use it when DHCP
20454 gave it a IP address.</p>
20455
20456 <p>The LDAP server is located using DNS, by first looking for the DNS
20457 entry ldap.$domain.  If this do not exist, it look for the
20458 _ldap._tcp.$domain SRV records and use the first one as the LDAP
20459 server.  Next, it connects to the LDAP server and search all
20460 namingContexts entries for posixAccount or posixGroup objects, and
20461 pick the first one as the LDAP base.  For Kerberos, a similar
20462 algorithm is used to locate the LDAP server, and the realm is the
20463 uppercase version of $domain.</p>
20464
20465 <p>So, what is not working, you might ask.  SMB mounting my home
20466 directory do not work.  No idea why, but suspected the incorrect
20467 Kerberos settings in /etc/krb5.conf and /etc/samba/smb.conf might be
20468 the cause.  These are not properly configured during installation, and
20469 had to be hand-edited to get the correct Kerberos realm and server,
20470 but SMB mounting still do not work. :(</p>
20471
20472 <p>With this automatic configuration in place, I expect a Debian Edu
20473 roaming profile installation would be able to automatically detect and
20474 connect to any site using LDAP and Kerberos for NSS directory and PAM
20475 authentication.  It should also work out of the box in a Active
20476 Directory environment providing posixAccount and posixGroup objects
20477 with UID and GID values.</p>
20478
20479 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
20480 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
20481
20482       </div>
20483       <div class="tags">
20484
20485
20486         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>.
20487
20488
20489       </div>
20490     </div>
20491     <div class="padding"></div>
20492
20493     <div class="entry">
20494       <div class="title">
20495         <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>
20496       </div>
20497       <div class="date">
20498          3rd August 2010
20499       </div>
20500       <div class="body">
20501         <p>The new roaming workstation profile in Debian Edu/Squeeze is fairly
20502 similar to the laptop setup am I working on using Ubuntu for the
20503 University of Oslo, and just for the heck of it, I tested today how
20504 hard it would be to integrate that profile into the university
20505 infrastructure.  In this case, it is the university LDAP server,
20506 Active Directory Kerberos server and SMB mounting from the Netapp file
20507 servers.</p>
20508
20509 <p>I was pleasantly surprised that the only three files needed to be
20510 changed (/etc/sssd/sssd.conf, /etc/ldap.conf and
20511 /etc/mklocaluser.d/20-debian-edu-config) and one file had to be added
20512 (/usr/share/perl5/Debian/Edu_Local.pm), to get the client working.
20513 Most of the changes were to get the client to use the university LDAP
20514 for NSS and Kerberos server for PAM, but one was to change a hard
20515 coded DNS domain name in the mklocaluser hook from .intern to
20516 .uio.no.</p>
20517
20518 <p>This testing was so encouraging, that I went ahead and adjusted the
20519 Debian Edu scripts and setup in subversion to centralise the roaming
20520 workstation setup a bit more and avoid the hardcoded DNS domain name,
20521 so that when I test this tomorrow, I expect to get away with modifying
20522 only /etc/sssd/sssd.conf and /etc/ldap.conf to get it to use the
20523 university servers.</p>
20524
20525 <p>My goal is to get the clients to have no hardcoded settings and
20526 fetch all their initial setup during installation and first boot, to
20527 allow them to be inserted also into environments where the default
20528 setup in Debian Edu has been changed or as with the university, where
20529 the environment is different but provides the protocols Debian Edu
20530 uses.</p>
20531
20532       </div>
20533       <div class="tags">
20534
20535
20536         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>.
20537
20538
20539       </div>
20540     </div>
20541     <div class="padding"></div>
20542
20543     <div class="entry">
20544       <div class="title">
20545         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html">Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery</a>
20546       </div>
20547       <div class="date">
20548         27th July 2010
20549       </div>
20550       <div class="body">
20551         <p>I discovered this while doing
20552 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">automated
20553 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze</a>.  A few packages
20554 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
20555 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
20556 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.</p>
20557
20558 <p>An example is from todays
20559 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt">upgrade
20560 of KDE using aptitude</a>.  In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
20561 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade.  The cause is simple.  If a
20562 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
20563 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
20564 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
20565 because its dependencies are unavailable.</p>
20566
20567 <p>In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:</p>
20568
20569 <blockquote><pre>
20570 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
20571  perl-modules depends on perl (>= 5.10.1-1); however:
20572   Version of perl on system is 5.10.0-19lenny2.
20573 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
20574  dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
20575 </pre></blockquote>
20576
20577 <p>The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
20578 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/527917">reported as a bug</a>, and will
20579 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
20580 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
20581 failures.  Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
20582 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
20583 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
20584 of dependency loops.</p>
20585
20586 <p>Thanks to
20587 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html">the
20588 tireless effort by Bill Allombert</a>, the number of circular
20589 dependencies
20590 <a href="http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html">left in Debian
20591 is dropping</a>, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)</p>
20592
20593 <p>Todays testing also exposed a bug in
20594 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590605">update-notifier</a> and
20595 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590604">different behaviour</a> between
20596 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
20597 dependency.  Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
20598 it.</p>
20599
20600       </div>
20601       <div class="tags">
20602
20603
20604         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>.
20605
20606
20607       </div>
20608     </div>
20609     <div class="padding"></div>
20610
20611     <div class="entry">
20612       <div class="title">
20613         <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>
20614       </div>
20615       <div class="date">
20616         27th July 2010
20617       </div>
20618       <div class="body">
20619         <p>I just posted this announcement culminating several months of work
20620 with the next Debian Edu release.  Not nearly done, but one major step
20621 completed.</p>
20622
20623 <blockquote>
20624 <p>This is the first test release based on Squeeze. The focus of this
20625 release is to test the user application selection. To have a look,
20626 install the standalone profile and let the developers know if the set
20627 of installed packages i.e. applications should be modified. If some
20628 user application is missing, or if there are some applications that no
20629 longer make sense to be included in Debian Edu, please let us know.
20630 Also, if a useful application is missing the translation for your
20631 language of choice, please let us know too.</p>
20632
20633 <p>In addition, feedback and help to polish the desktop (menus,
20634 artwork, starters, etc.) is appreciated. We would like to ship a nice
20635 and handy KDE4 desktop targeted for schools out of the box.</p>
20636
20637 <p>The other profiles should be installable, but there is a lot more
20638 work left to be done before they are ready, so do not expect to
20639 much.</p>
20640
20641 <p>Changes compared to the lenny based version</p>
20642
20643 <ul>
20644 <li>Everything from Debian Squeeze
20645 <ul>
20646   <li>Desktop environment KDE 4.4 => the new KDE desktop in
20647          combination with some new artwork
20648   <li>Web browser Iceweasel 3.5
20649   <li>OpenOffice.org 3.2
20650   <li>Educational toolbox GCompris 9.3
20651   <li>Music creator Rosegarden 10.04.2
20652   <li>Image editor Gimp 2.6.10
20653   <li>Virtual universe Celestia 1.6.0
20654   <li>Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.10.4
20655   <li>3D modeler Blender 2.49.2 (new application)
20656   <li>Video editor Kdenlive 0.7.7 (new application)
20657 </ul></li>
20658 <li>Now using Kerberos for password checking (migration not finished).
20659     Enabled for:
20660 <ul>
20661   <li>PAM
20662   <li>LDAP
20663   <li>IMAP
20664   <li>SMTP (sender verification)
20665 </ul>
20666 </li>
20667 <li>New experimental roaming workstation profile for laptops.</li>
20668 <li>Show welcome page to users when they first log in. The URL is
20669     fetched from LDAP.</li>
20670 <li>New LXDE desktop option, in addition to KDE (default) and Gnome.</li>
20671 <li>General cleanup (not finished)</li>
20672 </ul>
20673 <p>The following features are not working as they should</p>
20674
20675 <ul>
20676 <li>No web based administration tool for creating users and groups. The
20677     scripts ldap-createuser-krb and ldap-add-user-to-group can be used
20678     for testing.</li>
20679 <li>DVD installs are missing debian-installer images for the PXE boot,
20680     and do not set up the PXE menu on eth0 because of this. LTSP
20681     clients should still boot from eth1 on thin client servers.</li>
20682 <li>The restructured KDE menu is not implemented.</li>
20683 <li>The LDAP server setup need to be reviewed for security.</li>
20684 <li>The LDAP directory structure need to be reworked.</li>
20685 <li>Different sets of packages are installed when using the DVD and the
20686     netinst CD. More packages are installed using the netinst CD.</li>
20687 <li>The jackd package fail to install. This is believed to be caused by
20688     some ongoing transition, and hopefully should be solved soon. The
20689     jackd1 package can be installed manually for those that need it.</li>
20690 <li>Some packages lack translations. See
20691     http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Squeeze for updated status,
20692     and help out with translations.</li>
20693 </ul>
20694
20695 <p>To download this multiarch netinstall release you can use</p>
20696
20697 <ul>
20698 <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>
20699 <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>
20700 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
20701 </ul>
20702 <p>To download this multiarch dvd release you can use</p>
20703
20704 <ul>
20705 <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>
20706 <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>
20707 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
20708 </ul>
20709
20710 <p>There is no source DVD available yet. It will be prepared when we
20711 get closer to the final release.</p>
20712
20713 <p>The MD5SUM of these images are</p>
20714
20715 <ul>
20716 <li>3dbf45d59f42a53518b6e3c9ec3b5eb6 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
20717 <li>22f2cbfce281d1c6e478be452638675d debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
20718 </ul>
20719
20720 <p>The SHA1SUM of these images are</p>
20721 <ul>
20722 <li>c53d1b69b40cf37cd27aefaf33f6f6a3821bedf0 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
20723 <li>2ec29d7db676d59d32197b05c277ffe16348376c debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
20724 </ul>
20725 <p>How to report bugs:
20726 http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugsInBugzilla</p>
20727
20728 <p>Please direct replies to debian-edu@lists.debian.org</p>
20729 </blockquote>
20730
20731       </div>
20732       <div class="tags">
20733
20734
20735         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>.
20736
20737
20738       </div>
20739     </div>
20740     <div class="padding"></div>
20741
20742     <div class="entry">
20743       <div class="title">
20744         <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>
20745       </div>
20746       <div class="date">
20747         25th July 2010
20748       </div>
20749       <div class="body">
20750         <p>The last few months me and the other Debian Edu developers have
20751 been working hard to get the Debian/Squeeze based version of Debian
20752 Edu/Skolelinux into shape.  This future version will use Kerberos for
20753 authentication, and services are slowly migrated to single signon,
20754 getting rid of password questions one at the time.</p>
20755
20756 <p>It will also feature a roaming workstation profile with local home
20757 directory, for laptops that are only some times on the Skolelinux
20758 network, and for this profile a shortcut is created in Gnome and KDE
20759 to gain access to the users home directory on the file server.  This
20760 shortcut uses SMB at the moment, and yesterday I had time to test if
20761 SMB mounting had started working in KDE after we added the cifs-utils
20762 package.  I was pleasantly surprised how well it worked.</p>
20763
20764 <p>Thanks to the recent changes to our samba configuration to get it
20765 to use Kerberos for authentication, there were no question about user
20766 password when mounting the SMB volume.  A simple click on the shortcut
20767 in the KDE menu, and a window with the home directory popped
20768 up. :)</p>
20769
20770 <p>One step closer to a single signon solution out of the box in
20771 Debian Edu.  We already had PAM, LDAP, IMAP and SMTP in place, and now
20772 also Samba.  Next step is Cups and hopefully also NFS.</p>
20773
20774 <p>We had planned a alpha0 release of Debian Edu for today, but thanks
20775 to the autobuilder administrators for some architectures being slow to
20776 sign packages, we are still missing the fixed LTSP package we need for
20777 the release.  It was uploaded three days ago with urgency=high, and if
20778 it had entered testing yesterday we would have been able to test it in
20779 time for a alpha0 release today.  As the binaries for ia64 and powerpc
20780 still not uploaded to the Debian archive, we need to delay the alpha
20781 release another day.</p>
20782
20783 <p>If you want to help out with implementing Kerberos for Debian Edu,
20784 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
20785
20786       </div>
20787       <div class="tags">
20788
20789
20790         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>.
20791
20792
20793       </div>
20794     </div>
20795     <div class="padding"></div>
20796
20797     <div class="entry">
20798       <div class="title">
20799         <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>
20800       </div>
20801       <div class="date">
20802         18th July 2010
20803       </div>
20804       <div class="body">
20805         <p>Thanks to
20806 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Opengeodata/~3/wUTCzDZk3lc/project-of-the-week-which-way-home">todays
20807 opengeodata blog entry</a>, I just discovered that the
20808 OpenStreetmap.org site have gotten
20809 <a href="http://nroets.dev.openstreetmap.org/demo/index.html?layers=B000FTFTT">support
20810 for calculating routes</a>.  The support is still experimental and
20811 only available from the development server, until more experience is
20812 gathered on the user interface and any scalability issues.</p>
20813
20814 <p>Earlier, the routing I knew about using the OpenStreetmap.org data
20815 was provided by <a href="http://maps.cloudmade.com/">Cloudmade</a>,
20816 but having it on the main page is required to make everyone aware of
20817 the issue.  I've had people reject Openstreetmap.org as a viable
20818 alternative for them because the front page lacked routing support,
20819 and I hope their needs will be catered for when routing show up on the
20820 www.openstreetmap.org front page.</p>
20821
20822       </div>
20823       <div class="tags">
20824
20825
20826         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>.
20827
20828
20829       </div>
20830     </div>
20831     <div class="padding"></div>
20832
20833     <div class="entry">
20834       <div class="title">
20835         <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>
20836       </div>
20837       <div class="date">
20838         17th July 2010
20839       </div>
20840       <div class="body">
20841         <p>This is a
20842 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">followup</a>
20843 on my
20844 <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
20845 work</a> on
20846 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">merging
20847 all</a> the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.</p>
20848
20849 <p>As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
20850 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
20851 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server.  The two
20852 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.</p>
20853
20854 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
20855 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
20856 on a Debian Edu main-server.  Here is a summary.
20857
20858 <p><strong>powerdns</strong></p>
20859
20860 <a href="http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend">Clues
20861 on how to</a> set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
20862 the web.
20863
20864 <p>PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
20865 One "strict" mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
20866 using the same LDAP objects, and a "tree" mode where the forward and
20867 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
20868 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
20869 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.</p>
20870
20871 <p>In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
20872 base, and uses a "base" scoped search for the DNS name by adding
20873 "dc=tjener,dc=intern," to the base with a filter for
20874 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" for the forward entry and
20875 "dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa," with a filter for
20876 "(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)" for the reverse entry.  For
20877 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
20878 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
20879 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
20880 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
20881 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
20882 spfrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entries it is looking for
20883 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
20884 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
20885 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  The equivalent
20886 ldapsearch commands could look like this:</p>
20887
20888 <blockquote><pre>
20889 ldapsearch -h ldap \
20890   -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
20891   -s base -x '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
20892   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
20893   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
20894   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
20895   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
20896
20897 ldapsearch -h ldap \
20898   -b dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
20899   -s base -x '(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)'
20900   dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
20901   hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
20902   srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
20903 </pre></blockquote>
20904
20905 <p>In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
20906 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
20907 example LDAP objects used there.  In addition to these objects, the
20908 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
20909 also exist.</p>
20910
20911 <blockquote><pre>
20912 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
20913 objectclass: top
20914 objectclass: dnsdomain
20915 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
20916 dc: tjener
20917 arecord: 10.0.2.2
20918 associateddomain: tjener.intern
20919
20920 dn: dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
20921 objectclass: top
20922 objectclass: dnsdomain2
20923 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
20924 dc: 2
20925 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
20926 associateddomain: 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
20927 </pre></blockquote>
20928
20929 <p>In strict mode, the server behaves differently.  When looking for
20930 forward DNS entries, it is doing a "subtree" scoped search with the
20931 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
20932 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" and requests the attributes dnsttl,
20933 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
20934 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
20935 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entires it also do a
20936 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is "(arecord=10.0.2.2)"
20937 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
20938 modifytimestamp.  In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
20939 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
20940 instead.</p>
20941
20942 <p>The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
20943 like this:</p>
20944
20945 <blockquote><pre>
20946 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
20947   '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
20948   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
20949   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
20950   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
20951   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
20952
20953 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
20954   '(arecord=10.0.2.2)' associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
20955 </pre></blockquote>
20956
20957 <p>In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
20958 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
20959 reverse lookups.</p>
20960
20961 <p>A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
20962 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
20963 need to generate a DNS reply.  This make it able to work with any
20964 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.</p>
20965
20966 <p>The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC 1274) and
20967 dnsdomain2 schemas.  The latter is used for reverse entries like
20968 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.</p>
20969
20970 <p>In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
20971 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
20972 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain).  The use
20973 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
20974 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.</p>
20975
20976 <p>There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
20977 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
20978 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
20979 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
20980 (zonename and relativedomainname).</p>
20981
20982 <p>My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
20983 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
20984 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
20985 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
20986 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
20987 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):</p>
20988
20989 <blockquote><pre>
20990 objectclass ( some-oid NAME 'dnsDomainAux'
20991     SUP top
20992     AUXILIARY
20993     MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
20994           DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
20995           TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
20996           NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
20997           A6Record $ DNAMERecord
20998     ))
20999 </pre></blockquote>
21000
21001 <p>This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
21002 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
21003 all the attributes PowerDNS wants.  I've sent an email to the PowerDNS
21004 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
21005 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
21006 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.</p>
21007
21008 <p><strong>ISC dhcp</strong></p>
21009
21010 <p>The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
21011 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want.  This
21012 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
21013 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
21014 what is needed without having to read the source code.</p>
21015
21016 <p>In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
21017 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
21018 stored.  These are the relevant entries from
21019 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:</p>
21020
21021 <blockquote><pre>
21022 ldap-base-dn "dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no";
21023 ldap-dhcp-server-cn "dhcp";
21024 </pre></blockquote>
21025
21026 <p>The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
21027 configuration it need.  The cn "dhcp" is located using the given LDAP
21028 base and the filter "(&(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))".  The
21029 search result is this entry:</p>
21030
21031 <blockquote><pre>
21032 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
21033 cn: dhcp
21034 objectClass: top
21035 objectClass: dhcpServer
21036 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
21037 </pre></blockquote>
21038
21039 <p>The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
21040 subtree with DHCP configuration.  The DHCP configuration subtree base
21041 is located using a base scope search with base "cn=DHCP
21042 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" and filter
21043 "(&(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))".
21044 The search result is this entry:</p>
21045
21046 <blockquote><pre>
21047 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
21048 cn: DHCP Config
21049 objectClass: top
21050 objectClass: dhcpService
21051 objectClass: dhcpOptions
21052 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
21053 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
21054 dhcpStatements: authoritative
21055 dhcpOption: smtp-server code 69 = array of ip-address
21056 dhcpOption: www-server code 72 = array of ip-address
21057 dhcpOption: wpad-url code 252 = text
21058 </pre></blockquote>
21059
21060 <p>Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time.  When
21061 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
21062 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
21063 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
21064 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost.  These provide options
21065 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc.  Leaving out the
21066 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
21067 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
21068 related computer objects.</p>
21069
21070 <p>When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
21071 of the client (00:00:00:00:00:00 in this example), using a subtree
21072 scoped search with "cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" as
21073 the base and "(&(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
21074 00:00:00:00:00:00))" as the filter.  This is what a host object look
21075 like:</p>
21076
21077 <blockquote><pre>
21078 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
21079 cn: hostname
21080 objectClass: top
21081 objectClass: dhcpHost
21082 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
21083 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
21084 </pre></blockquote>
21085
21086 <p>There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
21087 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
21088 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure.  On the
21089 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
21090 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries.  The latter should make
21091 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
21092 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
21093 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
21094 structural object class.
21095
21096 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
21097
21098 <p>The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
21099 to which LDAP schemas to use.  While its "tree" mode is rigid when it
21100 come to the the LDAP structure, the "strict" mode is very flexible,
21101 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
21102 in the configuration.</p>
21103
21104 <p>The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
21105 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
21106 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
21107 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
21108 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
21109 structure.</p>
21110
21111 <p>Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
21112 this might work for Debian Edu:</p>
21113
21114 <blockquote><pre>
21115 ou=services
21116   cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
21117     cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
21118     cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
21119       cn=10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
21120         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
21121     cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
21122       cn=192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
21123         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
21124     ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
21125       cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
21126 </pre></blockquote>
21127
21128 <P>This is not tested yet.  If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
21129 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
21130 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
21131 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.</p>
21132
21133 <p>The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
21134 like this:</p>
21135
21136 <blockquote><pre>
21137 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
21138 dc: hostname
21139 objectClass: top
21140 objectClass: dhcpHost
21141 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
21142 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
21143 associateddomain: hostname.intern
21144 arecord: 10.11.12.13
21145 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
21146 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
21147 </pre></blockquote>
21148
21149 </p>One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
21150 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
21151 auxiliary object class.</p>
21152
21153       </div>
21154       <div class="tags">
21155
21156
21157         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>.
21158
21159
21160       </div>
21161     </div>
21162     <div class="padding"></div>
21163
21164     <div class="entry">
21165       <div class="title">
21166         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects</a>
21167       </div>
21168       <div class="date">
21169         14th July 2010
21170       </div>
21171       <div class="body">
21172         <p>For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
21173 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
21174 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
21175 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
21176 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.</p>
21177
21178 <p>I've looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
21179 information finally found a solution that seem to work.</p>
21180
21181 <p>The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
21182 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry.  If
21183 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
21184 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
21185 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
21186 to a slave DNS server.</p>
21187
21188 <p>If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
21189 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
21190 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
21191 I've written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
21192 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup.  It
21193 seem to work.</p>
21194
21195 <p>With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
21196 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
21197 an earlier email.  The combined LDAP object will look something like
21198 this:</p>
21199
21200 <blockquote><pre>
21201   dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
21202   cn: hostname
21203   objectClass: dhcphost
21204   objectclass: domainrelatedobject
21205   objectclass: dnsdomainaux
21206   associateddomain: hostname.intern
21207   arecord: 10.11.12.13
21208   dhcphwaddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
21209   dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
21210   ldapconfigsound: Y
21211 </pre></blockquote>
21212
21213 <p>The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
21214 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
21215 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress.  LTSP will use
21216 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.</p>
21217
21218 <p>I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
21219 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
21220 outside the "DHCP Config" subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
21221 that.  If I can't figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
21222 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
21223 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
21224 content.  I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
21225 might be a good place to put it.</p>
21226
21227 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
21228 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
21229
21230       </div>
21231       <div class="tags">
21232
21233
21234         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>.
21235
21236
21237       </div>
21238     </div>
21239     <div class="padding"></div>
21240
21241     <div class="entry">
21242       <div class="title">
21243         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html">Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP</a>
21244       </div>
21245       <div class="date">
21246         11th July 2010
21247       </div>
21248       <div class="body">
21249         <p>Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
21250 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
21251 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
21252 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.</p>
21253
21254 <p>Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
21255 to get configuration from LDAP.  The idea is to look up the MAC
21256 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
21257 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
21258 LTSP clients.</p>
21259
21260 <p>The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
21261 in a "computer" LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
21262 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.</p>
21263
21264 <p>This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
21265 this approach.  A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
21266 need to be written.  Comments, suggestions, etc?</p>
21267
21268 <blockquote><pre>
21269 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
21270 #
21271 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
21272 #
21273 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
21274 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
21275 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
21276 #
21277 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
21278 # existence of attribute names.
21279 #
21280 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
21281 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
21282 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
21283 #
21284 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
21285 # configuration settings.  Something like this should work:
21286 #
21287 # objectclass ( 1.1.2.2 NAME 'ltspClientAux'
21288 #     SUP top
21289 #     AUXILIARY
21290 #     MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
21291
21292 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
21293 if [ "$LDAPSERVER" ] ; then
21294     LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
21295     for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk '{print $5}'|sort -u) ; do
21296         filter="(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))"
21297         ldapsearch -h "$LDAPSERVER" -b "$LDAPBASE" -v -x "$filter" | \
21298             grep '^ltspConfig' | while read attr value ; do
21299             # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
21300             attr=$(echo $attr | sed 's/^ltspConfig//i' | tr a-z A-Z)
21301             # bass value on to clients
21302             eval "$attr=$value; export $attr"
21303         done
21304     done
21305 fi
21306 </pre></blockquote>
21307
21308 <p>I'm not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
21309 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
21310 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
21311 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
21312 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)</p>
21313
21314 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
21315 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
21316
21317 <p>Update 2010-07-17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
21318 configuration in LDAP that was created around year 2000 by
21319 <a href="http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html">PC
21320 Xperience, Inc., 2000</a>.  I found its
21321 <a href="http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/">files</a> on a
21322 personal home page over at redhat.com.</p>
21323
21324       </div>
21325       <div class="tags">
21326
21327
21328         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>.
21329
21330
21331       </div>
21332     </div>
21333     <div class="padding"></div>
21334
21335     <div class="entry">
21336       <div class="title">
21337         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
21338       </div>
21339       <div class="date">
21340          9th July 2010
21341       </div>
21342       <div class="body">
21343         <p>Since
21344 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">my
21345 last post</a> about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
21346 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma.  The java application
21347 <a href="http://jxplorer.org/">jXplorer</a> is claimed to be capable of
21348 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
21349 authenticate using Kerberos.  I have only tested the Kerberos
21350 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
21351 LDAP with my test user yet.  It is
21352 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html">available in
21353 Debian</a> testing and unstable at the moment.  The only problem I
21354 have with it is how it handle errors.  If something go wrong, its
21355 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
21356 and remove the failing query.  Nothing big, but very annoying.</p>
21357
21358       </div>
21359       <div class="tags">
21360
21361
21362         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>.
21363
21364
21365       </div>
21366     </div>
21367     <div class="padding"></div>
21368
21369     <div class="entry">
21370       <div class="title">
21371         <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>
21372       </div>
21373       <div class="date">
21374          3rd July 2010
21375       </div>
21376       <div class="body">
21377         <p>Here is a short update on my <a
21378 href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">my
21379 Debian Lenny->Squeeze upgrade testing</a>.  Here is a summary of the
21380 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude.  I'm
21381 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
21382 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
21383 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> and
21384 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585716">#585716</a>).</p>
21385
21386 <p>At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
21387 complete list of the installed packages.  Based on this I see these
21388 differences when I did a test run today.  As usual, I do not really
21389 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
21390 publish the difference.</p>
21391
21392 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
21393
21394 <blockquote><p>
21395   at-spi cpp-4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
21396   libatspi1.0-0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-1-common
21397   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
21398   libgtksourceview-common libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
21399   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
21400   libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
21401   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
21402   python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
21403 </p></blockquote>
21404
21405 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
21406
21407 <blockquote><p>
21408   bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
21409   gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
21410   libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-50
21411   libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
21412   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9
21413   libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3
21414   libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
21415   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
21416   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
21417   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
21418   libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
21419   libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++10
21420   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
21421   libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5
21422   libparted1.8-10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
21423   libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
21424   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1
21425   libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
21426   libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
21427   mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
21428 </p></blockquote>
21429
21430 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
21431
21432 <blockquote><p>
21433   gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
21434   python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
21435   xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
21436   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
21437   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
21438   xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
21439   xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
21440   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
21441   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
21442   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
21443   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
21444   xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
21445   xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
21446   xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
21447   xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
21448   xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
21449   xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
21450   xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
21451   xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
21452   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
21453   xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
21454 </p></blockquote>
21455
21456 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
21457
21458 <blockquote><p>
21459   deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
21460   xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
21461   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
21462 </p></blockquote>
21463
21464 <p>I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
21465 <a href="http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120">changed
21466 in git</a> today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
21467 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
21468 the difference somewhat.
21469
21470       </div>
21471       <div class="tags">
21472
21473
21474         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>.
21475
21476
21477       </div>
21478     </div>
21479     <div class="padding"></div>
21480
21481     <div class="entry">
21482       <div class="title">
21483         <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>
21484       </div>
21485       <div class="date">
21486          1st July 2010
21487       </div>
21488       <div class="body">
21489         <p>For a laptop, centralized user directories and password checking is
21490 a bit troubling.  Laptops are typically used also when not connected
21491 to the network, and it is vital for a user to be able to log in or
21492 unlock the screen saver also when a central server is unavailable.
21493 This is possible by caching passwords and directory information (user
21494 and group attributes) locally, and the packages to do so are available
21495 in Debian.  Here follow two recipes to set this up in Debian/Squeeze.
21496 It is also possible to set up in Debian/Lenny, but require more manual
21497 setup there because pam-auth-update is missing in Lenny.</p>
21498
21499 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nscd + libpam-ccreds + libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir</h2>
21500
21501 This is the traditional method with a twist.  The password caching is
21502 provided by libpam-ccreds (version 10-4 or later is needed on
21503 Squeeze), and the directory caching is done by nscd.  The directory
21504 lookup and password checking is done using LDAP.  If one want to use
21505 Kerberos for password checking the libpam-ldapd package can be
21506 replaced with libpam-krb5 or libpam-heimdal.  If one is happy having a
21507 local home directory with the path listed in LDAP, one can use the
21508 pam_mkhomedir module from pam-modules to make this happen instead of
21509 using libpam-mklocaluser.  A setup for pam-auth-update to enable
21510 pam_mkhomedir will have to be written until a fix for
21511 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/568577">bug #568577</a> is in the
21512 archive.  Because I believe it is a bad idea to have local home
21513 directories using misleading paths like /site/server/partition/, I
21514 prefer to create a local user with the home directory in /home/.  This
21515 is done using the libpam-mklocaluser package.</p>
21516
21517 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured</p>
21518
21519 <blockquote><pre>
21520 libnss-ldapd libpam-ldapd nscd libpam-ccreds libpam-mklocaluser
21521 </pre></blockquote>
21522
21523 <p>The ldapd packages will ask for LDAP connection information, and
21524 one have to fill in the values that fits ones own site.  Make sure the
21525 PAM part uses encrypted connections, to make sure the password is not
21526 sent in clear text to the LDAP server.  I've been unable to get TLS
21527 certificate checking for a self signed certificate working, which make
21528 LDAP authentication unsafe for Debian Edu (nslcd is not checking if it
21529 is talking to the correct LDAP server), and very much welcome feedback
21530 on how to get this working.</p>
21531
21532 <p>Because nscd do not have a default configuration fit for offline
21533 caching until <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/485282">bug #485282</a>
21534 is fixed, this configuration should be used instead of the one
21535 currently in /etc/nscd.conf.  The changes are in the fields
21536 reload-count and positive-time-to-live, and is based on the
21537 instructions I found in the
21538 <a href="http://www.flyn.org/laptopldap/">LDAP for Mobile Laptops</a>
21539 instructions by Flyn Computing.</p>
21540
21541 <blockquote><pre>
21542         debug-level             0
21543         reload-count            unlimited
21544         paranoia                no
21545
21546         enable-cache            passwd          yes
21547         positive-time-to-live   passwd          2592000
21548         negative-time-to-live   passwd          20
21549         suggested-size          passwd          211
21550         check-files             passwd          yes
21551         persistent              passwd          yes
21552         shared                  passwd          yes
21553         max-db-size             passwd          33554432
21554         auto-propagate          passwd          yes
21555
21556         enable-cache            group           yes
21557         positive-time-to-live   group           2592000
21558         negative-time-to-live   group           20
21559         suggested-size          group           211
21560         check-files             group           yes
21561         persistent              group           yes
21562         shared                  group           yes
21563         max-db-size             group           33554432
21564         auto-propagate          group           yes
21565
21566         enable-cache            hosts           no
21567         positive-time-to-live   hosts           2592000
21568         negative-time-to-live   hosts           20
21569         suggested-size          hosts           211
21570         check-files             hosts           yes
21571         persistent              hosts           yes
21572         shared                  hosts           yes
21573         max-db-size             hosts           33554432
21574
21575         enable-cache            services        yes
21576         positive-time-to-live   services        2592000
21577         negative-time-to-live   services        20
21578         suggested-size          services        211
21579         check-files             services        yes
21580         persistent              services        yes
21581         shared                  services        yes
21582         max-db-size             services        33554432
21583 </pre></blockquote>
21584
21585 <p>While we wait for a mechanism to update /etc/nsswitch.conf
21586 automatically like the one provided in
21587 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/496915">bug #496915</a>, the file
21588 content need to be manually replaced to ensure LDAP is used as the
21589 directory service on the machine.  /etc/nsswitch.conf should normally
21590 look like this:</p>
21591
21592 <blockquote><pre>
21593 passwd:         files ldap
21594 group:          files ldap
21595 shadow:         files ldap
21596 hosts:          files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns mdns4
21597 networks:       files
21598 protocols:      files
21599 services:       files
21600 ethers:         files
21601 rpc:            files
21602 netgroup:       files ldap
21603 </pre></blockquote>
21604
21605 <p>The important parts are that ldap is listed last for passwd, group,
21606 shadow and netgroup.</p>
21607
21608 <p>With these changes in place, any user in LDAP will be able to log
21609 in locally on the machine using for example kdm, get a local home
21610 directory created and have the password as well as user and group
21611 attributes cached.
21612
21613 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nss-updatedb + libpam-ccreds +
21614   libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir</h2>
21615
21616 <p>Because nscd have had its share of problems, and seem to have
21617 problems doing proper caching, I've seen suggestions and recipes to
21618 use nss-updatedb to copy parts of the LDAP database locally when the
21619 LDAP database is available.  I have not tested such setup, because I
21620 discovered sssd.</p>
21621
21622 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + sssd + libpam-mklocaluser</h2>
21623
21624 <p>A more flexible and robust setup than the nscd combination
21625 mentioned earlier that has shown up recently, is the
21626 <a href="https://fedorahosted.org/sssd/">sssd</a> package from Redhat.
21627 It is part of the <a href="http://www.freeipa.org/">FreeIPA</A> project
21628 to provide a Active Directory like directory service for Linux
21629 machines.  The sssd system combines the caching of passwords and user
21630 information into one package, and remove the need for nscd and
21631 libpam-ccreds.  It support LDAP and Kerberos, but not NIS.  Version
21632 1.2 do not support netgroups, but it is said that it will support this
21633 in version 1.5 expected to show up later in 2010.  Because the
21634 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd package</a>
21635 was missing in Debian, I ended up co-maintaining it with Werner, and
21636 version 1.2 is now in testing.
21637
21638 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured to get the
21639 roaming setup I want</p>
21640
21641 <blockquote><pre>
21642 libpam-sss libnss-sss libpam-mklocaluser
21643 </pre></blockquote>
21644
21645 The complete setup of sssd is done by editing/creating
21646 <tt>/etc/sssd/sssd.conf</tt>.
21647
21648 <blockquote><pre>
21649 [sssd]
21650 config_file_version = 2
21651 reconnection_retries = 3
21652 sbus_timeout = 30
21653 services = nss, pam
21654 domains = INTERN
21655
21656 [nss]
21657 filter_groups = root
21658 filter_users = root
21659 reconnection_retries = 3
21660
21661 [pam]
21662 reconnection_retries = 3
21663
21664 [domain/INTERN]
21665 enumerate = false
21666 cache_credentials = true
21667
21668 id_provider = ldap
21669 auth_provider = ldap
21670 chpass_provider = ldap
21671
21672 ldap_uri = ldap://ldap
21673 ldap_search_base = dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
21674 ldap_tls_reqcert = never
21675 ldap_tls_cacert = /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
21676 </pre></blockquote>
21677
21678 <p>I got the same problem here with certificate checking.  Had to set
21679 "ldap_tls_reqcert = never" to get it working.</p>
21680
21681 <p>With the libnss-sss package in testing at the moment, the
21682 nsswitch.conf file is update automatically, so there is no need to
21683 modify it manually.</p>
21684
21685 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
21686 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
21687
21688       </div>
21689       <div class="tags">
21690
21691
21692         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>.
21693
21694
21695       </div>
21696     </div>
21697     <div class="padding"></div>
21698
21699     <div class="entry">
21700       <div class="title">
21701         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
21702       </div>
21703       <div class="date">
21704         28th June 2010
21705       </div>
21706       <div class="body">
21707         <p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
21708 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
21709 tool to browse the LDAP tree.  The only one I was able to find in
21710 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
21711 <a href="http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA</a>, which has proved to
21712 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
21713 populated by default in Skolelinux.  Thanks to it, I have been able to
21714 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
21715 objects.  It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze.  If you
21716 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)</p>
21717
21718 <p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
21719 the BTS yet.  There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
21720 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
21721 Debian submenu in KDE.  I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
21722 released.</p>
21723
21724 <p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet.  I would
21725 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
21726 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet.  So in the mean time, I use
21727 <a href="http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi</a> for that.</p>
21728
21729 <p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
21730 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
21731
21732 <p>Update 2010-06-29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
21733 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq</a> package as a
21734 useful GUI alternative.  It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
21735 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze.  Unless that
21736 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.</p>
21737
21738       </div>
21739       <div class="tags">
21740
21741
21742         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>.
21743
21744
21745       </div>
21746     </div>
21747     <div class="padding"></div>
21748
21749     <div class="entry">
21750       <div class="title">
21751         <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>
21752       </div>
21753       <div class="date">
21754         24th June 2010
21755       </div>
21756       <div class="body">
21757         <p>A while back, I
21758 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
21759 about the fact</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
21760 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
21761 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.</p>
21762
21763 <p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
21764 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
21765 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
21766 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.</p>
21767
21768 <p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
21769 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
21770 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
21771 Debian Edu.</p>
21772
21773 <p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
21774 the
21775 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
21776 schema</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
21777 available today from IETF.</p>
21778
21779 <pre>
21780 --- dhcp.schema    (revision 65192)
21781 +++ dhcp.schema    (working copy)
21782 @@ -376,7 +376,7 @@
21783  objectclass ( 2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
21784         NAME 'dhcpHost'
21785         DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
21786 -       SUP top
21787 +       SUP top AUXILIARY
21788         MUST cn
21789         MAY  (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
21790         X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
21791 </pre>
21792
21793 <p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
21794 Edu/Squeeze.  We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
21795 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.</p>
21796
21797 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
21798 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
21799
21800       </div>
21801       <div class="tags">
21802
21803
21804         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>.
21805
21806
21807       </div>
21808     </div>
21809     <div class="padding"></div>
21810
21811     <div class="entry">
21812       <div class="title">
21813         <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>
21814       </div>
21815       <div class="date">
21816         16th June 2010
21817       </div>
21818       <div class="body">
21819         <p>A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
21820 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run.  Until now,
21821 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
21822 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
21823 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
21824 this:
21825
21826 <blockquote><pre>
21827 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
21828 tasksel --new-install
21829 </pre></blockquote>
21830
21831 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
21832 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
21833 any output what so ever.
21834
21835 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
21836 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
21837 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
21838 happen.  Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
21839 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
21840 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run.  I ended up using
21841 code like this:
21842
21843 <blockquote><pre>
21844 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
21845 cmd="$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed 's/debconf-apt-progress -- //')"
21846 $cmd
21847 </pre></blockquote>
21848
21849 <p>The content of $cmd is typically something like "<tt>aptitude -q
21850 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
21851 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
21852 ~pimportant</tt>", which will install the gnome desktop task, the
21853 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
21854 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
21855 installation.</p>
21856
21857 <p>A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
21858 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
21859 like this.</p>
21860
21861       </div>
21862       <div class="tags">
21863
21864
21865         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>.
21866
21867
21868       </div>
21869     </div>
21870     <div class="padding"></div>
21871
21872     <div class="entry">
21873       <div class="title">
21874         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html">Officeshots taking shape</a>
21875       </div>
21876       <div class="date">
21877         13th June 2010
21878       </div>
21879       <div class="body">
21880         <p>For those of us caring about document exchange and
21881 interoperability, <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">OfficeShots</a>
21882 is a great service.  It is to ODF documents what
21883 <a href="http://browsershots.org/">BrowserShots</a> is for web
21884 pages.</p>
21885
21886 <p>A while back, I was contacted by Knut Yrvin at the part of Nokia
21887 that used to be Trolltech, who wanted to help the OfficeShots project
21888 and wondered if the University of Oslo where I work would be
21889 interested in supporting the project.  I helped him to navigate his
21890 request to the right people at work, and his request was answered with
21891 a spot in the machine room with power and network connected, and Knut
21892 arranged funding for a machine to fill the spot.  The machine is
21893 administrated by the OfficeShots people, so I do not have daily
21894 contact with its progress, and thus from time to time check back to
21895 see how the project is doing.</p>
21896
21897 <p>Today I had a look, and was happy to see that the Dell box in our
21898 machine room now is the host for several virtual machines running as
21899 OfficeShots factories, and the project is able to render ODF documents
21900 in 17 different document processing implementation on Linux and
21901 Windows.  This is great.</p>
21902
21903       </div>
21904       <div class="tags">
21905
21906
21907         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>.
21908
21909
21910       </div>
21911     </div>
21912     <div class="padding"></div>
21913
21914     <div class="entry">
21915       <div class="title">
21916         <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>
21917       </div>
21918       <div class="date">
21919         13th June 2010
21920       </div>
21921       <div class="body">
21922         <p>My
21923 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">testing
21924 of Debian upgrades</a> from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I've
21925 finally made the upgrade logs available from
21926 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/</a>.
21927 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
21928 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting.  This time
21929 I will only focus on their removal plans.</p>
21930
21931 <p>After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
21932 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze.  The
21933 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
21934 xserver-xorg-video* drivers.  Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
21935 sure why.  When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
21936 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
21937 longer needed.  Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
21938 I do not know.  Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?</p>
21939
21940 <p>For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
21941 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
21942 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
21943 too surprising.</p>
21944
21945 <p>I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
21946 and avoided, and perhaps others as well.  Here are the complete list
21947 of planned removals.  The complete logs is available from the URL
21948 above.  Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
21949 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
21950 conffile questions.  No idea why.  I worked around it by using
21951 '<tt>echo >> /proc/<em>pidofdpkg</em>/fd/0</tt>' to tell dpkg to
21952 continue.</p>
21953
21954 <p><b>apt-get gnome 72</b>
21955 <br>bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
21956   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
21957   iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
21958   libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
21959   nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
21960   serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
21961   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
21962   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
21963   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
21964   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
21965   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
21966   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
21967   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
21968   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
21969   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
21970   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
21971   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
21972   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
21973   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
21974   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
21975   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
21976   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
21977   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
21978   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
21979   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
21980   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
21981   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
21982   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
21983   xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support</p>
21984
21985 <p><b>aptitude gnome 129</b>
21986
21987 <br>bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
21988   djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
21989   gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
21990   gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
21991   libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
21992   libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
21993   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
21994   libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
21995   libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
21996   libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
21997   libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
21998   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
21999   libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
22000   libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
22001   libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
22002   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
22003   libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
22004   libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
22005   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
22006   libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
22007   libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
22008   libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
22009   libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
22010   libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
22011   openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
22012   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
22013   python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
22014   python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
22015   swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
22016   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
22017   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
22018   zip</p>
22019
22020 <p><b>apt-get kde 82</b>
22021
22022 <br>cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
22023   kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
22024   kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
22025   kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
22026   kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
22027   libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
22028   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
22029   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
22030   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
22031   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
22032   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
22033   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
22034   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
22035   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
22036   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
22037   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
22038   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
22039   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
22040   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
22041   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
22042   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
22043   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
22044   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
22045   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
22046   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
22047   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
22048   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
22049   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9</p>
22050
22051 <p><b>aptitude kde 192</b>
22052 <br>bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
22053   djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
22054   ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
22055   kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
22056   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
22057   kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
22058   kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
22059   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
22060   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
22061   kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
22062   kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
22063   klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
22064   kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
22065   krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
22066   ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
22067   kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
22068   kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
22069   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
22070   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
22071   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
22072   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
22073   libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
22074   libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
22075   libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
22076   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
22077   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
22078   libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
22079   libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
22080   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
22081   libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
22082   libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
22083   openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
22084   superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
22085   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
22086   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
22087   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
22088   xulrunner-1.9</p>
22089
22090
22091       </div>
22092       <div class="tags">
22093
22094
22095         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>.
22096
22097
22098       </div>
22099     </div>
22100     <div class="padding"></div>
22101
22102     <div class="entry">
22103       <div class="title">
22104         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</a>
22105       </div>
22106       <div class="date">
22107         11th June 2010
22108       </div>
22109       <div class="body">
22110         <p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
22111 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly.  A few bugs
22112 have been discovered and reported in the process
22113 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
22114 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
22115 enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> in
22116 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
22117 am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
22118
22119 <p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
22120 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
22121 it.  To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
22122 script is inserted.  To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
22123 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
22124 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
22125
22126 <p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
22127 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
22128 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
22129 is created.  The bug report
22130 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
22131 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
22132 to make sure the upgrade go well.  Testing on virtual and real
22133 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
22134 do the trick in such settings anyway.  This is a
22135 <a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/">known
22136 issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
22137 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
22138 working with old kernels or something like that.  I really wish the
22139 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
22140 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
22141 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
22142 Debian Squeeze.</p>
22143
22144 <p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades.  This test
22145 script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
22146 trick:</p>
22147
22148 <blockquote><pre>
22149 #!/bin/sh
22150 set -ex
22151
22152 if [ "$1" ] ; then
22153     desktop=$1
22154 else
22155     desktop=gnome
22156 fi
22157
22158 from=lenny
22159 to=squeeze
22160
22161 exec &lt; /dev/null
22162 unset LANG
22163 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
22164 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
22165 fuser -mv .
22166 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
22167 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
22168 cat > $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d &lt;&lt;EOF
22169 #!/bin/sh
22170 exit 101
22171 EOF
22172 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
22173 exit_cleanup() {
22174     umount $tmpdir/proc
22175 }
22176 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
22177 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
22178 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
22179
22180 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
22181
22182 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger.  It need the test scripts
22183 # to return the correct answers.
22184 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
22185     chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
22186
22187 # Include the desktop and laptop task
22188 for test in desktop laptop ; do
22189     echo > $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test &lt;&lt;EOF
22190 #!/bin/sh
22191 exit 2
22192 EOF
22193     chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
22194 done
22195
22196 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
22197 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
22198 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
22199 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
22200
22201 echo deb $mirror $to main > $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
22202 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
22203 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
22204 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
22205 fuser -mv
22206 </pre></blockquote>
22207
22208 <p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
22209 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
22210 differently so far.  I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
22211 regularly and post the result on the web.  The Gnome upgrade currently
22212 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
22213 kdebase-workspace-data</p>
22214
22215 <p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
22216 (KDE 167 KiB, Gnome 516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
22217 post, so I will refrain from trying.  I can report that for Gnome,
22218 aptitude report 760 packages upgraded, 448 newly installed, 129 to
22219 remove and 1 not upgraded and 1024MB need to be downloaded while for
22220 KDE the same numbers are 702 packages upgraded, 507 newly installed,
22221 193 to remove and 0 not upgraded and 1117MB need to be downloaded</p>
22222
22223 <p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
22224 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
22225 booting without a hitch.  Was unsure if there were still bugs with
22226 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
22227 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
22228 packages.</p>
22229
22230       </div>
22231       <div class="tags">
22232
22233
22234         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>.
22235
22236
22237       </div>
22238     </div>
22239     <div class="padding"></div>
22240
22241     <div class="entry">
22242       <div class="title">
22243         <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>
22244       </div>
22245       <div class="date">
22246          6th June 2010
22247       </div>
22248       <div class="body">
22249         <p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
22250 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
22251 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd.  The packages with such
22252 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
22253 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart.  Because of
22254 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
22255 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.</p>
22256
22257 <p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
22258 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
22259 COLUMNS):</p>
22260
22261 <blockquote><pre>
22262 DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
22263 previous=N
22264 PREVLEVEL=
22265 RUNLEVEL=
22266 runlevel=S
22267 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
22268 UPSTART_INSTANCE=
22269 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
22270 </pre></blockquote>
22271
22272 <p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
22273 script.</p>
22274
22275 <blockquote><pre>
22276 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
22277 previous=N
22278 PREVLEVEL=N
22279 RUNLEVEL=S
22280 runlevel=S
22281 </pre></blockquote>
22282
22283 <p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
22284 sysvinit are not set by upstart.  Not sure if it is intentional or not
22285 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.</p>
22286
22287 <p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
22288 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
22289 choice.</p>
22290
22291       </div>
22292       <div class="tags">
22293
22294
22295         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>.
22296
22297
22298       </div>
22299     </div>
22300     <div class="padding"></div>
22301
22302     <div class="entry">
22303       <div class="title">
22304         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...</a>
22305       </div>
22306       <div class="date">
22307          6th June 2010
22308       </div>
22309       <div class="body">
22310         <p>Via the
22311 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
22312 of Rob Weir</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
22313 <a href="http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
22314 Standards Wars</a> (PDF 25 pages).  I recommend it for everyone
22315 following the standards wars of today.</p>
22316
22317       </div>
22318       <div class="tags">
22319
22320
22321         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>.
22322
22323
22324       </div>
22325     </div>
22326     <div class="padding"></div>
22327
22328     <div class="entry">
22329       <div class="title">
22330         <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>
22331       </div>
22332       <div class="date">
22333          3rd June 2010
22334       </div>
22335       <div class="body">
22336         <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
22337 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
22338 information extracted from each machine.  The script to do so is
22339 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
22340 the Skolelinux build servers:</p>
22341
22342 <blockquote><pre>
22343 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
22344   vendor                    count
22345   Dell Computer Corporation     1
22346     PowerEdge 1750              1
22347   IBM                           1
22348     eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]-     1
22349   Intel                         2
22350   [no-dmi-info]                 3
22351 maintainer:~#
22352 </pre></blockquote>
22353
22354 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
22355 provided in each machine.  Here there are Intel machines without model
22356 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
22357 machines listed as [no-dmi-info].  One can add -l as a command line
22358 option to list the individual machines.</p>
22359
22360 <p>A larger list is
22361 <a href="http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
22362 city of Narvik</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
22363 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly.  In their report there
22364 are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
22365 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
22366 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
22367 collector.</p>
22368
22369       </div>
22370       <div class="tags">
22371
22372
22373         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>.
22374
22375
22376       </div>
22377     </div>
22378     <div class="padding"></div>
22379
22380     <div class="entry">
22381       <div class="title">
22382         <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>
22383       </div>
22384       <div class="date">
22385          1st June 2010
22386       </div>
22387       <div class="body">
22388         <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
22389 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled.  The
22390 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
22391 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
22392 wait.</p>
22393
22394 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
22395 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#583312</a> initially filed
22396 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
22397 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
22398 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#524751</a> initially filed against
22399 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.</p>
22400
22401 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
22402 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
22403 distribution work out of the box for these users.  The nvidia driver
22404 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
22405 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
22406 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
22407 distribution that work for them.  I have no idea what the solution is,
22408 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.</p>
22409
22410 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.</p>
22411
22412       </div>
22413       <div class="tags">
22414
22415
22416         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>.
22417
22418
22419       </div>
22420     </div>
22421     <div class="padding"></div>
22422
22423     <div class="entry">
22424       <div class="title">
22425         <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>
22426       </div>
22427       <div class="date">
22428         27th May 2010
22429       </div>
22430       <div class="body">
22431         <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
22432 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
22433 issues are known and should be solved:
22434
22435 <p><ul>
22436
22437 <li>The wicd package seen to
22438 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting</a> and
22439 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup</a> when
22440 parallel booting is enabled.  No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
22441 seem to be on the case.</li>
22442
22443 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
22444 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition</a>
22445 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect.  The
22446 maintainer is on the case.</li>
22447
22448 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
22449 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
22450 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back</a> to
22451 sysv-rc.  One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
22452 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
22453 sysv-rc more robust.  Will investigate some more and probably upload a
22454 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
22455 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.</li>
22456
22457 </ul></p>
22458
22459 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
22460 solvable before Squeeze is released.  In addition to these there are
22461 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
22462 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.</p>
22463
22464 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
22465 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
22466 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
22467 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
22468
22469 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.</p>
22470
22471       </div>
22472       <div class="tags">
22473
22474
22475         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>.
22476
22477
22478       </div>
22479     </div>
22480     <div class="padding"></div>
22481
22482     <div class="entry">
22483       <div class="title">
22484         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</a>
22485       </div>
22486       <div class="date">
22487         22nd May 2010
22488       </div>
22489       <div class="body">
22490         <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
22491 found time today to return to the project.  Having to spend less time
22492 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
22493 definitely helped freeing some time.</p>
22494
22495 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu.  We
22496 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
22497 get disk and network controllers working.  Without having these
22498 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
22499 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
22500 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
22501 an external medium is a support pain.  Initially, I expected it to be
22502 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
22503 debian-installer to find and use them.  This proved to be wrong.
22504 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
22505 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
22506 /cdrom/firmware/).  This also proved to not work, and at this point I
22507 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
22508 going to work.</p>
22509
22510 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
22511 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
22512 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
22513 packages.  It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
22514 "external" media devices.  Today I changed it to also look in the
22515 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
22516 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu.  I also changed it to
22517 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
22518 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
22519 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
22520 Edu.</p>
22521
22522 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
22523 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
22524 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
22525 run these before activating the firmware during installation.  The
22526 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
22527 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.</p>
22528
22529 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
22530 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.</p>
22531
22532       </div>
22533       <div class="tags">
22534
22535
22536         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>.
22537
22538
22539       </div>
22540     </div>
22541     <div class="padding"></div>
22542
22543     <div class="entry">
22544       <div class="title">
22545         <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>
22546       </div>
22547       <div class="date">
22548         19th May 2010
22549       </div>
22550       <div class="body">
22551         <p>Today, the last piece of the puzzle for roaming laptops in Debian
22552 Edu finally entered the Debian archive.  Today, the new
22553 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-mklocaluser.html">libpam-mklocaluser</a>
22554 package was accepted.  Two days ago, two other pieces was accepted
22555 into unstable.  The
22556 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/pam-python.html">pam-python</a>
22557 package needed by libpam-mklocaluser, and the
22558 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd</a> package
22559 passed NEW on Monday.  In addition, the
22560 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds</a>
22561 package we need is in experimental (version 10-4) since Saturday, and
22562 hopefully will be moved to unstable soon.</p>
22563
22564 <p>This collection of packages allow for two different setups for
22565 roaming laptops.  The traditional setup would be using libpam-ccreds,
22566 nscd and libpam-mklocaluser with LDAP or Kerberos authentication,
22567 which should work out of the box if the configuration changes proposed
22568 for nscd in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/485282">BTS report
22569 #485282</a> is implemented.  The alternative setup is to use sssd with
22570 libpam-mklocaluser to connect to LDAP or Kerberos and let sssd take
22571 care of the caching of passwords and group information.</p>
22572
22573 <p>I have so far been unable to get sssd to work with the LDAP server
22574 at the University, but suspect the issue is some SSL/GnuTLS related
22575 problem with the server certificate.  I plan to update the Debian
22576 package to version 1.2, which is scheduled for next week, and hope to
22577 find time to make sure the next release will include both the
22578 Debian/Ubuntu specific patches.  Upstream is friendly and responsive,
22579 and I am sure we will find a good solution.</p>
22580
22581 <p>The idea is to set up the roaming laptops to authenticate using
22582 LDAP or Kerberos and create a local user with home directory in /home/
22583 when a usre in LDAP logs in via KDM or GDM for the first time, and
22584 cache the password for offline checking, as well as caching group
22585 memberhips and other relevant LDAP information.  The
22586 libpam-mklocaluser package was created to make sure the local home
22587 directory is in /home/, instead of /site/server/directory/ which would
22588 be the home directory if pam_mkhomedir was used.  To avoid confusion
22589 with support requests and configuration, we do not want local laptops
22590 to have users in a path that is used for the same users home directory
22591 on the home directory servers.</p>
22592
22593 <p>One annoying problem with gdm is that it do not show the PAM
22594 message passed to the user from libpam-mklocaluser when the local user
22595 is created.  Instead gdm simply reject the login with some generic
22596 message.  The message is shown in kdm, ssh and login, so I guess it is
22597 a bug in gdm.  Have not investigated if there is some other message
22598 type that can be used instead to get gdm to also show the message.</p>
22599
22600 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
22601 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
22602
22603       </div>
22604       <div class="tags">
22605
22606
22607         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>.
22608
22609
22610       </div>
22611     </div>
22612     <div class="padding"></div>
22613
22614     <div class="entry">
22615       <div class="title">
22616         <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>
22617       </div>
22618       <div class="date">
22619         14th May 2010
22620       </div>
22621       <div class="body">
22622         <p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
22623 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
22624 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
22625 expected, if I am to believe the
22626 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
22627 on debian-devel@</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
22628 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
22629 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen.  If serious problems are
22630 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
22631 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
22632 version.</p>
22633
22634 More information about
22635 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
22636 based boot sequencing</a> is available from the Debian wiki.  It is
22637 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
22638 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:</p>
22639
22640 <blockquote><pre>
22641 CONCURRENCY=none
22642 </pre></blockquote>
22643
22644 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
22645 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
22646 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
22647 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
22648
22649       </div>
22650       <div class="tags">
22651
22652
22653         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>.
22654
22655
22656       </div>
22657     </div>
22658     <div class="padding"></div>
22659
22660     <div class="entry">
22661       <div class="title">
22662         <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>
22663       </div>
22664       <div class="date">
22665         14th May 2010
22666       </div>
22667       <div class="body">
22668         <p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
22669 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
22670 system</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
22671 network.  Each machine will automatically report its status to the
22672 central server after boot and once per night.  The network setup is
22673 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
22674 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines.  This is useful
22675 to update the DHCP configuration.</p>
22676
22677 <p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
22678 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary.  Run
22679 this on the collector host:</p>
22680
22681 <blockquote><pre>
22682 perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
22683 </pre></blockquote>
22684
22685 <p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
22686 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.</p>
22687
22688 <p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
22689 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
22690 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
22691 tables in LDAP using this information.  Such tool is unfortunately not
22692 written yet.</p>
22693
22694       </div>
22695       <div class="tags">
22696
22697
22698         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>.
22699
22700
22701       </div>
22702     </div>
22703     <div class="padding"></div>
22704
22705     <div class="entry">
22706       <div class="title">
22707         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html">systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart</a>
22708       </div>
22709       <div class="date">
22710         13th May 2010
22711       </div>
22712       <div class="body">
22713         <p>The last few days a new boot system called
22714 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd</a>
22715 has been
22716 <a href="http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">introduced</a>
22717
22718 to the free software world.  I have not yet had time to play around
22719 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
22720 <a href="http://upstart.ubuntu.com/">upstart</a>, and might prove to be
22721 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
22722 based boot system.  Tollef is
22723 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/580814">in the process</a> of getting
22724 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work.  I
22725 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
22726 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
22727 at the moment do not.</p>
22728
22729 <p>Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
22730 platform support.  It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
22731 some new kernel features enabled to function properly.  This means
22732 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
22733 system.  Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
22734 way forward.</p>
22735
22736 <p>In the mean time, based on the
22737 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
22738 on debian-devel@</a> regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
22739 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
22740 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
22741 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies.  A
22742 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
22743 already in experimental.  If all go well, Squeeze will be released
22744 with parallel booting enabled by default.</p>
22745
22746       </div>
22747       <div class="tags">
22748
22749
22750         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>.
22751
22752
22753       </div>
22754     </div>
22755     <div class="padding"></div>
22756
22757     <div class="entry">
22758       <div class="title">
22759         <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>
22760       </div>
22761       <div class="date">
22762          6th May 2010
22763       </div>
22764       <div class="body">
22765         <p>These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
22766 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
22767 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies.  If you want
22768 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
22769 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
22770 based boot sequencing</a> is enabled, and add this line to
22771 /etc/default/rcS:</p>
22772
22773 <blockquote><pre>
22774 CONCURRENCY=makefile
22775 </pre></blockquote>
22776
22777 <p>That is it.  It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
22778 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
22779 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
22780 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts.  Startpar is configured
22781 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
22782 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
22783 make this happen.</p>
22784
22785 <p>Give it a try, and see if you like the result.  If some services
22786 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
22787 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
22788 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies).  Report bugs and get
22789 the package maintainers to fix it. :)</p>
22790
22791 <p>Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
22792 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct.  I
22793 expect we will get there in Squeeze+1, if we get manage to test and
22794 fix the remaining issues.</p>
22795
22796 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
22797 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
22798 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
22799 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
22800
22801       </div>
22802       <div class="tags">
22803
22804
22805         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>.
22806
22807
22808       </div>
22809     </div>
22810     <div class="padding"></div>
22811
22812     <div class="entry">
22813       <div class="title">
22814         <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>
22815       </div>
22816       <div class="date">
22817          2nd May 2010
22818       </div>
22819       <div class="body">
22820         <p>One interesting feature in Active Directory, is the ability to
22821 create a new user with an expired password, and thus force the user to
22822 change the password on the first login attempt.</p>
22823
22824 <p>I'm not quite sure how to do that with the LDAP setup in Debian
22825 Edu, but did some initial testing with a local account.  The account
22826 and password aging information is available in /etc/shadow, but
22827 unfortunately, it is not possible to specify an expiration time for
22828 passwords, only a maximum age for passwords.</p>
22829
22830 <p>A freshly created account (using adduser test) will have these
22831 settings in /etc/shadow:</p>
22832
22833 <blockquote><pre>
22834 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
22835 Last password change                                    : May 02, 2010
22836 Password expires                                        : never
22837 Password inactive                                       : never
22838 Account expires                                         : never
22839 Minimum number of days between password change          : 0
22840 Maximum number of days between password change          : 99999
22841 Number of days of warning before password expires       : 7
22842 root@tjener:~#
22843 </pre></blockquote>
22844
22845 <p>The only way I could come up with to create a user with an expired
22846 account, is to change the date of the last password change to the
22847 lowest value possible (January 1th 1970), and the maximum password age
22848 to the difference in days between that date and today.  To make it
22849 simple, I went for 30 years (30 * 365 = 10950) and January 2th (to
22850 avoid testing if 0 is a valid value).</p>
22851
22852 <p>After using these commands to set it up, it seem to work as
22853 intended:</p>
22854
22855 <blockquote><pre>
22856 root@tjener:~# chage -d 1 test; chage -M 10950 test
22857 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
22858 Last password change                                    : Jan 02, 1970
22859 Password expires                                        : never
22860 Password inactive                                       : never
22861 Account expires                                         : never
22862 Minimum number of days between password change          : 0
22863 Maximum number of days between password change          : 10950
22864 Number of days of warning before password expires       : 7
22865 root@tjener:~#
22866 </pre></blockquote>
22867
22868 <p>So far I have tested this with ssh and console, and kdm (in
22869 Squeeze) login, and all ask for a new password before login in the
22870 user (with ssh, I was thrown out and had to log in again).</p>
22871
22872 <p>Perhaps we should set up something similar for Debian Edu, to make
22873 sure only the user itself have the account password?</p>
22874
22875 <p>If you want to comment on or help out with implementing this for
22876 Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
22877
22878 <p>Update 2010-05-02 17:20: Paul Tötterman tells me on IRC that the
22879 shadow(8) page in Debian/testing now state that setting the date of
22880 last password change to zero (0) will force the password to be changed
22881 on the first login.  This was not mentioned in the manual in Lenny, so
22882 I did not notice this in my initial testing.  I have tested it on
22883 Squeeze, and '<tt>chage -d 0 username</tt>' do work there.  I have not
22884 tested it on Lenny yet.</p>
22885
22886 <p>Update 2010-05-02-19:05: Jim Paris tells me via email that an
22887 equivalent command to expire a password is '<tt>passwd -e
22888 username</tt>', which insert zero into the date of the last password
22889 change.</p>
22890
22891       </div>
22892       <div class="tags">
22893
22894
22895         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>.
22896
22897
22898       </div>
22899     </div>
22900     <div class="padding"></div>
22901
22902     <div class="entry">
22903       <div class="title">
22904         <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>
22905       </div>
22906       <div class="date">
22907         28th April 2010
22908       </div>
22909       <div class="body">
22910         <p>For some years now, I have wondered how we should handle laptops in
22911 Debian Edu.  The Debian Edu infrastructure is mostly designed to
22912 handle stationary computers, and less suited for computers that come
22913 and go.</p>
22914
22915 <p>Now I finally believe I have an sensible idea on how to adjust
22916 Debian Edu for laptops, by introducing a new profile for them, for
22917 example called Roaming Workstations.  Here are my thought on this.
22918 The setup would consist of the following:</p>
22919
22920 <ul>
22921
22922  <li>During installation, the user name of the owner / primary user of
22923    the laptop is requested and a local home directory is set up for
22924    the user, with uid and gid information fetched from the LDAP
22925    server.  This allow the user to work also when offline.  The
22926    central home directory can be available in a subdirectory on
22927    request, for example mounted via CIFS.  It could be mounted
22928    automatically when a user log in while on the Debian Edu network,
22929    and unmounted when the machine is taken away (network down,
22930    hibernate, etc), it can be set up to do automatic mounting on
22931    request (using autofs), or perhaps some GUI button on the desktop
22932    can be used to access it when needed.  Perhaps it is enough to use
22933    the fish protocol in KDE?</li>
22934
22935  <li>Password checking is set up to use LDAP or Kerberos
22936    authentication when the machine is on the Debian Edu network, and
22937    to cache the password for offline checking when the machine unable
22938    to reach the LDAP or Kerberos server.  This can be done using
22939    <a href="http://www.padl.com/OSS/pam_ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds</a>
22940    or the Fedora developed
22941    <a href="https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/SSSD">System
22942    Security Services Daemon</a> packages.</li>
22943
22944  <li>File synchronisation with the central home directory is set up
22945    using a shared directory in both the local and the central home
22946    directory, using unison.</li>
22947
22948  <li>Printing should be set up to print to all printers broadcasting
22949    their existence on the local network, and should then work out of
22950    the box with CUPS.  For sites needing accurate printer quotas, some
22951    system with Kerberos authentication or printing via ssh could be
22952    implemented.</li>
22953
22954  <li>For users that should have local root access to their laptop,
22955    sudo should be used to allow this to the local user.</li>
22956
22957  <li>It would be nice if user and group information from LDAP is
22958    cached on the client, but given that there are entries for the
22959    local user and primary group in /etc/, it should not be needed.</li>
22960
22961 </ul>
22962
22963 <p>I believe all the pieces to implement this are in Debian/testing at
22964 the moment.  If we work quickly, we should be able to get this ready
22965 in time for the Squeeze release to freeze.  Some of the pieces need
22966 tweaking, like libpam-ccreds should get support for pam-auth-update
22967 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566718">#566718</a>) and nslcd (or
22968 perhaps debian-edu-config) should get some integration code to stop
22969 its daemon when the LDAP server is unavailable to avoid long timeouts
22970 when disconnected from the net.  If we get Kerberos enabled, we need
22971 to make sure we avoid long timeouts there too.</p>
22972
22973 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
22974 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
22975
22976       </div>
22977       <div class="tags">
22978
22979
22980         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>.
22981
22982
22983       </div>
22984     </div>
22985     <div class="padding"></div>
22986
22987     <div class="entry">
22988       <div class="title">
22989         <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>
22990       </div>
22991       <div class="date">
22992         19th April 2010
22993       </div>
22994       <div class="body">
22995         <p>The last few weeks i have had the pleasure of reading a
22996 thought-provoking collection of essays by Cory Doctorow, on topics
22997 touching copyright, virtual worlds, the future of man when the
22998 conscience mind can be duplicated into a computer and many more. The
22999 book titled "Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity,
23000 Copyright, and the Future of the Future" is available with few
23001 restrictions on the web, for example from
23002 <a href="http://craphound.com/content/">his own site</a>. I read the
23003 epub-version from
23004 <a href="http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2883">feedbooks</a> using
23005 <a href="http://www.fbreader.org/">fbreader</a> and my N810. I
23006 strongly recommend this book.</p>
23007
23008       </div>
23009       <div class="tags">
23010
23011
23012         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>.
23013
23014
23015       </div>
23016     </div>
23017     <div class="padding"></div>
23018
23019     <div class="entry">
23020       <div class="title">
23021         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kerberos_for_Debian_Edu_Squeeze_.html">Kerberos for Debian Edu/Squeeze?</a>
23022       </div>
23023       <div class="date">
23024         14th April 2010
23025       </div>
23026       <div class="body">
23027         <p><a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20100413-kerberos/">Yesterdays
23028 NUUG presentation</a> about Kerberos was inspiring, and reminded me
23029 about the need to start using Kerberos in Skolelinux.  Setting up a
23030 Kerberos server seem to be straight forward, and if we get this in
23031 place a long time before the Squeeze version of Debian freezes, we
23032 have a chance to migrate Skolelinux away from NFSv3 for the home
23033 directories, and over to an architecture where the infrastructure do
23034 not have to trust IP addresses and machines, and instead can trust
23035 users and cryptographic keys instead.</p>
23036
23037 <p>A challenge will be integration and administration.  Is there a
23038 Kerberos implementation for Debian where one can control the
23039 administration access in Kerberos using LDAP groups?  With it, the
23040 school administration will have to maintain access control using flat
23041 files on the main server, which give a huge potential for errors.</p>
23042
23043 <p>A related question I would like to know is how well Kerberos and
23044 pam-ccreds (offline password check) work together.  Anyone know?</p>
23045
23046 <p>Next step will be to use Kerberos for access control in Lwat and
23047 Nagios.  I have no idea how much work that will be to implement.  We
23048 would also need to document how to integrate with Windows AD, as such
23049 shared network will require two Kerberos realms that need to cooperate
23050 to work properly.</p>
23051
23052 <p>I believe a good start would be to start using Kerberos on the
23053 skolelinux.no machines, and this way get ourselves experience with
23054 configuration and integration.  A natural starting point would be
23055 setting up ldap.skolelinux.no as the Kerberos server, and migrate the
23056 rest of the machines from PAM via LDAP to PAM via Kerberos one at the
23057 time.</p>
23058
23059 <p>If you would like to contribute to get this working in Skolelinux,
23060 I recommend you to see the video recording from yesterdays NUUG
23061 presentation, and start using Kerberos at home.  The video show show
23062 up in a few days.</p>
23063
23064       </div>
23065       <div class="tags">
23066
23067
23068         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>.
23069
23070
23071       </div>
23072     </div>
23073     <div class="padding"></div>
23074
23075     <div class="entry">
23076       <div class="title">
23077         <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>
23078       </div>
23079       <div class="date">
23080          6th March 2010
23081       </div>
23082       <div class="body">
23083         <p>6 years ago, as part of the Debian Edu development I am involved
23084 in, I asked for a hook in the kdm and gdm setup to run scripts as root
23085 when the user log out.  A bug was submitted against the xfree86-common
23086 package in 2004 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/230422">#230422</a>),
23087 and revisited every time Debian Edu was working on a new release.
23088 Today, this finally paid off.</p>
23089
23090 <p>The framework for this feature was today commited to the git
23091 repositry for the xorg package, and the git repository for xdm has
23092 been updated to use this framework.  Next on my agenda is to make sure
23093 kdm and gdm also add code to use this framework.</p>
23094
23095 <p>In Debian Edu, we want to ability to run commands as root when the
23096 user log out, to get rid of runaway processes and do general cleanup
23097 after a user.  With this framework in place, we finally can do that in
23098 a generic way that work with all display managers using this
23099 framework.  My goal is to get all display managers in Debian use it,
23100 similar to how they use the Xsession.d framework today.<p>
23101
23102       </div>
23103       <div class="tags">
23104
23105
23106         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>.
23107
23108
23109       </div>
23110     </div>
23111     <div class="padding"></div>
23112
23113     <div class="entry">
23114       <div class="title">
23115         <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>
23116       </div>
23117       <div class="date">
23118         11th February 2010
23119       </div>
23120       <div class="body">
23121         <p>On Tuesday, the Debian/Lenny based version of
23122 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> was finally
23123 shipped.  This was a major leap forward for the project, and I am very
23124 pleased that we finally got the release wrapped up.  Work on the first
23125 point release starts imediately, as we plan to get that one out a
23126 month after the major release, to include all fixes for bugs we found
23127 and fixed too late in the release process to include last Tuesday.</p>
23128
23129 <p>Perhaps it even is time for some partying?</p>
23130
23131 <p>After this first point release, my plan is to focus again on the
23132 next major release, based on Squeeze.  We will try to get as many of
23133 the fixes we need into the official Debian packages before the freeze,
23134 and have just a few weeks or months to make it happen.</p>
23135
23136       </div>
23137       <div class="tags">
23138
23139
23140         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>.
23141
23142
23143       </div>
23144     </div>
23145     <div class="padding"></div>
23146
23147     <div class="entry">
23148       <div class="title">
23149         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_Munin_and_Nagios_configuration.html">Automatic Munin and Nagios configuration</a>
23150       </div>
23151       <div class="date">
23152         27th January 2010
23153       </div>
23154       <div class="body">
23155         <p>One of the new features in the next Debian/Lenny based release of
23156 Debian Edu/Skolelinux, which is scheduled for release in the next few
23157 days, is automatic configuration of the service monitoring system
23158 Nagios.  The previous release had automatic configuration of trend
23159 analysis using Munin, and this Lenny based release take that a step
23160 further.</p>
23161
23162 <p>When installing a Debian Edu Main-server, it is automatically
23163 configured as a Munin and Nagios server.  In addition, it is
23164 configured to be a server for the
23165 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">SiteSummary
23166 system</a> I have written for use in Debian Edu.  The SiteSummary
23167 system is inspired by a system used by the University of Oslo where I
23168 work.  In short, the system provide a centralised collector of
23169 information about the computers on the network, and a client on each
23170 computer submitting information to this collector.  This allow for
23171 automatic information on which packages are installed on each machine,
23172 which kernel the machines are using, what kind of configuration the
23173 packages got etc.  This also allow us to automatically generate Munin
23174 and Nagios configuration.</p>
23175
23176 <p>All computers reporting to the sitesummary collector with the
23177 munin-node package installed is automatically enabled as a Munin
23178 client and graphs from the statistics collected from that machine show
23179 up automatically on http://www/munin/ on the Main-server.</p>
23180
23181 <p>All non-laptop computers reporting to the sitesummary collector are
23182 automatically monitored for network presence (ping and any network
23183 services detected).  In addition, all computers (also laptops) with
23184 the nagios-nrpe-server package installed and configured the way
23185 sitesummary would configure it, are monitored for full disks, software
23186 raid status, swap free and other checks that need to run locally on
23187 the machine.</p>
23188
23189 <p>The result is that the administrator on a school using Debian Edu
23190 based on Lenny will be able to check the health of his installation
23191 with one look at the Nagios settings, without having to spend any time
23192 keeping the Nagios configuration up-to-date.</p>
23193
23194 <p>The only configuration one need to do to get Nagios up and running
23195 is to set the password used to get access via HTTP.  The system
23196 administrator need to run "<tt>htpasswd /etc/nagios3/htpasswd.users
23197 nagiosadmin</tt>" to create a nagiosadmin user and set a password for
23198 it to be able to log into the Nagios web pages.  After that,
23199 everything is taken care of.</p>
23200
23201       </div>
23202       <div class="tags">
23203
23204
23205         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>.
23206
23207
23208       </div>
23209     </div>
23210     <div class="padding"></div>
23211
23212     <div class="entry">
23213       <div class="title">
23214         <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>
23215       </div>
23216       <div class="date">
23217         12th August 2009
23218       </div>
23219       <div class="body">
23220         <p>Just for fun, I did a search right now on Google for a few file ODF
23221 and MS Office based formats (not to be mistaken for ISO or ECMA
23222 OOXML), to get an idea of their relative usage.  I searched using
23223 'filetype:odt' and equvalent terms, and got these results:</P>
23224
23225 <table>
23226 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
23227 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:282000</td> <td>docx:308000</td></tr>
23228 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:75600</td> <td>pptx:183000</td></tr>
23229 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:26500     </td> <td>xlsx:145000</td></tr>
23230 </table>
23231
23232 <p>Next, I added a 'site:no' limit to get the numbers for Norway, and
23233 got these numbers:</p>
23234
23235 <table>
23236 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
23237 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:2480 </td> <td>docx:4460</td></tr>
23238 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:299   </td> <td>pptx:741</td></tr>
23239 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:187       </td> <td>xlsx:372</td></tr>
23240 </table>
23241
23242 <p>I wonder how these numbers change over time.</p>
23243
23244 <p>I am aware of Google returning different results and numbers based
23245 on where the search is done, so I guess these numbers will differ if
23246 they are conduced in another country.  Because of this, I did the same
23247 search from a machine in California, USA, a few minutes after the
23248 search done from a machine here in Norway.</p>
23249
23250
23251 <table>
23252 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
23253 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:129000</td> <td>docx:308000</td></tr>
23254 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:44200</td> <td>pptx:93900</td></tr>
23255 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:26500     </td> <td>xlsx:82400</td></tr>
23256 </table>
23257
23258 <p>And with 'site:no':
23259
23260 <table>
23261 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
23262 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:2480</td> <td>docx:3410</td></tr>
23263 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:175</td> <td>pptx:604</td></tr>
23264 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:186       </td> <td>xlsx:296</td></tr>
23265 </table>
23266
23267 <p>Interesting difference, not sure what to conclude from these
23268 numbers.</p>
23269
23270       </div>
23271       <div class="tags">
23272
23273
23274         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>.
23275
23276
23277       </div>
23278     </div>
23279     <div class="padding"></div>
23280
23281     <div class="entry">
23282       <div class="title">
23283         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ISO_still_hope_to_fix_OOXML.html">ISO still hope to fix OOXML</a>
23284       </div>
23285       <div class="date">
23286          8th August 2009
23287       </div>
23288       <div class="body">
23289         <p>According to <a
23290 href="http://twerner.blogspot.com/2009/08/defects-of-office-open-xml.html">a
23291 blog post from Torsten Werner</a>, the current defect report for ISO
23292 29500 (ISO OOXML) is 809 pages.  His interesting point is that the
23293 defect report is 71 pages more than the full ODF 1.1 specification.
23294 Personally I find it more interesting that ISO still believe ISO OOXML
23295 can be fixed in ISO.  Personally, I believe it is broken beyon repair,
23296 and I completely lack any trust in ISO for being able to get anywhere
23297 close to solving the problems.  I was part of the Norwegian committee
23298 involved in the OOXML fast track process, and was not impressed with
23299 Standard Norway and ISO in how they handled it.</p>
23300
23301 <p>These days I focus on ODF instead, which seem like a specification
23302 with the future ahead of it.  We are working in NUUG to organise a ODF
23303 seminar this autumn.</p>
23304
23305       </div>
23306       <div class="tags">
23307
23308
23309         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>.
23310
23311
23312       </div>
23313     </div>
23314     <div class="padding"></div>
23315
23316     <div class="entry">
23317       <div class="title">
23318         <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>
23319       </div>
23320       <div class="date">
23321         27th July 2009
23322       </div>
23323       <div class="body">
23324         <p>Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
23325 and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
23326 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing.  This
23327 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
23328 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
23329 installation.  Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
23330 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.</p>
23331
23332 <p>The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
23333 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
23334 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.</p>
23335
23336       </div>
23337       <div class="tags">
23338
23339
23340         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>.
23341
23342
23343       </div>
23344     </div>
23345     <div class="padding"></div>
23346
23347     <div class="entry">
23348       <div class="title">
23349         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html">Taking over sysvinit development</a>
23350       </div>
23351       <div class="date">
23352         22nd July 2009
23353       </div>
23354       <div class="body">
23355         <p>After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
23356 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
23357 take over the package and become the new upstream.  The number of
23358 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
23359 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
23360 the package up to date.</p>
23361
23362 <p>On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
23363 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman.  About 10 days ago, I made
23364 a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
23365 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
23366 distributions.  We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
23367 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge.  Since the
23368 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
23369 upstream project at <a href="http://savannah.nongnu.org/">Savannah</a>, and continue
23370 development there.  The project is registered and currently waiting
23371 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
23372 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
23373 working on the future release.</p>
23374
23375 <p>It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
23376 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.</p>
23377
23378       </div>
23379       <div class="tags">
23380
23381
23382         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>.
23383
23384
23385       </div>
23386     </div>
23387     <div class="padding"></div>
23388
23389     <div class="entry">
23390       <div class="title">
23391         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html">Debian boots quicker and quicker</a>
23392       </div>
23393       <div class="date">
23394         24th June 2009
23395       </div>
23396       <div class="body">
23397         <p>I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
23398 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
23399 could find more ways to speed up the boot system.  This was an Ubuntu
23400 funded
23401 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint">developer
23402 gathering</a>. It was quite productive.  We also discussed the future
23403 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
23404 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
23405 asynchronous and event base.  The Ubuntu approach using udev and
23406 upstart might be a good way forward.  Time will show.</p>
23407
23408 <p>Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
23409 process in Debian.  All of these should be applied to get a quick
23410 boot:</p>
23411
23412 <ul>
23413
23414 <li>Use dash as /bin/sh.</li>
23415
23416 <li>Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
23417    clock is in UTC.</li>
23418
23419 <li>Install and activate the insserv package to enable
23420    <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
23421    based boot sequencing</a>, and enable concurrent booting.</li>
23422
23423 </ul>
23424
23425 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
23426 <a href="http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/">Carlos
23427 Villegas</a>.
23428
23429 <p>Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
23430 unstable yesterday.  When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
23431 from the boot sequence.  It depend on very correct dependency
23432 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
23433 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
23434 using this.</p>
23435
23436 <p>On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
23437 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
23438 startup speed as well.  Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
23439 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
23440 possible to run a of them in the same process.  A quick way to test
23441 this would be to enable insserv and run 'mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
23442 insserv'.  Will need to test if that work. :)</p>
23443
23444       </div>
23445       <div class="tags">
23446
23447
23448         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>.
23449
23450
23451       </div>
23452     </div>
23453     <div class="padding"></div>
23454
23455     <div class="entry">
23456       <div class="title">
23457         <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>
23458       </div>
23459       <div class="date">
23460          2nd May 2009
23461       </div>
23462       <div class="body">
23463         <p>There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
23464 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
23465 do not yet know them.</p>
23466
23467 <p>The first one is <a href="http://valgrind.org/">valgrind</a>, a
23468 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
23469 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run 'valgrind program',
23470 and it will report any problems on stdout.  It is even better if the
23471 program include debug information.  With debug information, it is able
23472 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
23473 occurs.  It can report things like 'reading past memory block in file
23474 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M', and
23475 'using uninitialised value in control logic'.  This tool has made it
23476 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
23477 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
23478
23479 <p>The second one is
23480 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity">Coverity</a> which is
23481 a source code checker.  It is able to process the source of a program
23482 and find problems in the logic without running the program.  It
23483 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
23484 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel.  It is now a commercial tool
23485 and the company behind it is running
23486 <a href="http://www.scan.coverity.com/">a community service</a> for the
23487 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
23488 their source checked for free.  Several thousand defects have been
23489 found and fixed so far.  It can find errors like 'lock L taken in file
23490 X line N is never released if exiting in line M', or 'the code in file
23491 Y lines O to P can never be executed'.  The projects included in the
23492 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
23493 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.</p>
23494
23495 <p>I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
23496 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
23497 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
23498 surrounded by today.</p>
23499
23500       </div>
23501       <div class="tags">
23502
23503
23504         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>.
23505
23506
23507       </div>
23508     </div>
23509     <div class="padding"></div>
23510
23511     <div class="entry">
23512       <div class="title">
23513         <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>
23514       </div>
23515       <div class="date">
23516         28th April 2009
23517       </div>
23518       <div class="body">
23519         <p>Julien Blache
23520 <a href="http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214">claim that no
23521 patch is better than a useless patch</a>.  I completely disagree, as a
23522 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
23523 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
23524 time on fixing it.  No patch do not provide any of these positive
23525 properties.</p>
23526
23527       </div>
23528       <div class="tags">
23529
23530
23531         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>.
23532
23533
23534       </div>
23535     </div>
23536     <div class="padding"></div>
23537
23538     <div class="entry">
23539       <div class="title">
23540         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Recording_video_from_cron_using_VLC.html">Recording video from cron using VLC</a>
23541       </div>
23542       <div class="date">
23543          5th April 2009
23544       </div>
23545       <div class="body">
23546         <p>One think I have wanted to figure out for a along time is how to
23547 run vlc from cron to do recording of video streams on the net.  The
23548 task is trivial with mplayer, but I do not really trust the security
23549 of mplayer (it crashes too often on strange input), and thus prefer
23550 vlc.  I finally found a way to do it today.  I spent an hour or so
23551 searching the web for recipes and reading the documentation.  The
23552 hardest part was to get rid of the GUI window, but after finding the
23553 dummy interface, the command line finally presented itself:</p>
23554
23555 <blockquote><pre>URL=http://www.ping.uio.no/video/rms-oslo_2009.ogg
23556 SAVEFILE=rms.ogg
23557 DISPLAY= vlc -q $URL \
23558   --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
23559   --intf=dummy</pre></blockquote>
23560
23561 <p>The command stream the URL and store it in the SAVEFILE by
23562 duplicating the output stream to "nodisplay" and the file, using the
23563 dummy interface.  The dummy interface and the nodisplay output make
23564 sure no X interface is needed.</p>
23565
23566 <p>The cron job then need to start this job with the appropriate URL
23567 and file name to save, sleep for the duration wanted, and then kill
23568 the vlc process with SIGTERM.  Here is a complete script
23569 <tt>vlc-record</tt> to use from <tt>at</tt> or <tt>cron</tt>:</p>
23570
23571 <blockquote><pre>#!/bin/sh
23572 set -e
23573 URL="$1"
23574 SAVEFILE="$2"
23575 DURATION="$3"
23576 DISPLAY= vlc -q "$URL" \
23577   --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
23578   --intf=dummy < /dev/null > /dev/null 2>&1 &
23579 pid=$!
23580 sleep $DURATION
23581 kill $pid
23582 wait $pid</pre></blockquote>
23583
23584       </div>
23585       <div class="tags">
23586
23587
23588         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>.
23589
23590
23591       </div>
23592     </div>
23593     <div class="padding"></div>
23594
23595     <div class="entry">
23596       <div class="title">
23597         <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>
23598       </div>
23599       <div class="date">
23600         30th March 2009
23601       </div>
23602       <div class="body">
23603         <p>Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
23604 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure.  It is the
23605 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
23606 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
23607 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
23608 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
23609 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
23610 application.</p>
23611
23612 <p>This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
23613 independently of the server applications.  One can even allow users to
23614 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
23615 protocol and format.  In the normal case, only one client application
23616 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
23617 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
23618 blocked from doing so.</p>
23619
23620 <p>It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
23621 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
23622 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
23623 requirements change.</p>
23624
23625 <p>I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
23626 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
23627 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.</p>
23628
23629       </div>
23630       <div class="tags">
23631
23632
23633         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>.
23634
23635
23636       </div>
23637     </div>
23638     <div class="padding"></div>
23639
23640     <div class="entry">
23641       <div class="title">
23642         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html">Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering</a>
23643       </div>
23644       <div class="date">
23645         29th March 2009
23646       </div>
23647       <div class="body">
23648         <p>I'm sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
23649 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering.  I got a bit done tuning the
23650 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
23651 implementation avahi.  It look like it could be useful for us.  Almost
23652 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
23653 get to know the Skolelinux system.  Walter Bender, involved in the
23654 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
23655 also helped me improve my OLPC installation.  He also showed me that
23656 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
23657 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian.  As a
23658 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu.  We also
23659 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
23660 proved to be too hard for us.  The application seem to need more work
23661 before it is ready for me.  I look forward to getting home and relax
23662 now. :)</p>
23663
23664       </div>
23665       <div class="tags">
23666
23667
23668         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>.
23669
23670
23671       </div>
23672     </div>
23673     <div class="padding"></div>
23674
23675     <div class="entry">
23676       <div class="title">
23677         <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>
23678       </div>
23679       <div class="date">
23680         29th March 2009
23681       </div>
23682       <div class="body">
23683         <p>The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
23684 optimal.  There is RFC 2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
23685 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC 2307bis, with
23686 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory.  The RFC
23687 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
23688 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.</p>
23689
23690 <p>In <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux</a>,
23691 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
23692 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
23693 and LTSP configuration in LDAP.  These objects have a lot in common,
23694 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
23695 object per entity.  For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
23696 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
23697 DNS information and another with DHCP information.  The schemas
23698 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
23699 object.  In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
23700 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
23701 It just do not scale.  I believe it is time for a few RFC
23702 specifications to cleam up this mess.</p>
23703
23704 <p>I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
23705 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
23706 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
23707 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.</p>
23708
23709 <p>I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
23710 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.</p>
23711
23712 <p>Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
23713 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up.  Time to start a
23714 new IETF work group?</p>
23715
23716       </div>
23717       <div class="tags">
23718
23719
23720         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>.
23721
23722
23723       </div>
23724     </div>
23725     <div class="padding"></div>
23726
23727     <div class="entry">
23728       <div class="title">
23729         <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>
23730       </div>
23731       <div class="date">
23732         28th February 2009
23733       </div>
23734       <div class="body">
23735         <p>At work, we have a few hundred Linux servers, and with that amount
23736 of hardware it is important to keep track of when the hardware support
23737 contract expire for each server.  We have a machine (and service)
23738 register, which until recently did not contain much useful besides the
23739 machine room location and contact information for the system owner for
23740 each machine.  To make it easier for us to track support contract
23741 status, I've recently spent time on extending the machine register to
23742 include information about when the support contract expire, and to tag
23743 machines with expired contracts to make it easy to get a list of such
23744 machines.  I extended a perl script already being used to import
23745 information about machines into the register, to also do some screen
23746 scraping off the sites of Dell, HP and IBM (our majority of machines
23747 are from these vendors), and automatically check the support status
23748 for the relevant machines.  This make the support status information
23749 easily available and I hope it will make it easier for the computer
23750 owner to know when to get new hardware or renew the support contract.
23751 The result of this work documented that 27% of the machines in the
23752 registry is without a support contract, and made it very easy to find
23753 them.  27% might seem like a lot, but I see it more as the case of us
23754 using machines a bit longer than the 3 years a normal support contract
23755 last, to have test machines and a platform for less important
23756 services.  After all, the machines without a contract are working fine
23757 at the moment and the lack of contract is only a problem if any of
23758 them break down.  When that happen, we can either fix it using spare
23759 parts from other machines or move the service to another old
23760 machine.</p>
23761
23762 <p>I believe the code for screen scraping the Dell site was originally
23763 written by Trond Hasle Amundsen, and later adjusted by me and Morten
23764 Werner Forsbring.  The HP scraping was written by me after reading a
23765 nice article in ;login: about how to use WWW::Mechanize, and the IBM
23766 scraping was written by me based on the Dell code.  I know the HTML
23767 parsing could be done using nice libraries, but did not want to
23768 introduce more dependencies.  This is the current incarnation:</p>
23769
23770 <pre>
23771 use LWP::Simple;
23772 use POSIX;
23773 use WWW::Mechanize;
23774 use Date::Parse;
23775 [...]
23776 sub get_support_info {
23777     my ($machine, $model, $serial, $productnumber) = @_;
23778     my $str;
23779
23780     if ( $model =~ m/^Dell / ) {
23781         # fetch website from Dell support
23782         my $url = "http://support.euro.dell.com/support/topics/topic.aspx/emea/shared/support/my_systems_info/no/details?c=no&amp;cs=nodhs1&amp;l=no&amp;s=dhs&amp;ServiceTag=$serial";
23783         my $webpage = get($url);
23784         return undef unless ($webpage);
23785
23786         my $daysleft = -1;
23787         my @lines = split(/\n/, $webpage);
23788         foreach my $line (@lines) {
23789             next unless ($line =~ m/Beskrivelse/);
23790             $line =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
23791             $line =~ s/^.+?;(Beskrivelse;)/$1/;
23792
23793             my @f = split(/\;/, $line);
23794             @f = @f[13 .. $#f];
23795             my $lastend = "";
23796             while ($f[3] eq "DELL") {
23797                 my ($type, $startstr, $endstr, $days) = @f[0, 5, 7, 10];
23798
23799                 my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
23800                                             localtime(str2time($startstr)));
23801                 my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
23802                                           localtime(str2time($endstr)));
23803                 $str .= "$type $start -> $end ";
23804                 @f = @f[14 .. $#f];
23805                 $lastend = $end if ($end gt $lastend);
23806             }
23807             my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
23808             tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
23809                 if ($lastend lt $today);
23810         }
23811     } elsif ( $model =~ m/^HP / ) {
23812         my $mech = WWW::Mechanize->new();
23813         my $url =
23814             'http://www1.itrc.hp.com/service/ewarranty/warrantyInput.do';
23815         $mech->get($url);
23816         my $fields = {
23817             'BODServiceID' => 'NA',
23818             'RegisteredPurchaseDate' => '',
23819             'country' => 'NO',
23820             'productNumber' => $productnumber,
23821             'serialNumber1' => $serial,
23822         };
23823         $mech->submit_form( form_number => 2,
23824                             fields      => $fields );
23825         # Next step is screen scraping
23826         my $content = $mech->content();
23827
23828         $content =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
23829         $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
23830         $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
23831         $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
23832
23833         my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
23834
23835         while ($content =~ m/;Warranty Type;/) {
23836             my ($type, $status, $startstr, $stopstr) = $content =~
23837                 m/;Warranty Type;([^;]+);.+?;Status;(\w+);Start Date;([^;]+);End Date;([^;]+);/;
23838             $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty Type;//;
23839             my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
23840                                         localtime(str2time($startstr)));
23841             my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
23842                                       localtime(str2time($stopstr)));
23843
23844             $str .= "$type ($status) $start -> $end ";
23845
23846             tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
23847                 if ($end lt $today);
23848         }
23849     } elsif ( $model =~ m/^IBM / ) {
23850         # This code ignore extended support contracts.
23851         my ($producttype) = $model =~ m/.*-\[(.{4}).+\]-/;
23852         if ($producttype &amp;&amp; $serial) {
23853             my $content =
23854                 get("http://www-947.ibm.com/systems/support/supportsite.wss/warranty?action=warranty&amp;brandind=5000008&amp;Submit=Submit&amp;type=$producttype&amp;serial=$serial");
23855             if ($content) {
23856                 $content =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
23857                 $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
23858                 $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
23859                 $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
23860
23861                 $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty status;//;
23862                 my ($status, $end) = $content =~ m/;Warranty status;([^;]+)\s*;Expiration date;(\S+) ;/;
23863
23864                 $str .= "($status) -> $end ";
23865
23866                 my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
23867                 tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
23868                     if ($end lt $today);
23869             }
23870         }
23871     }
23872     return $str;
23873 }
23874 </pre>
23875
23876 <p>Here are some examples on how to use the function, using fake
23877 serial numbers.  The information passed in as arguments are fetched
23878 from dmidecode.</p>
23879
23880 <pre>
23881 print get_support_info("hp.host", "HP ProLiant BL460c G1", "1234567890"
23882                        "447707-B21");
23883 print get_support_info("dell.host", "Dell Inc. PowerEdge 2950", "1234567");
23884 print get_support_info("ibm.host", "IBM eserver xSeries 345 -[867061X]-",
23885                        "1234567");
23886 </pre>
23887
23888 <p>I would recommend this approach for tracking support contracts for
23889 everyone with more than a few computers to administer. :)</p>
23890
23891 <p>Update 2009-03-06: The IBM page do not include extended support
23892 contracts, so it is useless in that case.  The original Dell code do
23893 not handle extended support contracts either, but has been updated to
23894 do so.</p>
23895
23896       </div>
23897       <div class="tags">
23898
23899
23900         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>.
23901
23902
23903       </div>
23904     </div>
23905     <div class="padding"></div>
23906
23907     <div class="entry">
23908       <div class="title">
23909         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_bar_codes_at_a_computing_center.html">Using bar codes at a computing center</a>
23910       </div>
23911       <div class="date">
23912         20th February 2009
23913       </div>
23914       <div class="body">
23915         <p>At work with the University of Oslo, we have several hundred computers
23916 in our computing center.  This give us a challenge in tracking the
23917 location and cabling of the computers, when they are added, moved and
23918 removed.  Some times the location register is not updated when a
23919 computer is inserted or moved and we then have to search the room for
23920 the "missing" computer.</p>
23921
23922 <p>In the last issue of Linux Journal, I came across a project
23923 <a href="http://www.libdmtx.org/">libdmtx</a> to write and read bar
23924 code blocks as defined in the
23925 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Matrix">The Data Matrix
23926 Standard</a>.  This is bar codes that can be read with a normal
23927 digital camera, for example that on a cell phone, and several such bar
23928 codes can be read by libdmtx from one picture.  The bar code standard
23929 allow up to 2 KiB to be written in the tag.  There is another project
23930 with <a href="http://www.terryburton.co.uk/barcodewriter/">a bar code
23931 writer written in postscript</a> capable of creating such bar codes,
23932 but this was the first time I found a tool to read these bar
23933 codes.</p>
23934
23935 <p>It occurred to me that this could be used to tag and track the
23936 machines in our computing center.  If both racks and computers are
23937 tagged this way, we can use a picture of the rack and all its
23938 computers to detect the rack location of any computer in that rack.
23939 If we do this regularly for the entire room, we will find all
23940 locations, and can detect movements and removals.</p>
23941
23942 <p>I decided to test if this would work in practice, and picked a
23943 random rack and tagged all the machines with their names.  Next, I
23944 took pictures with my digital camera, and gave the dmtxread program
23945 these JPEG pictures to see how many tags it could read.  This worked
23946 fairly well.  If the pictures was well focused and not taken from the
23947 side, all tags in the image could be read.  Because of limited space
23948 between the racks, I was unable to get a good picture of the entire
23949 rack, but could without problem read all tags from a picture covering
23950 about half the rack.  I had to limit the search time used by dmtxread
23951 to 60000 ms to make sure it terminated in a reasonable time frame.</p>
23952
23953 <p>My conclusion is that this could work, and we should probably look
23954 at adjusting our computer tagging procedures to use bar codes for
23955 easier automatic tracking of computers.</p>
23956
23957       </div>
23958       <div class="tags">
23959
23960
23961         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>.
23962
23963
23964       </div>
23965     </div>
23966     <div class="padding"></div>
23967
23968     <div class="entry">
23969       <div class="title">
23970         <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>
23971       </div>
23972       <div class="date">
23973         17th January 2009
23974       </div>
23975       <div class="body">
23976         <p>As part of the work we do in <a href="http://www.nuug.no">NUUG</a>
23977 to publish video recordings of our monthly presentations, we provide a
23978 page with embedded video for easy access to the recording.  Putting a
23979 good set of HTML tags together to get working embedded video in all
23980 browsers and across all operating systems is not easy.  I hope this
23981 will become easier when the &lt;video&gt; tag is implemented in all
23982 browsers, but I am not sure.  We provide the recordings in several
23983 formats, MPEG1, Ogg Theora, H.264 and Quicktime, and want the
23984 browser/media plugin to pick one it support and use it to play the
23985 recording, using whatever embed mechanism the browser understand.
23986 There is at least four different tags to use for this, the new HTML5
23987 &lt;video&gt; tag, the &lt;object&gt; tag, the &lt;embed&gt; tag and
23988 the &lt;applet&gt; tag.  All of these take a lot of options, and
23989 finding the best options is a major challenge.</p>
23990
23991 <p>I just tested the experimental Opera browser available from <a
23992 href="http://labs.opera.com">labs.opera.com</a>, to see how it handled
23993 a &lt;video&gt; tag with a few video sources and no extra attributes.
23994 I was not very impressed.  The browser start by fetching a picture
23995 from the video stream.  Not sure if it is the first frame, but it is
23996 definitely very early in the recording.  So far, so good. Next,
23997 instead of streaming the 76 MiB video file, it start to download all
23998 of it, but do not start to play the video.  This mean I have to wait
23999 for several minutes for the downloading to finish.  When the download
24000 is done, the playing of the video do not start!  Waiting for the
24001 download, but I do not get to see the video?  Some testing later, I
24002 discover that I have to add the controls="true" attribute to be able
24003 to get a play button to pres to start the video.  Adding
24004 autoplay="true" did not help.  I sure hope this is a misfeature of the
24005 test version of Opera, and that future implementations of the
24006 &lt;video&gt; tag will stream recordings by default, or at least start
24007 playing when the download is done.</p>
24008
24009 <p>The test page I used (since changed to add more attributes) is
24010 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20090113-foredrag-om-foredrag/">available
24011 from the nuug site</a>.  Will have to test it with the new Firefox
24012 too.</p>
24013
24014 <p>In the test process, I discovered a missing feature.  I was unable
24015 to find a way to get the URL of the playing video out of Opera, so I
24016 am not quite sure it picked the Ogg Theora version of the video.  I
24017 sure hope it was using the announced Ogg Theora support. :)</p>
24018
24019       </div>
24020       <div class="tags">
24021
24022
24023         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/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>.
24024
24025
24026       </div>
24027     </div>
24028     <div class="padding"></div>
24029
24030     <div class="entry">
24031       <div class="title">
24032         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_video_mixer_on_a_USB_stick.html">Software video mixer on a USB stick</a>
24033       </div>
24034       <div class="date">
24035         28th December 2008
24036       </div>
24037       <div class="body">
24038         <p>The <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a> is
24039 recording our montly presentation on video, and recently we have
24040 worked on improving the quality of the recordings by mixing the slides
24041 directly with the video stream.  For this, we use the
24042 <a href="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/">dvswitch</a> package from
24043 the Debian video team.  As this require quite one computer per video
24044 source, and NUUG do not have enough laptops available, we need to
24045 borrow laptops.  And to avoid having to install extra software on
24046 these borrwed laptops, I have wrapped up all the programs needed on a
24047 bootable USB stick.  The software required is dvswitch with assosiated
24048 source, sink and mixer applications and
24049 <a href="http://www.kinodv.org/">dvgrab</a>.  To allow this setup to
24050 work without any configuration, I've patched dvswitch to use
24051 <a href="http://www.avahi.org/">avahi</a> to connect the various parts
24052 together.  And to allow us to use laptops without firewire plugs, I
24053 upgraded dvgrab to the one from Debian/unstable to get one that work
24054 with USB sources.  We have not yet tested this setup in a production
24055 setup, but I hope it will work properly, and allow us to set up a
24056 video mixer in a very short time frame.  We will need it for
24057 <a href="http://www.goopen.no/">Go Open 2009</a>.</p>
24058
24059 <p><a href="http://www.nuug.no/pub/video/bin/usbstick-dvswitch.img.gz">The
24060 USB image</a> is for a 1 GB memory stick, but can be used on any
24061 larger stick as well.</p>
24062
24063       </div>
24064       <div class="tags">
24065
24066
24067         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>.
24068
24069
24070       </div>
24071     </div>
24072     <div class="padding"></div>
24073
24074     <div class="entry">
24075       <div class="title">
24076         <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>
24077       </div>
24078       <div class="date">
24079          7th December 2008
24080       </div>
24081       <div class="body">
24082         <p>This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
24083 Oslo.  Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
24084 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
24085 LTSP installation.  LTSP now work out of the box on the 10-network.
24086 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
24087 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box.  Was working on getting the
24088 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
24089 finish it before the weekend was up.</p>
24090
24091 <p>Did not find time to look at the 4 VGA cards in one box we got from
24092 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
24093 development gathering.  Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
24094 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
24095 of these cards.</p>
24096
24097       </div>
24098       <div class="tags">
24099
24100
24101         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>.
24102
24103
24104       </div>
24105     </div>
24106     <div class="padding"></div>
24107
24108     <div class="entry">
24109       <div class="title">
24110         <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>
24111       </div>
24112       <div class="date">
24113         25th November 2008
24114       </div>
24115       <div class="body">
24116         <p>Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
24117 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
24118 default in Debian Edu.  We need an embedded video playing plugin with
24119 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
24120 all the multimedia content available on the web.  The test results and
24121 notes are available on
24122 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">the
24123 Debian wiki</a>.  I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
24124 fill this need.  My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
24125 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages.  A lot of the MIME
24126 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
24127 video/ogg), just do not work.  And simple formats like the
24128 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn't supported by the
24129 totem and vlc plugins.  I hope the situation will improve soon.  No
24130 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.</p>
24131
24132 <p>For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin.  It seem to
24133 be the only one fitting our needs. :/</p>
24134
24135       </div>
24136       <div class="tags">
24137
24138
24139         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>.
24140
24141
24142       </div>
24143     </div>
24144     <div class="padding"></div>
24145
24146     <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>
24147     <div id="sidebar">
24148
24149
24150
24151 <h2>Archive</h2>
24152 <ul>
24153
24154 <li>2015
24155 <ul>
24156
24157 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/01/">January (7)</a></li>
24158
24159 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/02/">February (6)</a></li>
24160
24161 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/03/">March (1)</a></li>
24162
24163 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/04/">April (4)</a></li>
24164
24165 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/05/">May (3)</a></li>
24166
24167 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/06/">June (4)</a></li>
24168
24169 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/07/">July (6)</a></li>
24170
24171 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/08/">August (2)</a></li>
24172
24173 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/09/">September (2)</a></li>
24174
24175 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/10/">October (9)</a></li>
24176
24177 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/11/">November (6)</a></li>
24178
24179 </ul></li>
24180
24181 <li>2014
24182 <ul>
24183
24184 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/01/">January (2)</a></li>
24185
24186 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/02/">February (3)</a></li>
24187
24188 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/03/">March (8)</a></li>
24189
24190 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/04/">April (7)</a></li>
24191
24192 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/05/">May (1)</a></li>
24193
24194 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/06/">June (2)</a></li>
24195
24196 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/07/">July (2)</a></li>
24197
24198 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/08/">August (2)</a></li>
24199
24200 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/09/">September (5)</a></li>
24201
24202 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/10/">October (6)</a></li>
24203
24204 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/11/">November (3)</a></li>
24205
24206 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/12/">December (5)</a></li>
24207
24208 </ul></li>
24209
24210 <li>2013
24211 <ul>
24212
24213 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/01/">January (11)</a></li>
24214
24215 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/02/">February (9)</a></li>
24216
24217 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/03/">March (9)</a></li>
24218
24219 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/04/">April (6)</a></li>
24220
24221 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/05/">May (9)</a></li>
24222
24223 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/06/">June (10)</a></li>
24224
24225 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/07/">July (7)</a></li>
24226
24227 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/08/">August (3)</a></li>
24228
24229 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/09/">September (5)</a></li>
24230
24231 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/10/">October (7)</a></li>
24232
24233 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/11/">November (9)</a></li>
24234
24235 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/12/">December (3)</a></li>
24236
24237 </ul></li>
24238
24239 <li>2012
24240 <ul>
24241
24242 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/01/">January (7)</a></li>
24243
24244 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/02/">February (10)</a></li>
24245
24246 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/03/">March (17)</a></li>
24247
24248 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/04/">April (12)</a></li>
24249
24250 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/05/">May (12)</a></li>
24251
24252 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/06/">June (20)</a></li>
24253
24254 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/07/">July (17)</a></li>
24255
24256 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/08/">August (6)</a></li>
24257
24258 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/09/">September (9)</a></li>
24259
24260 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/10/">October (17)</a></li>
24261
24262 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/11/">November (10)</a></li>
24263
24264 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/12/">December (7)</a></li>
24265
24266 </ul></li>
24267
24268 <li>2011
24269 <ul>
24270
24271 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/01/">January (16)</a></li>
24272
24273 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/02/">February (6)</a></li>
24274
24275 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/03/">March (6)</a></li>
24276
24277 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/04/">April (7)</a></li>
24278
24279 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/05/">May (3)</a></li>
24280
24281 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/06/">June (2)</a></li>
24282
24283 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/07/">July (7)</a></li>
24284
24285 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/08/">August (6)</a></li>
24286
24287 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/09/">September (4)</a></li>
24288
24289 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/10/">October (2)</a></li>
24290
24291 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/11/">November (3)</a></li>
24292
24293 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/12/">December (1)</a></li>
24294
24295 </ul></li>
24296
24297 <li>2010
24298 <ul>
24299
24300 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (2)</a></li>
24301
24302 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/02/">February (1)</a></li>
24303
24304 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/03/">March (3)</a></li>
24305
24306 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/04/">April (3)</a></li>
24307
24308 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/05/">May (9)</a></li>
24309
24310 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (14)</a></li>
24311
24312 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/07/">July (12)</a></li>
24313
24314 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/08/">August (13)</a></li>
24315
24316 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/09/">September (7)</a></li>
24317
24318 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/10/">October (9)</a></li>
24319
24320 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/11/">November (13)</a></li>
24321
24322 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/12/">December (12)</a></li>
24323
24324 </ul></li>
24325
24326 <li>2009
24327 <ul>
24328
24329 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (8)</a></li>
24330
24331 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (8)</a></li>
24332
24333 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (12)</a></li>
24334
24335 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (10)</a></li>
24336
24337 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/05/">May (9)</a></li>
24338
24339 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/06/">June (3)</a></li>
24340
24341 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/07/">July (4)</a></li>
24342
24343 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (3)</a></li>
24344
24345 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (1)</a></li>
24346
24347 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/10/">October (2)</a></li>
24348
24349 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (3)</a></li>
24350
24351 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (3)</a></li>
24352
24353 </ul></li>
24354
24355 <li>2008
24356 <ul>
24357
24358 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (5)</a></li>
24359
24360 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (7)</a></li>
24361
24362 </ul></li>
24363
24364 </ul>
24365
24366
24367
24368 <h2>Tags</h2>
24369 <ul>
24370
24371  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (13)</a></li>
24372
24373  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (1)</a></li>
24374
24375  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (1)</a></li>
24376
24377  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bankid">bankid (4)</a></li>
24378
24379  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin (9)</a></li>
24380
24381  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (15)</a></li>
24382
24383  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa (2)</a></li>
24384
24385  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath (2)</a></li>
24386
24387  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (114)</a></li>
24388
24389  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (154)</a></li>
24390
24391  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan (10)</a></li>
24392
24393  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/dld">dld (15)</a></li>
24394
24395  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook (20)</a></li>
24396
24397  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/drivstoffpriser">drivstoffpriser (4)</a></li>
24398
24399  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (296)</a></li>
24400
24401  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (23)</a></li>
24402
24403  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (12)</a></li>
24404
24405  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture (24)</a></li>
24406
24407  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox (9)</a></li>
24408
24409  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen (16)</a></li>
24410
24411  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264 (20)</a></li>
24412
24413  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju (42)</a></li>
24414
24415  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram (10)</a></li>
24416
24417  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (19)</a></li>
24418
24419  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap (9)</a></li>
24420
24421  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (8)</a></li>
24422
24423  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd (2)</a></li>
24424
24425  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (1)</a></li>
24426
24427  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network (8)</a></li>
24428
24429  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (36)</a></li>
24430
24431  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (271)</a></li>
24432
24433  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (177)</a></li>
24434
24435  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn (22)</a></li>
24436
24437  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (2)</a></li>
24438
24439  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (58)</a></li>
24440
24441  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (92)</a></li>
24442
24443  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid (1)</a></li>
24444
24445  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reactos">reactos (1)</a></li>
24446
24447  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (11)</a></li>
24448
24449  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (3)</a></li>
24450
24451  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (9)</a></li>
24452
24453  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (1)</a></li>
24454
24455  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ruter">ruter (4)</a></li>
24456
24457  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/scraperwiki">scraperwiki (2)</a></li>
24458
24459  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (44)</a></li>
24460
24461  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (4)</a></li>
24462
24463  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis (4)</a></li>
24464
24465  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (48)</a></li>
24466
24467  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (3)</a></li>
24468
24469  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (10)</a></li>
24470
24471  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (36)</a></li>
24472
24473  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin (2)</a></li>
24474
24475  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/usenix">usenix (2)</a></li>
24476
24477  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (8)</a></li>
24478
24479  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (54)</a></li>
24480
24481  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (4)</a></li>
24482
24483  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (37)</a></li>
24484
24485 </ul>
24486
24487
24488     </div>
24489     <p style="text-align: right">
24490  Created by <a href="http://steve.org.uk/Software/chronicle">Chronicle v4.6</a>
24491 </p>
24492
24493   </body>
24494 </html>