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                <title>Petter Reinholdtsen - Entries from October 2013</title>
                <description>Entries from October 2013</description>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/</link>

        
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                <title>Good causes: Debian Outreach Program for Women, EFF documenting the spying and Open access in Norway</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Good_causes__Debian_Outreach_Program_for_Women__EFF_documenting_the_spying_and_Open_access_in_Norway.html</link>        
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Good_causes__Debian_Outreach_Program_for_Women__EFF_documenting_the_spying_and_Open_access_in_Norway.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Tue, 15 Oct 2013 21:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;The last few days I came across a few good causes that should get
wider attention.  I recommend signing and donating to each one of
these. :)&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Via &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2013/18/&quot;&gt;Debian
Project News for 2013-10-14&lt;/a&gt; I came across the Outreach Program for
Women program which is a Google Summer of Code like initiative to get
more women involved in free software.  One debian sponsor has offered
to match &lt;a href=&quot;http://debian.ch/opw2013&quot;&gt;any donation done to Debian
earmarked&lt;/a&gt; for this initiative.  I donated a few minutes ago, and
hope you will to. :)&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;And the Electronic Frontier Foundation just announced plans to
create video documentaries about the excessive spying on every
Internet user that take place these days, and their need to fund the
work.  I&#39;ve already donated.  Are you next?&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;For my Norwegian audience, the organisation Studentenes og
Akademikernes Internasjonale Hjelpefond is collecting signatures for a
statement under the heading
&lt;a href=&quot;http://saih.no/Bloggers_United/&quot;&gt;Bloggers United for Open
Access&lt;/a&gt; for those of us asking for more focus on open access in the
Norwegian government.  So far 499 signatures.  I hope you will sign it
too.&lt;/p&gt;
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                <title>Oslo community mesh network - with NUUG and Hackeriet at Hausmania</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Oslo_community_mesh_network___with_NUUG_and_Hackeriet_at_Hausmania.html</link>        
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Oslo_community_mesh_network___with_NUUG_and_Hackeriet_at_Hausmania.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Fri, 11 Oct 2013 14:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;Wireless mesh networks are self organising and self healing
networks that can be used to connect computers across small and large
areas, depending on the radio technology used.  Normal wifi equipment
can be used to create home made radio networks, and there are several
successful examples like
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.freifunk.net/&quot;&gt;Freifunk&lt;/a&gt; and
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.awmn.net/&quot;&gt;Athens Wireless Metropolitan Network&lt;/a&gt;
(see
&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wireless_community_networks_by_region#Greece&quot;&gt;wikipedia
for a large list&lt;/a&gt;) around the globe.  To give you an idea how it
work, check out the nice overview of the Kiel Freifunk community which
can be seen from their
&lt;a href=&quot;http://freifunk.in-kiel.de/ffmap/nodes.html&quot;&gt;dynamically
updated node graph and map&lt;/a&gt;, where one can see how the mesh nodes
automatically handle routing and recover from nodes disappearing.
There is also a small community mesh network group in Oslo, Norway,
and that is the main topic of this blog post.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I&#39;ve wanted to check out mesh networks for a while now, and hoped
to do it as part of my involvement with the &lt;a
href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/&quot;&gt;NUUG member organisation&lt;/a&gt; community, and
my recent involvement in
&lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox&quot;&gt;the Freedombox project&lt;/a&gt;
finally lead me to give mesh networks some priority, as I suspect a
Freedombox should use mesh networks to connect neighbours and family
when possible, given that most communication between people are
between those nearby (as shown for example by research on Facebook
communication patterns).  It also allow people to communicate without
any central hub to tap into for those that want to listen in on the
private communication of citizens, which have become more and more
important over the years.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;So far I have only been able to find one group of people in Oslo
working on community mesh networks, over at the hack space
&lt;a href=&quot;http://hackeriet.no/&quot;&gt;Hackeriet&lt;/a&gt; at Husmania.  They seem to
have started with some Freifunk based effort using OLSR, called
&lt;a href=&quot;http://oslo.freifunk.net/index.php?title=Main_Page&quot;&gt;the Oslo
Freifunk project&lt;/a&gt;, but that effort is now dead and the people
behind it have moved on to a batman-adv based system called
&lt;a href=&quot;http://meshfx.org/trac&quot;&gt;meshfx&lt;/a&gt;.  Unfortunately the wiki
site for the Oslo Freifunk project is no longer possible to update to
reflect this fact, so the old project page can&#39;t be updated to point to
the new project.  A while back, the people at Hackeriet invited people
from the Freifunk community to Oslo to talk about mesh networks.  I
came across this video where Hans Jørgen Lysglimt interview the
speakers about this talk (from
&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2Kd7CLkhSY&quot;&gt;youtube&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;iframe width=&quot;420&quot; height=&quot;315&quot; src=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/embed/N2Kd7CLkhSY&quot; frameborder=&quot;0&quot; allowfullscreen&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I mentioned OLSR and batman-adv, which are mesh routing protocols.
There are heaps of different protocols, and I am still struggling to
figure out which one would be &quot;best&quot; for some definitions of best, but
given that the community mesh group in Oslo is so small, I believe it
is best to hook up with the existing one instead of trying to create a
completely different setup, and thus I have decided to focus on
batman-adv for now.  It sure help me to  know that the very cool
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.servalproject.org/&quot;&gt;Serval project in Australia&lt;/a&gt;
is using batman-adv as their meshing technology when it create a self
organizing and self healing telephony system for disaster areas and
less industrialized communities.  Check out this cool video presenting
that project (from
&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30qNfzJCQOA&quot;&gt;youtube&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;iframe width=&quot;560&quot; height=&quot;315&quot; src=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/embed/30qNfzJCQOA&quot; frameborder=&quot;0&quot; allowfullscreen&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;According to the wikipedia page on
&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_mesh_network&quot;&gt;Wireless
mesh network&lt;/a&gt; there are around 70 competing schemes for routing
packets across mesh networks, and OLSR, B.A.T.M.A.N. and
B.A.T.M.A.N. advanced are protocols used by several free software
based community mesh networks.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The batman-adv protocol is a bit special, as it provide layer 2
(as in ethernet ) routing, allowing ipv4 and ipv6 to work on the same
network.  One way to think about it is that it provide a mesh based
vlan you can bridge to or handle like any other vlan connected to your
computer.  The required drivers are already in the Linux kernel at
least since Debian Wheezy, and it is fairly easy to set up.  A
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki/Quick-start-guide&quot;&gt;good
introduction&lt;/a&gt; is available from the Open Mesh project.  These are
the key settings needed to join the Oslo meshfx network:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;table&gt;
&lt;tr&gt;&lt;th&gt;Setting&lt;/th&gt;&lt;th&gt;Value&lt;/th&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;Protocol / kernel module&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;batman-adv&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;ESSID&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;meshfx@hackeriet&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
&lt;td&gt;Channel / Frequency&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;11 / 2462&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
&lt;td&gt;Cell ID&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;02:BA:00:00:00:01&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;/table&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The reason for setting ad-hoc wifi Cell ID is to work around bugs
in firmware used in wifi card and wifi drivers.  (See a nice post from
VillageTelco about
&quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://tiebing.blogspot.no/2009/12/ad-hoc-cell-splitting-re-post-original.html&quot;&gt;Information
about cell-id splitting, stuck beacons, and failed IBSS merges!&lt;/a&gt;
for details.)  When these settings are activated and you have some
other mesh node nearby, your computer will be connected to the mesh
network and can communicate with any mesh node that is connected to
any of the nodes in your network of nodes. :)&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;My initial plan was to reuse my old Linksys WRT54GL as a mesh node,
but that seem to be very hard, as I have not been able to locate a
firmware supporting batman-adv.  If anyone know how to use that old
wifi access point with batman-adv these days, please let me know.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;If you find this project interesting and want to join, please join
us on IRC, either channel
&lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.freenode.net/#oslohackerspace&quot;&gt;#oslohackerspace&lt;/a&gt;
or &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.freenode.net/#nuug&quot;&gt;#nuug&lt;/a&gt; on
irc.freenode.net.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;While investigating mesh networks in Oslo, I came across an old
research paper from the university of Stavanger and Telenor Research
and Innovation called
&lt;a href=&quot;http://folk.uio.no/paalee/publications/netrel-egeland-iswcs-2008.pdf&quot;&gt;The
reliability of wireless backhaul mesh networks&lt;/a&gt; and elsewhere
learned that Telenor have been experimenting with mesh networks at
Grünerløkka in Oslo.  So mesh networks are also interesting for
commercial companies, even though Telenor discovered that it was hard
to figure out a good business plan for mesh networking and as far as I
know have closed down the experiment.  Perhaps Telenor or others would
be interested in a cooperation?&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2013-10-12&lt;/strong&gt;: I was just
&lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2013-October/005900.html&quot;&gt;told
by the Serval project developers&lt;/a&gt; that they no longer use
batman-adv (but are compatible with it), but their own crypto based
mesh system.&lt;/p&gt;
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                <title>Skolelinux / Debian Edu 7.1 install and overview video from Marcelo Salvador</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_7_1_install_and_overview_video_from_Marcelo_Salvador.html</link>        
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_7_1_install_and_overview_video_from_Marcelo_Salvador.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Tue, 8 Oct 2013 17:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;The other day I was pleased and surprised to discover that Marcelo
Salvador had published a
&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-GgpdqgLFc&quot;&gt;video on
Youtube&lt;/a&gt; showing how to install the standalone Debian Edu /
Skolelinux profile.  This is the profile intended for use at home or
on laptops that should not be integrated into the provided network
services (no central home directory, no Kerberos / LDAP directory etc,
in other word a single user machine).  The result is 11 minutes long,
and show some user applications (seem to be rather randomly picked).
Missed a few of my favorites like celestia, planets and chromium
showing the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.zygotebody.com/&quot;&gt;Zygote Body 3D model
of the human body&lt;/a&gt;, but I guess he did not know about those or find
other programs more interesting. :) And the video do not show the
advantages I believe is one of the most valuable featuers in Debian
Edu, its central school server making it possible to run hundreds of
computers without hard drives by installing one central
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ltsp.org/&quot;&gt;LTSP server&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Anyway, check out the video, embedded below and linked to above:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;iframe width=&quot;420&quot; height=&quot;315&quot; src=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/embed/w-GgpdqgLFc&quot; frameborder=&quot;0&quot; allowfullscreen&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Are there other nice videos demonstrating Skolelinux?  Please let
me know. :)&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
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