]> pere.pagekite.me Git - homepage.git/blob - blog/tags/debian/debian.rss
6fee796401cfc60e6d814dbf0c6ac6e94e52fa59
[homepage.git] / blog / tags / debian / debian.rss
1 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
2 <rss version='2.0' xmlns:lj='http://www.livejournal.org/rss/lj/1.0/'>
3 <channel>
4 <title>Petter Reinholdtsen - Entries tagged debian</title>
5 <description>Entries tagged debian</description>
6 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/</link>
7
8
9 <item>
10 <title>New chrpath release 0.15</title>
11 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_15.html</link>
12 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_15.html</guid>
13 <pubDate>Sun, 24 Nov 2013 09:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
14 <description>&lt;p&gt;After many years break from the package and a vain hope that
15 development would be continued by someone else, I finally pulled my
16 acts together this morning and wrapped up a new release of chrpath,
17 the command line tool to modify the rpath and runpath of already
18 compiled ELF programs. The update was triggered by the persistence of
19 Isha Vishnoi at IBM, which needed a new config.guess file to get
20 support for the ppc64le architecture (powerpc 64-bit Little Endian) he
21 is working on. I checked the
22 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/chrpath&quot;&gt;Debian&lt;/a&gt;,
23 &lt;a href=&quot;https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/chrpath&quot;&gt;Ubuntu&lt;/a&gt; and
24 &lt;a href=&quot;https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/acls/name/chrpath&quot;&gt;Fedora&lt;/a&gt;
25 packages for interesting patches (failed to find the source from
26 OpenSUSE and Mandriva packages), and found quite a few nice fixes.
27 These are the release notes:&lt;/p&gt;
28
29 &lt;p&gt;New in 0.15 released 2013-11-24:&lt;/p&gt;
30
31 &lt;ul&gt;
32
33 &lt;li&gt;Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project to work
34 with newer architectures. Thanks to isha vishnoi for the heads
35 up.&lt;/li&gt;
36
37 &lt;li&gt;Updated README with current URLs.&lt;/li&gt;
38
39 &lt;li&gt;Added byteswap fix found in Ubuntu, credited Jeremy Kerr and
40 Matthias Klose.&lt;/li&gt;
41
42 &lt;li&gt;Added missing help for -k|--keepgoing option, using patch by
43 Petr Machata found in Fedora.&lt;/li&gt;
44
45 &lt;li&gt;Rewrite removal of RPATH/RUNPATH to make sure the entry in
46 .dynamic is a NULL terminated string. Based on patch found in
47 Fedora credited Axel Thimm and Christian Krause.&lt;/li&gt;
48
49 &lt;/ul&gt;
50
51 &lt;p&gt;You can
52 &lt;a href=&quot;https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052&quot;&gt;download the
53 new version 0.15 from alioth&lt;/a&gt;. Please let us know via the Alioth
54 project if something is wrong with the new release. The test suite
55 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
56 include a testsuite check.&lt;/p&gt;
57 </description>
58 </item>
59
60 <item>
61 <title>Debian init.d boot script example for rsyslog</title>
62 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_init_d_boot_script_example_for_rsyslog.html</link>
63 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_init_d_boot_script_example_for_rsyslog.html</guid>
64 <pubDate>Sat, 2 Nov 2013 22:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
65 <description>&lt;p&gt;If one of the points of switching to a new init system in Debian is
66 &lt;a href=&quot;http://thomas.goirand.fr/blog/?p=147&quot;&gt;to get rid of huge
67 init.d scripts&lt;/a&gt;, I doubt we need to switch away from sysvinit and
68 init.d scripts at all. Here is an example init.d script, ie a rewrite
69 of /etc/init.d/rsyslog:&lt;/p&gt;
70
71 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
72 #!/lib/init/init-d-script
73 ### BEGIN INIT INFO
74 # Provides: rsyslog
75 # Required-Start: $remote_fs $time
76 # Required-Stop: umountnfs $time
77 # X-Stop-After: sendsigs
78 # Default-Start: 2 3 4 5
79 # Default-Stop: 0 1 6
80 # Short-Description: enhanced syslogd
81 # Description: Rsyslog is an enhanced multi-threaded syslogd.
82 # It is quite compatible to stock sysklogd and can be
83 # used as a drop-in replacement.
84 ### END INIT INFO
85 DESC=&quot;enhanced syslogd&quot;
86 DAEMON=/usr/sbin/rsyslogd
87 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
88
89 &lt;p&gt;Pretty minimalistic to me... For the record, the original sysv-rc
90 script was 137 lines, and the above is just 15 lines, most of it meta
91 info/comments.&lt;/p&gt;
92
93 &lt;p&gt;How to do this, you ask? Well, one create a new script
94 /lib/init/init-d-script looking something like this:
95
96 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
97 #!/bin/sh
98
99 # Define LSB log_* functions.
100 # Depend on lsb-base (&gt;= 3.2-14) to ensure that this file is present
101 # and status_of_proc is working.
102 . /lib/lsb/init-functions
103
104 #
105 # Function that starts the daemon/service
106
107 #
108 do_start()
109 {
110 # Return
111 # 0 if daemon has been started
112 # 1 if daemon was already running
113 # 2 if daemon could not be started
114 start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON --test &gt; /dev/null \
115 || return 1
116 start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON -- \
117 $DAEMON_ARGS \
118 || return 2
119 # Add code here, if necessary, that waits for the process to be ready
120 # to handle requests from services started subsequently which depend
121 # on this one. As a last resort, sleep for some time.
122 }
123
124 #
125 # Function that stops the daemon/service
126 #
127 do_stop()
128 {
129 # Return
130 # 0 if daemon has been stopped
131 # 1 if daemon was already stopped
132 # 2 if daemon could not be stopped
133 # other if a failure occurred
134 start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --retry=TERM/30/KILL/5 --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
135 RETVAL=&quot;$?&quot;
136 [ &quot;$RETVAL&quot; = 2 ] &amp;&amp; return 2
137 # Wait for children to finish too if this is a daemon that forks
138 # and if the daemon is only ever run from this initscript.
139 # If the above conditions are not satisfied then add some other code
140 # that waits for the process to drop all resources that could be
141 # needed by services started subsequently. A last resort is to
142 # sleep for some time.
143 start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --oknodo --retry=0/30/KILL/5 --exec $DAEMON
144 [ &quot;$?&quot; = 2 ] &amp;&amp; return 2
145 # Many daemons don&#39;t delete their pidfiles when they exit.
146 rm -f $PIDFILE
147 return &quot;$RETVAL&quot;
148 }
149
150 #
151 # Function that sends a SIGHUP to the daemon/service
152 #
153 do_reload() {
154 #
155 # If the daemon can reload its configuration without
156 # restarting (for example, when it is sent a SIGHUP),
157 # then implement that here.
158 #
159 start-stop-daemon --stop --signal 1 --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
160 return 0
161 }
162
163 SCRIPTNAME=$1
164 scriptbasename=&quot;$(basename $1)&quot;
165 echo &quot;SN: $scriptbasename&quot;
166 if [ &quot;$scriptbasename&quot; != &quot;init-d-library&quot; ] ; then
167 script=&quot;$1&quot;
168 shift
169 . $script
170 else
171 exit 0
172 fi
173
174 NAME=$(basename $DAEMON)
175 PIDFILE=/var/run/$NAME.pid
176
177 # Exit if the package is not installed
178 #[ -x &quot;$DAEMON&quot; ] || exit 0
179
180 # Read configuration variable file if it is present
181 [ -r /etc/default/$NAME ] &amp;&amp; . /etc/default/$NAME
182
183 # Load the VERBOSE setting and other rcS variables
184 . /lib/init/vars.sh
185
186 case &quot;$1&quot; in
187 start)
188 [ &quot;$VERBOSE&quot; != no ] &amp;&amp; log_daemon_msg &quot;Starting $DESC&quot; &quot;$NAME&quot;
189 do_start
190 case &quot;$?&quot; in
191 0|1) [ &quot;$VERBOSE&quot; != no ] &amp;&amp; log_end_msg 0 ;;
192 2) [ &quot;$VERBOSE&quot; != no ] &amp;&amp; log_end_msg 1 ;;
193 esac
194 ;;
195 stop)
196 [ &quot;$VERBOSE&quot; != no ] &amp;&amp; log_daemon_msg &quot;Stopping $DESC&quot; &quot;$NAME&quot;
197 do_stop
198 case &quot;$?&quot; in
199 0|1) [ &quot;$VERBOSE&quot; != no ] &amp;&amp; log_end_msg 0 ;;
200 2) [ &quot;$VERBOSE&quot; != no ] &amp;&amp; log_end_msg 1 ;;
201 esac
202 ;;
203 status)
204 status_of_proc &quot;$DAEMON&quot; &quot;$NAME&quot; &amp;&amp; exit 0 || exit $?
205 ;;
206 #reload|force-reload)
207 #
208 # If do_reload() is not implemented then leave this commented out
209 # and leave &#39;force-reload&#39; as an alias for &#39;restart&#39;.
210 #
211 #log_daemon_msg &quot;Reloading $DESC&quot; &quot;$NAME&quot;
212 #do_reload
213 #log_end_msg $?
214 #;;
215 restart|force-reload)
216 #
217 # If the &quot;reload&quot; option is implemented then remove the
218 # &#39;force-reload&#39; alias
219 #
220 log_daemon_msg &quot;Restarting $DESC&quot; &quot;$NAME&quot;
221 do_stop
222 case &quot;$?&quot; in
223 0|1)
224 do_start
225 case &quot;$?&quot; in
226 0) log_end_msg 0 ;;
227 1) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Old process is still running
228 *) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Failed to start
229 esac
230 ;;
231 *)
232 # Failed to stop
233 log_end_msg 1
234 ;;
235 esac
236 ;;
237 *)
238 echo &quot;Usage: $SCRIPTNAME {start|stop|status|restart|force-reload}&quot; &gt;&amp;2
239 exit 3
240 ;;
241 esac
242
243 :
244 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
245
246 &lt;p&gt;It is based on /etc/init.d/skeleton, and could be improved quite a
247 lot. I did not really polish the approach, so it might not always
248 work out of the box, but you get the idea. I did not try very hard to
249 optimize it nor make it more robust either.&lt;/p&gt;
250
251 &lt;p&gt;A better argument for switching init system in Debian than reducing
252 the size of init scripts (which is a good thing to do anyway), is to
253 get boot system that is able to handle the kernel events sensibly and
254 robustly, and do not depend on the boot to run sequentially. The boot
255 and the kernel have not behaved sequentially in years.&lt;/p&gt;
256 </description>
257 </item>
258
259 <item>
260 <title>Browser plugin for SPICE (spice-xpi) uploaded to Debian</title>
261 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Browser_plugin_for_SPICE__spice_xpi__uploaded_to_Debian.html</link>
262 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Browser_plugin_for_SPICE__spice_xpi__uploaded_to_Debian.html</guid>
263 <pubDate>Fri, 1 Nov 2013 11:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
264 <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.spice-space.org/&quot;&gt;The SPICE protocol&lt;/a&gt; for
265 remote display access is the preferred solution with oVirt and RedHat
266 Enterprise Virtualization, and I was sad to discover the other day
267 that the browser plugin needed to use these systems seamlessly was
268 missing in Debian. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/668284&quot;&gt;request
269 for a package&lt;/a&gt; was from 2012-04-10 with no progress since
270 2013-04-01, so I decided to wrap up a package based on the great work
271 from Cajus Pollmeier and put it in a collab-maint maintained git
272 repository to get a package I could use. I would very much like
273 others to help me maintain the package (or just take over, I do not
274 mind), but as no-one had volunteered so far, I just uploaded it to
275 NEW. I hope it will be available in Debian in a few days.&lt;/p&gt;
276
277 &lt;p&gt;The source is now available from
278 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/spice-xpi.git;a=summary&quot;&gt;http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/spice-xpi.git;a=summary&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
279 </description>
280 </item>
281
282 <item>
283 <title>Teaching vmdebootstrap to create Raspberry Pi SD card images</title>
284 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Teaching_vmdebootstrap_to_create_Raspberry_Pi_SD_card_images.html</link>
285 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Teaching_vmdebootstrap_to_create_Raspberry_Pi_SD_card_images.html</guid>
286 <pubDate>Sun, 27 Oct 2013 17:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
287 <description>&lt;p&gt;The
288 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/v/vmdebootstrap.html&quot;&gt;vmdebootstrap&lt;/a&gt;
289 program is a a very nice system to create virtual machine images. It
290 create a image file, add a partition table, mount it and run
291 debootstrap in the mounted directory to create a Debian system on a
292 stick. Yesterday, I decided to try to teach it how to make images for
293 &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi&quot;&gt;Raspberry Pi&lt;/a&gt;, as part
294 of a plan to simplify the build system for
295 &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox&quot;&gt;the FreedomBox
296 project&lt;/a&gt;. The FreedomBox project already uses vmdebootstrap for
297 the virtualbox images, but its current build system made multistrap
298 based system for Dreamplug images, and it is lacking support for
299 Raspberry Pi.&lt;/p&gt;
300
301 &lt;p&gt;Armed with the knowledge on how to build &quot;foreign&quot; (aka non-native
302 architecture) chroots for Raspberry Pi, I dived into the vmdebootstrap
303 code and adjusted it to be able to build armel images on my amd64
304 Debian laptop. I ended up giving vmdebootstrap five new options,
305 allowing me to replicate the image creation process I use to make
306 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html&quot;&gt;Debian
307 Jessie based mesh node images for the Raspberry Pi&lt;/a&gt;. First, the
308 &lt;tt&gt;--foreign /path/to/binfm_handler&lt;/tt&gt; option tell vmdebootstrap to
309 call debootstrap with --foreign and to copy the handler into the
310 generated chroot before running the second stage. This allow
311 vmdebootstrap to create armel images on an amd64 host. Next I added
312 two new options &lt;tt&gt;--bootsize size&lt;/tt&gt; and &lt;tt&gt;--boottype
313 fstype&lt;/tt&gt; to teach it to create a separate /boot/ partition with the
314 given file system type, allowing me to create an image with a vfat
315 partition for the /boot/ stuff. I also added a &lt;tt&gt;--variant
316 variant&lt;/tt&gt; option to allow me to create smaller images without the
317 Debian base system packages installed. Finally, I added an option
318 &lt;tt&gt;--no-extlinux&lt;/tt&gt; to tell vmdebootstrap to not install extlinux
319 as a boot loader. It is not needed on the Raspberry Pi and probably
320 most other non-x86 architectures. The changes were accepted by the
321 upstream author of vmdebootstrap yesterday and today, and is now
322 available from
323 &lt;a href=&quot;http://git.liw.fi/cgi-bin/cgit/cgit.cgi/vmdebootstrap/&quot;&gt;the
324 upstream project page&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
325
326 &lt;p&gt;To use it to build a Raspberry Pi image using Debian Jessie, first
327 create a small script (the customize script) to add the non-free
328 binary blob needed to boot the Raspberry Pi and the APT source
329 list:&lt;/p&gt;
330
331 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
332 #!/bin/sh
333 set -e # Exit on first error
334 rootdir=&quot;$1&quot;
335 cd &quot;$rootdir&quot;
336 cat &amp;lt;&amp;lt;EOF &gt; etc/apt/sources.list
337 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ jessie main contrib non-free
338 EOF
339 # Install non-free binary blob needed to boot Raspberry Pi. This
340 # install a kernel somewhere too.
341 wget https://raw.github.com/Hexxeh/rpi-update/master/rpi-update \
342 -O $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
343 chmod a+x $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
344 mkdir -p $rootdir/lib/modules
345 touch $rootdir/boot/start.elf
346 chroot $rootdir rpi-update
347 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
348
349 &lt;p&gt;Next, fetch the latest vmdebootstrap script and call it like this
350 to build the image:&lt;/p&gt;
351
352 &lt;pre&gt;
353 sudo ./vmdebootstrap \
354 --variant minbase \
355 --arch armel \
356 --distribution jessie \
357 --mirror http://http.debian.net/debian \
358 --image test.img \
359 --size 600M \
360 --bootsize 64M \
361 --boottype vfat \
362 --log-level debug \
363 --verbose \
364 --no-kernel \
365 --no-extlinux \
366 --root-password raspberry \
367 --hostname raspberrypi \
368 --foreign /usr/bin/qemu-arm-static \
369 --customize `pwd`/customize \
370 --package netbase \
371 --package git-core \
372 --package binutils \
373 --package ca-certificates \
374 --package wget \
375 --package kmod
376 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
377
378 &lt;p&gt;The list of packages being installed are the ones needed by
379 rpi-update to make the image bootable on the Raspberry Pi, with the
380 exception of netbase, which is needed by debootstrap to find
381 /etc/hosts with the minbase variant. I really wish there was a way to
382 set up an Raspberry Pi using only packages in the Debian archive, but
383 that is not possible as far as I know, because it boots from the GPU
384 using a non-free binary blob.&lt;/p&gt;
385
386 &lt;p&gt;The build host need debootstrap, kpartx and qemu-user-static and
387 probably a few others installed. I have not checked the complete
388 build dependency list.&lt;/p&gt;
389
390 &lt;p&gt;The resulting image will not use the hardware floating point unit
391 on the Raspberry PI, because the armel architecture in Debian is not
392 optimized for that use. So the images created will be a bit slower
393 than &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.raspbian.org/&quot;&gt;Raspbian&lt;/a&gt; based images.&lt;/p&gt;
394 </description>
395 </item>
396
397 <item>
398 <title>Good causes: Debian Outreach Program for Women, EFF documenting the spying and Open access in Norway</title>
399 <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>
400 <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>
401 <pubDate>Tue, 15 Oct 2013 21:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
402 <description>&lt;p&gt;The last few days I came across a few good causes that should get
403 wider attention. I recommend signing and donating to each one of
404 these. :)&lt;/p&gt;
405
406 &lt;p&gt;Via &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2013/18/&quot;&gt;Debian
407 Project News for 2013-10-14&lt;/a&gt; I came across the Outreach Program for
408 Women program which is a Google Summer of Code like initiative to get
409 more women involved in free software. One debian sponsor has offered
410 to match &lt;a href=&quot;http://debian.ch/opw2013&quot;&gt;any donation done to Debian
411 earmarked&lt;/a&gt; for this initiative. I donated a few minutes ago, and
412 hope you will to. :)&lt;/p&gt;
413
414 &lt;p&gt;And the Electronic Frontier Foundation just announced plans to
415 create &lt;a href=&quot;https://supporters.eff.org/donate/nsa-videos&quot;&gt;video
416 documentaries about the excessive spying&lt;/a&gt; on every Internet user that
417 take place these days, and their need to fund the work. I&#39;ve already
418 donated. Are you next?&lt;/p&gt;
419
420 &lt;p&gt;For my Norwegian audience, the organisation Studentenes og
421 Akademikernes Internasjonale Hjelpefond is collecting signatures for a
422 statement under the heading
423 &lt;a href=&quot;http://saih.no/Bloggers_United/&quot;&gt;Bloggers United for Open
424 Access&lt;/a&gt; for those of us asking for more focus on open access in the
425 Norwegian government. So far 499 signatures. I hope you will sign it
426 too.&lt;/p&gt;
427 </description>
428 </item>
429
430 <item>
431 <title>Videos about the Freedombox project - for inspiration and learning</title>
432 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Videos_about_the_Freedombox_project___for_inspiration_and_learning.html</link>
433 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Videos_about_the_Freedombox_project___for_inspiration_and_learning.html</guid>
434 <pubDate>Fri, 27 Sep 2013 14:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
435 <description>&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/&quot;&gt;Freedombox
436 project&lt;/a&gt; have been going on for a while, and have presented the
437 vision, ideas and solution several places. Here is a little
438 collection of videos of talks and presentation of the project.&lt;/p&gt;
439
440 &lt;ul&gt;
441
442 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukvUz5taxvA&quot;&gt;FreedomBox -
443 2,5 minute marketing film&lt;/a&gt; (Youtube)&lt;/li&gt;
444
445 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzW25QTVWsE&quot;&gt;Eben Moglen
446 discusses the Freedombox on CBS news 2011&lt;/a&gt; (Youtube)&lt;/li&gt;
447
448 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae8SZbxfE0g&quot;&gt;Eben Moglen -
449 Freedom in the Cloud - Software Freedom, Privacy and and Security for
450 Web 2.0 and Cloud computing at ISOC-NY Public Meeting 2010&lt;/a&gt;
451 (Youtube)&lt;/li&gt;
452
453 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNaIji_3xBE&quot;&gt;Fosdem 2011
454 Keynote by Eben Moglen presenting the Freedombox&lt;/a&gt; (Youtube)&lt;/li&gt;
455
456 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bDDUyJSQ9s&quot;&gt;Presentation of
457 the Freedombox by James Vasile at Elevate in Gratz 2011&lt;/a&gt; (Youtube)&lt;/li&gt;
458
459 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQTmnk27g9s&quot;&gt; Freedombox -
460 Discovery, Identity, and Trust by Nick Daly at Freedombox Hackfest New
461 York City in 2012&lt;/a&gt; (Youtube)&lt;/li&gt;
462
463 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkbSB4Ba7Ck&quot;&gt;Introduction
464 to the Freedombox at Freedombox Hackfest New York City in 2012&lt;/a&gt;
465 (Youtube)&lt;/li&gt;
466
467 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-P2Jaeg0aQ&quot;&gt;Freedom, Out
468 of the Box! by Bdale Garbee at linux.conf.au Ballarat, 2012&lt;/a&gt; (Youtube) &lt;/li&gt;
469
470 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://archive.fosdem.org/2013/schedule/event/freedombox/&quot;&gt;Freedombox
471 1.0 by Eben Moglen and Bdale Garbee at Fosdem 2013&lt;/a&gt; (FOSDEM) &lt;/li&gt;
472
473 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1LpYX2zVYg&quot;&gt;What is the
474 FreedomBox today by Bdale Garbee at Debconf13 in Vaumarcus
475 2013&lt;/a&gt; (Youtube)&lt;/li&gt;
476
477 &lt;/ul&gt;
478
479 &lt;p&gt;A larger list is available from
480 &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/TalksAndPresentations&quot;&gt;the
481 Freedombox Wiki&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
482
483 &lt;p&gt;On other news, I am happy to report that Freedombox based on Debian
484 Jessie is coming along quite well, and soon both Owncloud and using
485 Tor should be available for testers of the Freedombox solution. :) In
486 a few weeks I hope everything needed to test it is included in Debian.
487 The withsqlite package is already in Debian, and the plinth package is
488 pending in NEW. The third and vital part of that puzzle is the
489 metapackage/setup framework, which is still pending an upload. Join
490 us on &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox&quot;&gt;IRC
491 (#freedombox on irc.debian.org)&lt;/a&gt; and
492 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss&quot;&gt;the
493 mailing list&lt;/a&gt; if you want to help make this vision come true.&lt;/p&gt;
494 </description>
495 </item>
496
497 <item>
498 <title>Recipe to test the Freedombox project on amd64 or Raspberry Pi</title>
499 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Recipe_to_test_the_Freedombox_project_on_amd64_or_Raspberry_Pi.html</link>
500 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Recipe_to_test_the_Freedombox_project_on_amd64_or_Raspberry_Pi.html</guid>
501 <pubDate>Tue, 10 Sep 2013 14:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
502 <description>&lt;p&gt;I was introduced to the
503 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/&quot;&gt;Freedombox project&lt;/a&gt;
504 in 2010, when Eben Moglen presented his vision about serving the need
505 of non-technical people to keep their personal information private and
506 within the legal protection of their own homes. The idea is to give
507 people back the power over their network and machines, and return
508 Internet back to its intended peer-to-peer architecture. Instead of
509 depending on a central service, the Freedombox will give everyone
510 control over their own basic infrastructure.&lt;/p&gt;
511
512 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;ve intended to join the effort since then, but other tasks have
513 taken priority. But this summers nasty news about the misuse of trust
514 and privilege exercised by the &quot;western&quot; intelligence gathering
515 communities increased my eagerness to contribute to a point where I
516 actually started working on the project a while back.&lt;/p&gt;
517
518 &lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://alioth.debian.org/projects/freedombox/&quot;&gt;initial
519 Debian initiative&lt;/a&gt; based on the vision from Eben Moglen, is to
520 create a simple and cheap Debian based appliance that anyone can hook
521 up in their home and get access to secure and private services and
522 communication. The initial deployment platform have been the
523 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/t-dreamplugdetails.aspx&quot;&gt;Dreamplug&lt;/a&gt;,
524 which is a piece of hardware I do not own. So to be able to test what
525 the current Freedombox setup look like, I had to come up with a way to install
526 it on some hardware I do have access to. I have rewritten the
527 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/NickDaly/freedom-maker&quot;&gt;freedom-maker&lt;/a&gt;
528 image build framework to use .deb packages instead of only copying
529 setup into the boot images, and thanks to this rewrite I am able to
530 set up any machine supported by Debian Wheezy as a Freedombox, using
531 the previously mentioned deb (and a few support debs for packages
532 missing in Debian).&lt;/p&gt;
533
534 &lt;p&gt;The current Freedombox setup consist of a set of bootstrapping
535 scripts
536 (&lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/freedombox-setup&quot;&gt;freedombox-setup&lt;/a&gt;),
537 and a administrative web interface
538 (&lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/NickDaly/Plinth&quot;&gt;plinth&lt;/a&gt; + exmachina +
539 withsqlite), as well as a privacy enhancing proxy based on
540 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy&quot;&gt;privoxy&lt;/a&gt;
541 (freedombox-privoxy). There is also a web/javascript based XMPP
542 client (&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/jwchat&quot;&gt;jwchat&lt;/a&gt;)
543 trying (unsuccessfully so far) to talk to the XMPP server
544 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/ejabberd&quot;&gt;ejabberd&lt;/a&gt;). The
545 web interface is pluggable, and the goal is to use it to enable OpenID
546 services, mesh network connectivity, use of TOR, etc, etc. Not much of
547 this is really working yet, see
548 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/NickDaly/freedombox-todos/blob/master/TODO&quot;&gt;the
549 project TODO&lt;/a&gt; for links to GIT repositories. Most of the code is
550 on github at the moment. The HTTP proxy is operational out of the
551 box, and the admin web interface can be used to add/remove plinth
552 users. I&#39;ve not been able to do anything else with it so far, but
553 know there are several branches spread around github and other places
554 with lots of half baked features.&lt;/p&gt;
555
556 &lt;p&gt;Anyway, if you want to have a look at the current state, the
557 following recipes should work to give you a test machine to poke
558 at.&lt;/p&gt;
559
560 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Debian Wheezy amd64&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
561
562 &lt;ol&gt;
563
564 &lt;li&gt;Fetch normal Debian Wheezy installation ISO.&lt;/li&gt;
565 &lt;li&gt;Boot from it, either as CD or USB stick.&lt;/li&gt;
566 &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Press [tab] on the boot prompt and add this as a boot argument
567 to the Debian installer:&lt;p&gt;
568 &lt;pre&gt;url=&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat&quot;&gt;http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
569
570 &lt;li&gt;Answer the few language/region/password questions and pick disk to
571 install on.&lt;/li&gt;
572
573 &lt;li&gt;When the installation is finished and the machine have rebooted a
574 few times, your Freedombox is ready for testing.&lt;/li&gt;
575
576 &lt;/ol&gt;
577
578 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Raspberry Pi Raspbian&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
579
580 &lt;ol&gt;
581
582 &lt;li&gt;Fetch a Raspbian SD card image, create SD card.&lt;/li&gt;
583 &lt;li&gt;Boot from SD card, extend file system to fill the card completely.&lt;/li&gt;
584 &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Log in and add this to /etc/sources.list:&lt;/p&gt;
585 &lt;pre&gt;
586 deb &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/&quot;&gt;http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox&lt;/a&gt; wheezy main
587 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
588 &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Run this as root:&lt;/p&gt;
589 &lt;pre&gt;
590 wget -O - http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/BE1A583D.asc | \
591 apt-key add -
592 apt-get update
593 apt-get install freedombox-setup
594 /usr/lib/freedombox/setup
595 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
596 &lt;li&gt;Reboot into your freshly created Freedombox.&lt;/li&gt;
597
598 &lt;/ol&gt;
599
600 &lt;p&gt;You can test it on other architectures too, but because the
601 freedombox-privoxy package is binary, it will only work as intended on
602 the architectures where I have had time to build the binary and put it
603 in my APT repository. But do not let this stop you. It is only a
604 short &quot;&lt;tt&gt;apt-get source -b freedombox-privoxy&lt;/tt&gt;&quot; away. :)&lt;/p&gt;
605
606 &lt;p&gt;Note that by default Freedombox is a DHCP server on the
607 192.168.1.0/24 subnet, so if this is your subnet be careful and turn
608 off the DHCP server by running &quot;&lt;tt&gt;update-rc.d isc-dhcp-server
609 disable&lt;/tt&gt;&quot; as root.&lt;/p&gt;
610
611 &lt;p&gt;Please let me know if this works for you, or if you have any
612 problems. We gather on the IRC channel
613 &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox&quot;&gt;#freedombox&lt;/a&gt; on
614 irc.debian.org and the
615 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss&quot;&gt;project
616 mailing list&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
617
618 &lt;p&gt;Once you get your freedombox operational, you can visit
619 &lt;tt&gt;http://your-host-name:8001/&lt;/tt&gt; to see the state of the plint
620 welcome screen (dead end - do not be surprised if you are unable to
621 get past it), and next visit &lt;tt&gt;http://your-host-name:8001/help/&lt;/tt&gt;
622 to look at the rest of plinth. The default user is &#39;admin&#39; and the
623 default password is &#39;secret&#39;.&lt;/p&gt;
624 </description>
625 </item>
626
627 <item>
628 <title>Intel 180 SSD disk with Lenovo firmware can not use Intel firmware</title>
629 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_180_SSD_disk_with_Lenovo_firmware_can_not_use_Intel_firmware.html</link>
630 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_180_SSD_disk_with_Lenovo_firmware_can_not_use_Intel_firmware.html</guid>
631 <pubDate>Sun, 18 Aug 2013 14:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
632 <description>&lt;p&gt;Earlier, I reported about
633 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html&quot;&gt;my
634 problems using an Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB disk&lt;/a&gt;. Friday I was
635 told by IBM that the original disk should be thrown away. And as
636 there no longer was a problem if I bricked the firmware, I decided
637 today to try to install Intel firmware to replace the Lenovo firmware
638 currently on the disk.&lt;/p&gt;
639
640 &lt;p&gt;I searched the Intel site for firmware, and found
641 &lt;a href=&quot;https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&amp;ProdId=3472&amp;DwnldID=18363&amp;ProductFamily=Solid-State+Drives+and+Caching&amp;ProductLine=Intel%c2%ae+High+Performance+Solid-State+Drive&amp;ProductProduct=Intel%c2%ae+SSD+520+Series+(180GB%2c+2.5in+SATA+6Gb%2fs%2c+25nm%2c+MLC)&amp;lang=eng&quot;&gt;issdfut_2.0.4.iso&lt;/a&gt;
642 (aka Intel SATA Solid-State Drive Firmware Update Tool) which
643 according to the site should contain the latest firmware for SSD
644 disks. I inserted the broken disk in one of my spare laptops and
645 booted the ISO from a USB stick. The disk was recognized, but the
646 program claimed the newest firmware already were installed and refused
647 to insert any Intel firmware. So no change, and the disk is still
648 unable to handle write load. :( I guess the only way to get them
649 working would be if Lenovo releases new firmware. No idea how likely
650 that is. Anyway, just blogging about this test for completeness. I
651 got a working Samsung disk, and see no point in spending more time on
652 the broken disks.&lt;/p&gt;
653 </description>
654 </item>
655
656 <item>
657 <title>How to fix a Thinkpad X230 with a broken 180 GB SSD disk</title>
658 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html</link>
659 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html</guid>
660 <pubDate>Wed, 17 Jul 2013 23:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
661 <description>&lt;p&gt;Today I switched to
662 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html&quot;&gt;my
663 new laptop&lt;/a&gt;. I&#39;ve previously written about the problems I had with
664 my new Thinkpad X230, which was delivered with an
665 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_SSD_520_Series_180_GB_with_Lenovo_firmware_still_lock_up_from_sustained_writes.html&quot;&gt;180
666 GB Intel SSD disk with Lenovo firmware&lt;/a&gt; that did not handle
667 sustained writes. My hardware supplier have been very forthcoming in
668 trying to find a solution, and after first trying with another
669 identical 180 GB disks they decided to send me a 256 GB Samsung SSD
670 disk instead to fix it once and for all. The Samsung disk survived
671 the installation of Debian with encrypted disks (filling the disk with
672 random data during installation killed the first two), and I thus
673 decided to trust it with my data. I have installed it as a Debian Edu
674 Wheezy roaming workstation hooked up with my Debian Edu Squeeze main
675 server at home using Kerberos and LDAP, and will use it as my work
676 station from now on.&lt;/p&gt;
677
678 &lt;p&gt;As this is a solid state disk with no moving parts, I believe the
679 Debian Wheezy default installation need to be tuned a bit to increase
680 performance and increase life time of the disk. The Linux kernel and
681 user space applications do not yet adjust automatically to such
682 environment. To make it easier for my self, I created a draft Debian
683 package &lt;tt&gt;ssd-setup&lt;/tt&gt; to handle this tuning. The
684 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/ssd-setup.git&quot;&gt;source
685 for the ssd-setup package&lt;/a&gt; is available from collab-maint, and it
686 is set up to adjust the setup of the machine by just installing the
687 package. If there is any non-SSD disk in the machine, the package
688 will refuse to install, as I did not try to write any logic to sort
689 file systems in SSD and non-SSD file systems.&lt;/p&gt;
690
691 &lt;p&gt;I consider the package a draft, as I am a bit unsure how to best
692 set up Debian Wheezy with an SSD. It is adjusted to my use case,
693 where I set up the machine with one large encrypted partition (in
694 addition to /boot), put LVM on top of this and set up partitions on
695 top of this again. See the README file in the package source for the
696 references I used to pick the settings. At the moment these
697 parameters are tuned:&lt;/p&gt;
698
699 &lt;ul&gt;
700
701 &lt;li&gt;Set up cryptsetup to pass TRIM commands to the physical disk
702 (adding discard to /etc/crypttab)&lt;/li&gt;
703
704 &lt;li&gt;Set up LVM to pass on TRIM commands to the underlying device (in
705 this case a cryptsetup partition) by changing issue_discards from
706 0 to 1 in /etc/lvm/lvm.conf.&lt;/li&gt;
707
708 &lt;li&gt;Set relatime as a file system option for ext3 and ext4 file
709 systems.&lt;/li&gt;
710
711 &lt;li&gt;Tell swap to use TRIM commands by adding &#39;discard&#39; to
712 /etc/fstab.&lt;/li&gt;
713
714 &lt;li&gt;Change I/O scheduler from cfq to deadline using a udev rule.&lt;/li&gt;
715
716 &lt;li&gt;Run fstrim on every ext3 and ext4 file system every night (from
717 cron.daily).&lt;/li&gt;
718
719 &lt;li&gt;Adjust sysctl values vm.swappiness to 1 and vm.vfs_cache_pressure
720 to 50 to reduce the kernel eagerness to swap out processes.&lt;/li&gt;
721
722 &lt;/ul&gt;
723
724 &lt;p&gt;During installation, I cancelled the part where the installer fill
725 the disk with random data, as this would kill the SSD performance for
726 little gain. My goal with the encrypted file system is to ensure
727 those stealing my laptop end up with a brick and not a working
728 computer. I have no hope in keeping the really resourceful people
729 from getting the data on the disk (see
730 &lt;a href=&quot;http://xkcd.com/538/&quot;&gt;XKCD #538&lt;/a&gt; for an explanation why).
731 Thus I concluded that adding the discard option to crypttab is the
732 right thing to do.&lt;/p&gt;
733
734 &lt;p&gt;I considered using the noop I/O scheduler, as several recommended
735 it for SSD, but others recommended deadline and a benchmark I found
736 indicated that deadline might be better for interactive use.&lt;/p&gt;
737
738 &lt;p&gt;I also considered using the &#39;discard&#39; file system option for ext3
739 and ext4, but read that it would give a performance hit ever time a
740 file is removed, and thought it best to that that slowdown once a day
741 instead of during my work.&lt;/p&gt;
742
743 &lt;p&gt;My package do not set up tmpfs on /var/run, /var/lock and /tmp, as
744 this is already done by Debian Edu.&lt;/p&gt;
745
746 &lt;p&gt;I have not yet started on the user space tuning. I expect
747 iceweasel need some tuning, and perhaps other applications too, but
748 have not yet had time to investigate those parts.&lt;/p&gt;
749
750 &lt;p&gt;The package should work on Ubuntu too, but I have not yet tested it
751 there.&lt;/p&gt;
752
753 &lt;p&gt;As for the answer to the question in the title of this blog post,
754 as far as I know, the only solution I know about is to replace the
755 disk. It might be possible to flash it with Intel firmware instead of
756 the Lenovo firmware. But I have not tried and did not want to do so
757 without approval from Lenovo as I wanted to keep the warranty on the
758 disk until a solution was found and they wanted the broken disks
759 back.&lt;/p&gt;
760 </description>
761 </item>
762
763 <item>
764 <title>Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB with Lenovo firmware still lock up from sustained writes</title>
765 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_SSD_520_Series_180_GB_with_Lenovo_firmware_still_lock_up_from_sustained_writes.html</link>
766 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_SSD_520_Series_180_GB_with_Lenovo_firmware_still_lock_up_from_sustained_writes.html</guid>
767 <pubDate>Wed, 10 Jul 2013 13:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
768 <description>&lt;p&gt;A few days ago, I wrote about
769 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html&quot;&gt;the
770 problems I experienced with my new X230 and its SSD disk&lt;/a&gt;, which
771 was dying during installation because it is unable to cope with
772 sustained write. My supplier is in contact with
773 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lenovo.com/&quot;&gt;Lenovo&lt;/a&gt;, and they wanted to send a
774 replacement disk to try to fix the problem. They decided to send an
775 identical model, so my hopes for a permanent fix was slim.&lt;/p&gt;
776
777 &lt;p&gt;Anyway, today I got the replacement disk and tried to install
778 Debian Edu Wheezy with encrypted disk on it. The new disk have the
779 same firmware version as the original. This time my hope raised
780 slightly as the installation progressed, as the original disk used to
781 die after 4-7% of the disk was written to, while this time it kept
782 going past 10%, 20%, 40% and even past 50%. But around 60%, the disk
783 died again and I was back on square one. I still do not have a new
784 laptop with a disk I can trust. I can not live with a disk that might
785 lock up when I download a new
786 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu / Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; ISO or
787 other large files. I look forward to hearing from my supplier with
788 the next proposal from Lenovo.&lt;/p&gt;
789
790 &lt;p&gt;The original disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
791 11S0C38722Z1ZNME35X1TR, ISN: CVCV321407HB180EGN, SA: G57560302, FW:
792 LF1i, 29MAY2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
793 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40002756C4, Model:
794 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5&quot; 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
795 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.&lt;/p&gt;
796
797 &lt;p&gt;The replacement disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
798 11S0C38722Z1ZNDE34N0L0, ISN: CVCV315306RK180EGN, SA: G57560-302, FW:
799 LF1i, 22APR2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
800 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40000AB69E, Model:
801 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5&quot; 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
802 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.&lt;/p&gt;
803
804 &lt;p&gt;The only difference is in the first number (serial number?), ISN,
805 SA, date and WNPP values. Mentioning all the details here in case
806 someone is able to use the information to find a way to identify the
807 failing disk among working ones (if any such working disk actually
808 exist).&lt;/p&gt;
809 </description>
810 </item>
811
812 <item>
813 <title>July 13th: Debian/Ubuntu BSP and Skolelinux/Debian Edu developer gathering in Oslo</title>
814 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/July_13th__Debian_Ubuntu_BSP_and_Skolelinux_Debian_Edu_developer_gathering_in_Oslo.html</link>
815 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/July_13th__Debian_Ubuntu_BSP_and_Skolelinux_Debian_Edu_developer_gathering_in_Oslo.html</guid>
816 <pubDate>Tue, 9 Jul 2013 10:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
817 <description>&lt;p&gt;The upcoming Saturday, 2013-07-13, we are organising a combined
818 Debian Edu developer gathering and Debian and Ubuntu bug squashing
819 party in Oslo. It is organised by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/&quot;&gt;the
820 member assosiation NUUG&lt;/a&gt; and
821 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
822 project&lt;/a&gt; together with &lt;a href=&quot;http://bitraf.no/&quot;&gt;the hack space
823 Bitraf&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
824
825 &lt;p&gt;It starts 10:00 and continue until late evening. Everyone is
826 welcome, and there is no fee to participate. There is on the other
827 hand limited space, and only room for 30 people. Please put your name
828 on &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2013/07/13/no/Oslo&quot;&gt;the event
829 wiki page&lt;/a&gt; if you plan to join us.&lt;/p&gt;
830 </description>
831 </item>
832
833 <item>
834 <title>The Thinkpad is dead, long live the Thinkpad X230?</title>
835 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html</link>
836 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html</guid>
837 <pubDate>Fri, 5 Jul 2013 08:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
838 <description>&lt;p&gt;Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a
839 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html&quot;&gt;replacement
840 for my trusty old Thinkpad X41&lt;/a&gt;. Unfortunately I did not have much
841 time to spend on it, and it took a while to find a model I believe
842 will do the job, but two days ago the replacement finally arrived. I
843 ended up picking a
844 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230&quot;&gt;Thinkpad X230&lt;/a&gt;
845 with SSD disk (NZDAJMN). I first test installed Debian Edu Wheezy as
846 a roaming workstation, and it seemed to work flawlessly. But my
847 second installation with encrypted disk was not as successful. More
848 on that below.&lt;/p&gt;
849
850 &lt;p&gt;I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
851 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
852 listed in the feature list. But I did get good help from the search
853 feature at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.prisjakt.no/&quot;&gt;Prisjakt&lt;/a&gt;, which
854 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
855 requirements. A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks according
856 to that search interface, so I had to drop specifying the number of
857 disks from my search parameters. I also asked around among friends to
858 get their impression on keyboards and robustness.&lt;/p&gt;
859
860 &lt;p&gt;So the new laptop arrived, and it is quite a lot wider than the
861 X41. I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is
862 significantly wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my
863 hand a lot more to reach the edges. But the key response is fairly
864 good and the individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope
865 I will get used to it. My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really
866 needed a new laptop now. :)&lt;/p&gt;
867
868 &lt;p&gt;Turning off the touch pad was simple. All it took was a quick
869 visit to the BIOS during boot it disable it.&lt;/p&gt;
870
871 &lt;p&gt;But there is a fatal problem with the laptop. The 180 GB SSD disk
872 lock up during load. And this happen when installing Debian Wheezy
873 with encrypted disk, while the disk is being filled with random data.
874 I also tested to install Ubuntu Raring, and it happen there too if I
875 reenable the code to fill the disk with random data (it is disabled by
876 default in Ubuntu). And the bug with is already known. It was
877 reported to Debian as &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/691427&quot;&gt;BTS
878 report #691427 2012-10-25&lt;/a&gt; (journal commit I/O error on brand-new
879 Thinkpad T430s ext4 on lvm on SSD). It is also reported to the Linux
880 kernel developers as
881 &lt;a href=&quot;https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51861&quot;&gt;Kernel bugzilla
882 report #51861 2012-12-20&lt;/a&gt; (Intel SSD 520 stops working under load
883 (SSDSC2BW180A3L in Lenovo ThinkPad T430s)). It is also reported on the
884 Lenovo forums, both for
885 &lt;a href=&quot;http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-and-newer-T-series/T430s-Intel-SSD-520-180GB-issue/m-p/1070549&quot;&gt;T430
886 2012-11-10&lt;/a&gt; and for
887 &lt;a href=&quot;http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/X-Series-ThinkPad-Laptops/x230-SATA-errors-with-180GB-Intel-520-SSD-under-heavy-write-load/m-p/1068147&quot;&gt;X230
888 03-20-2013&lt;/a&gt;. The problem do not only affect installation. The
889 reports state that the disk lock up during use if many writes are done
890 on the disk, so it is much no use to work around the installation
891 problem and end up with a computer that can lock up at any moment.
892 There is even a
893 &lt;a href=&quot;https://git.efficios.com/?p=test-ssd.git&quot;&gt;small C program
894 available&lt;/a&gt; that will lock up the hard drive after running a few
895 minutes by writing to a file.&lt;/p&gt;
896
897 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;ve contacted my supplier and asked how to handle this, and after
898 contacting PCHELP Norway (request 01D1FDP) which handle support
899 requests for Lenovo, his first suggestion was to upgrade the disk
900 firmware. Unfortunately there is no newer firmware available from
901 Lenovo, as my disk already have the most recent one (version LF1i). I
902 hope to hear more from him today and hope the problem can be
903 fixed. :)&lt;/p&gt;
904 </description>
905 </item>
906
907 <item>
908 <title>The Thinkpad is dead, long live the Thinkpad X230</title>
909 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230.html</link>
910 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230.html</guid>
911 <pubDate>Thu, 4 Jul 2013 09:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
912 <description>&lt;p&gt;Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a replacement for my
913 trusty old Thinkpad X41. Unfortunately I did not have much time to
914 spend on it, but today the replacement finally arrived. I ended up
915 picking a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230&quot;&gt;Thinkpad
916 X230&lt;/a&gt; with SSD disk (NZDAJMN). I first test installed Debian Edu
917 Wheezy as a roaming workstation, and it worked flawlessly. As I write
918 this, it is installing what I hope will be a more final installation,
919 with a encrypted hard drive to ensure any dope head stealing it end up
920 with an expencive door stop.&lt;/p&gt;
921
922 &lt;p&gt;I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
923 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
924 listed in the feature list. But I did get good help from the search
925 feature at &lt;ahref=&quot;http://www.prisjakt.no/&quot;&gt;Prisjakt&lt;/a&gt;, which
926 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
927 requirements. A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks, so I had
928 to drop number of disks from my search parameters.&lt;/p&gt;
929
930 &lt;p&gt;I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is significantly
931 wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my hand a lot more
932 to reach the edges. But the key response is fairly good and the
933 individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope I will get
934 used to it. My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really needed a
935 new laptop now. :)&lt;/p&gt;
936
937 &lt;p&gt;I look forward to figuring out how to turn off the touch pad.&lt;/p&gt;
938 </description>
939 </item>
940
941 <item>
942 <title>Automatically locate and install required firmware packages on Debian (Isenkram 0.4)</title>
943 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_locate_and_install_required_firmware_packages_on_Debian__Isenkram_0_4_.html</link>
944 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_locate_and_install_required_firmware_packages_on_Debian__Isenkram_0_4_.html</guid>
945 <pubDate>Tue, 25 Jun 2013 11:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
946 <description>&lt;p&gt;It annoys me when the computer fail to do automatically what it is
947 perfectly capable of, and I have to do it manually to get things
948 working. One such task is to find out what firmware packages are
949 needed to get the hardware on my computer working. Most often this
950 affect the wifi card, but some times it even affect the RAID
951 controller or the ethernet card. Today I pushed version 0.4 of the
952 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram&quot;&gt;Isenkram package&lt;/a&gt;
953 including a new script isenkram-autoinstall-firmware handling the
954 process of asking all the loaded kernel modules what firmware files
955 they want, find debian packages providing these files and install the
956 debian packages. Here is a test run on my laptop:&lt;/p&gt;
957
958 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
959 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
960 info: kernel drivers requested extra firmware: ipw2200-bss.fw ipw2200-ibss.fw ipw2200-sniffer.fw
961 info: fetching http://http.debian.net/debian/dists/squeeze/Contents-i386.gz
962 info: locating packages with the requested firmware files
963 info: Updating APT sources after adding non-free APT source
964 info: trying to install firmware-ipw2x00
965 firmware-ipw2x00
966 firmware-ipw2x00
967 Preconfiguring packages ...
968 Selecting previously deselected package firmware-ipw2x00.
969 (Reading database ... 259727 files and directories currently installed.)
970 Unpacking firmware-ipw2x00 (from .../firmware-ipw2x00_0.28+squeeze1_all.deb) ...
971 Setting up firmware-ipw2x00 (0.28+squeeze1) ...
972 #
973 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
974
975 &lt;p&gt;When all the requested firmware is present, a simple message is
976 printed instead:&lt;/p&gt;
977
978 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
979 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
980 info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules. exiting
981 #
982 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
983
984 &lt;p&gt;It could use some polish, but it is already working well and saving
985 me some time when setting up new machines. :)&lt;/p&gt;
986
987 &lt;p&gt;So, how does it work? It look at the set of currently loaded
988 kernel modules, and look up each one of them using modinfo, to find
989 the firmware files listed in the module meta-information. Next, it
990 download the Contents file from a nearby APT mirror, and search for
991 the firmware files in this file to locate the package with the
992 requested firmware file. If the package is in the non-free section, a
993 non-free APT source is added and the package is installed using
994 &lt;tt&gt;apt-get install&lt;/tt&gt;. The end result is a slightly better working
995 machine.&lt;/p&gt;
996
997 &lt;p&gt;I hope someone find time to implement a more polished version of
998 this script as part of the hw-detect debian-installer module, to
999 finally fix &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/655507&quot;&gt;BTS report
1000 #655507&lt;/a&gt;. There really is no need to insert USB sticks with
1001 firmware during a PXE install when the packages already are available
1002 from the nearby Debian mirror.&lt;/p&gt;
1003 </description>
1004 </item>
1005
1006 <item>
1007 <title>Fixing the Linux black screen of death on machines with Intel HD video</title>
1008 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fixing_the_Linux_black_screen_of_death_on_machines_with_Intel_HD_video.html</link>
1009 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fixing_the_Linux_black_screen_of_death_on_machines_with_Intel_HD_video.html</guid>
1010 <pubDate>Tue, 11 Jun 2013 11:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
1011 <description>&lt;p&gt;When installing RedHat, Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu on some machines,
1012 the screen just turn black when Linux boot, either during installation
1013 or on first boot from the hard disk. I&#39;ve seen it once in a while the
1014 last few years, but only recently understood the cause. I&#39;ve seen it
1015 on HP laptops, and on my latest acquaintance the Packard Bell laptop.
1016 The reason seem to be in the wiring of some laptops. The system to
1017 control the screen background light is inverted, so when Linux try to
1018 turn the brightness fully on, it end up turning it off instead. I do
1019 not know which Linux drivers are affected, but this post is about the
1020 i915 driver used by the
1021 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv&quot;&gt;Packard Bell
1022 EasyNote LV&lt;/a&gt;, Thinkpad X40 and many other laptops.&lt;/p&gt;
1023
1024 &lt;p&gt;The problem can be worked around two ways. Either by adding
1025 i915.invert_brightness=1 as a kernel option, or by adding a file in
1026 /etc/modprobe.d/ to tell modprobe to add the invert_brightness=1
1027 option when it load the i915 kernel module. On Debian and Ubuntu, it
1028 can be done by running these commands as root:&lt;/p&gt;
1029
1030 &lt;pre&gt;
1031 echo options i915 invert_brightness=1 | tee /etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf
1032 update-initramfs -u -k all
1033 &lt;/pre&gt;
1034
1035 &lt;p&gt;Since March 2012 there is
1036 &lt;a href=&quot;http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=4dca20efb1a9c2efefc28ad2867e5d6c3f5e1955&quot;&gt;a
1037 mechanism in the Linux kernel&lt;/a&gt; to tell the i915 driver which
1038 hardware have this problem, and get the driver to invert the
1039 brightness setting automatically. To use it, one need to add a row in
1040 &lt;a href=&quot;http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c&quot;&gt;the
1041 intel_quirks array&lt;/a&gt; in the driver source
1042 &lt;tt&gt;drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c&lt;/tt&gt; (look for &quot;&lt;tt&gt;static
1043 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks&lt;/tt&gt;&quot;), specifying the PCI device
1044 number (vendor number 8086 is assumed) and subdevice vendor and device
1045 number.&lt;/p&gt;
1046
1047 &lt;p&gt;My Packard Bell EasyNote LV got this output from &lt;tt&gt;lspci
1048 -vvnn&lt;/tt&gt; for the video card in question:&lt;/p&gt;
1049
1050 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
1051 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation \
1052 3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller [8086:0156] \
1053 (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
1054 Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device [1025:0688]
1055 Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- \
1056 ParErr- Stepping- SE RR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
1057 Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast &gt;TAbort- \
1058 &lt;TAbort- &lt;MAbort-&gt;SERR- &lt;PERR- INTx-
1059 Latency: 0
1060 Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 42
1061 Region 0: Memory at c2000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
1062 Region 2: Memory at b0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
1063 Region 4: I/O ports at 4000 [size=64]
1064 Expansion ROM at &lt;unassigned&gt; [disabled]
1065 Capabilities: &lt;access denied&gt;
1066 Kernel driver in use: i915
1067 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1068
1069 &lt;p&gt;The resulting intel_quirks entry would then look like this:&lt;/p&gt;
1070
1071 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
1072 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks[] = {
1073 ...
1074 /* Packard Bell EasyNote LV11HC needs invert brightness quirk */
1075 { 0x0156, 0x1025, 0x0688, quirk_invert_brightness },
1076 ...
1077 }
1078 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1079
1080 &lt;p&gt;According to the kernel module instructions (as seen using
1081 &lt;tt&gt;modinfo i915&lt;/tt&gt;), information about hardware needing the
1082 invert_brightness flag should be sent to the
1083 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/dri-devel&quot;&gt;dri-devel
1084 (at) lists.freedesktop.org&lt;/a&gt; mailing list to reach the kernel
1085 developers. But my email about the laptop sent 2013-06-03 have not
1086 yet shown up in
1087 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2013-June/thread.html&quot;&gt;the
1088 web archive for the mailing list&lt;/a&gt;, so I suspect they do not accept
1089 emails from non-subscribers. Because of this, I sent my patch also to
1090 the Debian bug tracking system instead as
1091 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/710938&quot;&gt;BTS report #710938&lt;/a&gt;, to make
1092 sure the patch is not lost.&lt;/p&gt;
1093
1094 &lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, it is not enough to fix the kernel to get Laptops
1095 with this problem working properly with Linux. If you use Gnome, your
1096 worries should be over at this point. But if you use KDE, there is
1097 something in KDE ignoring the invert_brightness setting and turning on
1098 the screen during login. I&#39;ve reported it to Debian as
1099 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/711237&quot;&gt;BTS report #711237&lt;/a&gt;, and
1100 have no idea yet how to figure out exactly what subsystem is doing
1101 this. Perhaps you can help? Perhaps you know what the Gnome
1102 developers did to handle this, and this can give a clue to the KDE
1103 developers? Or you know where in KDE the screen brightness is changed
1104 during login? If so, please update the BTS report (or get in touch if
1105 you do not know how to update BTS).&lt;/p&gt;
1106
1107 &lt;p&gt;Update 2013-07-19: The correct fix for this machine seem to be
1108 acpi_backlight=vendor, to disable ACPI backlight support completely,
1109 as the ACPI information on the machine is trash and it is better to
1110 leave it to the intel video driver to control the screen
1111 backlight.&lt;/p&gt;
1112 </description>
1113 </item>
1114
1115 <item>
1116 <title>How to install Linux on a Packard Bell Easynote LV preinstalled with Windows 8</title>
1117 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8.html</link>
1118 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8.html</guid>
1119 <pubDate>Mon, 27 May 2013 15:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
1120 <description>&lt;p&gt;Two days ago, I asked
1121 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_can_I_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8_.html&quot;&gt;how
1122 I could install Linux on a Packard Bell EasyNote LV computer
1123 preinstalled with Windows 8&lt;/a&gt;. I found a solution, but am horrified
1124 with the obstacles put in the way of Linux users on a laptop with UEFI
1125 and Windows 8.&lt;/p&gt;
1126
1127 &lt;p&gt;I never found out if the cause of my problems were the use of UEFI
1128 secure booting or fast boot. I suspect fast boot was the problem,
1129 causing the firmware to boot directly from HD without considering any
1130 key presses and alternative devices, but do not know UEFI settings
1131 enough to tell.&lt;/p&gt;
1132
1133 &lt;p&gt;There is no way to install Linux on the machine in question without
1134 opening the box and disconnecting the hard drive! This is as far as I
1135 can tell, the only way to get access to the firmware setup menu
1136 without accepting the Windows 8 license agreement. I am told (and
1137 found description on how to) that it is possible to configure the
1138 firmware setup once booted into Windows 8. But as I believe the terms
1139 of that agreement are completely unacceptable, accepting the license
1140 was never an alternative. I do not enter agreements I do not intend
1141 to follow.&lt;/p&gt;
1142
1143 &lt;p&gt;I feared I had to return the laptops and ask for a refund, and
1144 waste many hours on this, but luckily there was a way to get it to
1145 work. But I would not recommend it to anyone planning to run Linux on
1146 it, and I have become sceptical to Windows 8 certified laptops. Is
1147 this the way Linux will be forced out of the market place, by making
1148 it close to impossible for &quot;normal&quot; users to install Linux without
1149 accepting the Microsoft Windows license terms? Or at least not
1150 without risking to loose the warranty?&lt;/p&gt;
1151
1152 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;ve updated the
1153 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv&quot;&gt;Linux Laptop
1154 wiki page for Packard Bell EasyNote LV&lt;/a&gt;, to ensure the next person
1155 do not have to struggle as much as I did to get Linux into the
1156 machine.&lt;/p&gt;
1157
1158 &lt;p&gt;Thanks to Bob Rosbag, Florian Weimer, Philipp Kern, Ben Hutching,
1159 Michael Tokarev and others for feedback and ideas.&lt;/p&gt;
1160 </description>
1161 </item>
1162
1163 <item>
1164 <title>How can I install Linux on a Packard Bell Easynote LV preinstalled with Windows 8?</title>
1165 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_can_I_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8_.html</link>
1166 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_can_I_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8_.html</guid>
1167 <pubDate>Sat, 25 May 2013 18:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
1168 <description>&lt;p&gt;I&#39;ve run into quite a problem the last few days. I bought three
1169 new laptops for my parents and a few others. I bought Packard Bell
1170 Easynote LV to run Kubuntu on and use as their home computer. But I
1171 am completely unable to figure out how to install Linux on it. The
1172 computer is preinstalled with Windows 8, and I suspect it uses UEFI
1173 instead of a BIOS to boot.&lt;/p&gt;
1174
1175 &lt;p&gt;The problem is that I am unable to get it to PXE boot, and unable
1176 to get it to boot the Linux installer from my USB stick. I have yet
1177 to try the DVD install, and still hope it will work. when I turn on
1178 the computer, there is no information on what buttons to press to get
1179 the normal boot menu. I expect to get some boot menu to select PXE or
1180 USB stick booting. When booting, it first ask for the language to
1181 use, then for some regional settings, and finally if I will accept the
1182 Windows 8 terms of use. As these terms are completely unacceptable to
1183 me, I have no other choice but to turn off the computer and try again
1184 to get it to boot the Linux installer.&lt;/p&gt;
1185
1186 &lt;p&gt;I have gathered my findings so far on a Linlap page about the
1187 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv&quot;&gt;Packard Bell
1188 EasyNote LV&lt;/a&gt; model. If you have any idea how to get Linux
1189 installed on this machine, please get in touch or update that wiki
1190 page. If I can&#39;t find a way to install Linux, I will have to return
1191 the laptop to the seller and find another machine for my parents.&lt;/p&gt;
1192
1193 &lt;p&gt;I wonder, is this the way Linux will be forced out of the market
1194 using UEFI and &quot;secure boot&quot; by making it impossible to install Linux
1195 on new Laptops?&lt;/p&gt;
1196 </description>
1197 </item>
1198
1199 <item>
1200 <title>How to transform a Debian based system to a Debian Edu installation</title>
1201 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_transform_a_Debian_based_system_to_a_Debian_Edu_installation.html</link>
1202 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_transform_a_Debian_based_system_to_a_Debian_Edu_installation.html</guid>
1203 <pubDate>Fri, 17 May 2013 11:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
1204 <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu / Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; is
1205 an operating system based on Debian intended for use in schools. It
1206 contain a turn-key solution for the computer network provided to
1207 pupils in the primary schools. It provide both the central server,
1208 network boot servers and desktop environments with heaps of
1209 educational software. The project was founded almost 12 years ago,
1210 2001-07-02. If you want to support the project, which is in need for
1211 cash to fund developer gatherings and other project related activity,
1212 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html&quot;&gt;please
1213 donate some money&lt;/a&gt;.
1214
1215 &lt;p&gt;A topic that come up again and again on the Debian Edu mailing
1216 lists and elsewhere, is the question on how to transform a Debian or
1217 Ubuntu installation into a Debian Edu installation. It isn&#39;t very
1218 hard, and last week I wrote a script to replicate the steps done by
1219 the Debian Edu installer.&lt;/p&gt;
1220
1221 &lt;p&gt;The script,
1222 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/branches/wheezy/debian-edu-config/share/debian-edu-config/tools/debian-edu-bless?view=markup&quot;&gt;debian-edu-bless&lt;a/&gt;
1223 in the debian-edu-config package, will go through these six steps and
1224 transform an existing Debian Wheezy or Ubuntu (untested) installation
1225 into a Debian Edu Workstation:&lt;/p&gt;
1226
1227 &lt;ol&gt;
1228
1229 &lt;li&gt;Add skolelinux related APT sources.&lt;/li&gt;
1230 &lt;li&gt;Create /etc/debian-edu/config with the wanted configuration.&lt;/li&gt;
1231 &lt;li&gt;Install debian-edu-install to load preseeding values and pull in
1232 our configuration.&lt;/li&gt;
1233 &lt;li&gt;Preseed debconf database with profile setup in
1234 /etc/debian-edu/config, and run tasksel to install packages
1235 according to the profile specified in the config above,
1236 overriding some of the Debian automation machinery.&lt;/li&gt;
1237 &lt;li&gt;Run debian-edu-cfengine-D installation to configure everything
1238 that could not be done using preseeding.&lt;/li&gt;
1239 &lt;li&gt;Ask for a reboot to enable all the configuration changes.&lt;/li&gt;
1240
1241 &lt;/ol&gt;
1242
1243 &lt;p&gt;There are some steps in the Debian Edu installation that can not be
1244 replicated like this. Disk partitioning and LVM setup, for example.
1245 So this script just assume there is enough disk space to install all
1246 the needed packages.&lt;/p&gt;
1247
1248 &lt;p&gt;The script was created to help a Debian Edu student working on
1249 setting up &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.raspberrypi.org&quot;&gt;Raspberry Pi&lt;/a&gt; as a
1250 Debian Edu client, and using it he can take the existing
1251 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.raspbian.org/FrontPage‎&quot;&gt;Raspbian&lt;/a&gt; installation and
1252 transform it into a fully functioning Debian Edu Workstation (or
1253 Roaming Workstation, or whatever :).&lt;/p&gt;
1254
1255 &lt;p&gt;The default setting in the script is to create a KDE Workstation.
1256 If a LXDE based Roaming workstation is wanted instead, modify the
1257 PROFILE and DESKTOP values at the top to look like this instead:&lt;/p&gt;
1258
1259 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
1260 PROFILE=&quot;Roaming-Workstation&quot;
1261 DESKTOP=&quot;lxde&quot;
1262 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1263
1264 &lt;p&gt;The script could even become useful to set up Debian Edu servers in
1265 the cloud, by starting with a virtual Debian installation at some
1266 virtual hosting service and setting up all the services on first
1267 boot.&lt;/p&gt;
1268 </description>
1269 </item>
1270
1271 <item>
1272 <title>Debian, the Linux distribution of choice for LEGO designers?</title>
1273 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian__the_Linux_distribution_of_choice_for_LEGO_designers_.html</link>
1274 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian__the_Linux_distribution_of_choice_for_LEGO_designers_.html</guid>
1275 <pubDate>Sat, 11 May 2013 20:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
1276 <description>&lt;P&gt;In January,
1277 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html&quot;&gt;I
1278 announced a&lt;/a&gt; new &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego&quot;&gt;IRC
1279 channel #debian-lego&lt;/a&gt;, for those of us in the Debian and Linux
1280 community interested in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lego.com/&quot;&gt;LEGO&lt;/a&gt;, the
1281 marvellous construction system from Denmark. We also created
1282 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners&quot;&gt;a wiki page&lt;/a&gt; to have
1283 a place to take notes and write down our plans and hopes. And several
1284 people showed up to help. I was very happy to see the effect of my
1285 call. Since the small start, we have a debtags tag
1286 &lt;a href=&quot;http://debtags.debian.net/search/bytag?wl=hardware::hobby:lego&quot;&gt;hardware::hobby:lego&lt;/a&gt;
1287 tag for LEGO related packages, and now count 10 packages related to
1288 LEGO and &lt;a href=&quot;http://mindstorms.lego.com/&quot;&gt;Mindstorms&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;
1289
1290 &lt;p&gt;&lt;table&gt;
1291 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/brickos&quot;&gt;brickos&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;alternative OS for LEGO Mindstorms RCX. Supports development in C/C++&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
1292 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/leocad&quot;&gt;leocad&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;virtual brick CAD software&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
1293 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/libnxt&quot;&gt;libnxt&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;utility library for talking to the LEGO Mindstorms NX&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
1294 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/lnpd&quot;&gt;lnpd&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;daemon for LNP communication with BrickOS&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
1295 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/nbc&quot;&gt;nbc&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
1296 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/nqc&quot;&gt;nqc&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Not Quite C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms RCX&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
1297 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/python-nxt&quot;&gt;python-nxt&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;python driver/interface/wrapper for the Lego Mindstorms NXT robot&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
1298 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/python-nxt-filer&quot;&gt;python-nxt-filer&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;simple GUI to manage files on a LEGO Mindstorms NXT&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
1299 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/scratch&quot;&gt;scratch&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;easy to use programming environment for ages 8 and up&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
1300 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/t2n&quot;&gt;t2n&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;simple command-line tool for Lego NXT&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
1301 &lt;/table&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1302
1303 &lt;p&gt;Some of these are available in Wheezy, and all but one are
1304 currently available in Jessie/testing. leocad is so far only
1305 available in experimental.&lt;/p&gt;
1306
1307 &lt;p&gt;If you care about LEGO in Debian, please join us on IRC and help
1308 adding the rest of the great free software tools available on Linux
1309 for LEGO designers.&lt;/p&gt;
1310 </description>
1311 </item>
1312
1313 <item>
1314 <title>Debian Wheezy is out - and Debian Edu / Skolelinux should soon follow! #newinwheezy</title>
1315 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Wheezy_is_out___and_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_should_soon_follow___newinwheezy.html</link>
1316 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Wheezy_is_out___and_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_should_soon_follow___newinwheezy.html</guid>
1317 <pubDate>Sun, 5 May 2013 07:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
1318 <description>&lt;p&gt;When I woke up this morning, I was very happy to see that the
1319 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130504&quot;&gt;release announcement
1320 for Debian Wheezy&lt;/a&gt; was waiting in my mail box. This is a great
1321 Debian release, and I expect to move my machines at home over to it fairly
1322 soon.&lt;/p&gt;
1323
1324 &lt;p&gt;The new debian release contain heaps of new stuff, and one program
1325 in particular make me very happy to see included. The
1326 &lt;a href=&quot;http://scratch.mit.edu/&quot;&gt;Scratch&lt;/a&gt; program, made famous by
1327 the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.code.org/&quot;&gt;Teach kids code&lt;/a&gt; movement, is
1328 included for the first time. Alongside similar programs like
1329 &lt;a href=&quot;http://edu.kde.org/kturtle/&quot;&gt;kturtle&lt;/a&gt; and
1330 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Turtle_Art&quot;&gt;turtleart&lt;/a&gt;,
1331 it allow for visual programming where syntax errors can not happen,
1332 and a friendly programming environment for learning to control the
1333 computer. Scratch will also be included in the next release of Debian
1334 Edu.&lt;/a&gt;
1335
1336 &lt;p&gt;And now that Wheezy is wrapped up, we can wrap up the next Debian
1337 Edu/Skolelinux release too. The
1338 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/04/msg00132.html&quot;&gt;first
1339 alpha release&lt;/a&gt; went out last week, and the next should soon
1340 follow.&lt;p&gt;
1341 </description>
1342 </item>
1343
1344 <item>
1345 <title>Isenkram 0.2 finally in the Debian archive</title>
1346 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Isenkram_0_2_finally_in_the_Debian_archive.html</link>
1347 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Isenkram_0_2_finally_in_the_Debian_archive.html</guid>
1348 <pubDate>Wed, 3 Apr 2013 23:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
1349 <description>&lt;p&gt;Today the &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram&quot;&gt;Isenkram
1350 package&lt;/a&gt; finally made it into the archive, after lingering in NEW
1351 for many months. I uploaded it to the Debian experimental suite
1352 2013-01-27, and today it was accepted into the archive.&lt;/p&gt;
1353
1354 &lt;p&gt;Isenkram is a system for suggesting to users what packages to
1355 install to work with a pluggable hardware device. The suggestion pop
1356 up when the device is plugged in. For example if a Lego Mindstorm NXT
1357 is inserted, it will suggest to install the program needed to program
1358 the NXT controller. Give it a go, and report bugs and suggestions to
1359 BTS. :)&lt;/p&gt;
1360 </description>
1361 </item>
1362
1363 <item>
1364 <title>Bitcoin GUI now available from Debian/unstable (and Ubuntu/raring)</title>
1365 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Bitcoin_GUI_now_available_from_Debian_unstable__and_Ubuntu_raring_.html</link>
1366 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Bitcoin_GUI_now_available_from_Debian_unstable__and_Ubuntu_raring_.html</guid>
1367 <pubDate>Sat, 2 Feb 2013 09:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
1368 <description>&lt;p&gt;My
1369 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html&quot;&gt;last
1370 bitcoin related blog post&lt;/a&gt; mentioned that the new
1371 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin&quot;&gt;bitcoin package&lt;/a&gt; for
1372 Debian was waiting in NEW. It was accepted by the Debian ftp-masters
1373 2013-01-19, and have been available in unstable since then. It was
1374 automatically copied to Ubuntu, and is available in their Raring
1375 version too.&lt;/p&gt;
1376
1377 &lt;p&gt;But there is a strange problem with the build that block this new
1378 version from being available on the i386 and kfreebsd-i386
1379 architectures. For some strange reason, the autobuilders in Debian
1380 for these architectures fail to run the test suite on these
1381 architectures (&lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/672524&quot;&gt;BTS #672524&lt;/a&gt;).
1382 We are so far unable to reproduce it when building it manually, and
1383 no-one have been able to propose a fix. If you got an idea what is
1384 failing, please let us know via the BTS.&lt;/p&gt;
1385
1386 &lt;p&gt;One feature that is annoying me with of the bitcoin client, because
1387 I often run low on disk space, is the fact that the client will exit
1388 if it run short on space (&lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/696715&quot;&gt;BTS
1389 #696715&lt;/a&gt;). So make sure you have enough disk space when you run
1390 it. :)&lt;/p&gt;
1391
1392 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1393 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1394 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&amp;label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
1395 </description>
1396 </item>
1397
1398 <item>
1399 <title>Welcome to the world, Isenkram!</title>
1400 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html</link>
1401 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html</guid>
1402 <pubDate>Tue, 22 Jan 2013 22:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
1403 <description>&lt;p&gt;Yesterday, I
1404 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html&quot;&gt;asked
1405 for testers&lt;/a&gt; for my prototype for making Debian better at handling
1406 pluggable hardware devices, which I
1407 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html&quot;&gt;set
1408 out to create&lt;/a&gt; earlier this month. Several valuable testers showed
1409 up, and caused me to really want to to open up the development to more
1410 people. But before I did this, I want to come up with a sensible name
1411 for this project. Today I finally decided on a new name, and I have
1412 renamed the project from hw-support-handler to this new name. In the
1413 process, I moved the source to git and made it available as a
1414 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/isenkram.git&quot;&gt;collab-maint&lt;/a&gt;
1415 repository in Debian. The new name? It is &lt;strong&gt;Isenkram&lt;/strong&gt;.
1416 To fetch and build the latest version of the source, use&lt;/p&gt;
1417
1418 &lt;pre&gt;
1419 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/collab-maint/isenkram.git
1420 cd isenkram &amp;&amp; git-buildpackage -us -uc
1421 &lt;/pre&gt;
1422
1423 &lt;p&gt;I have not yet adjusted all files to use the new name yet. If you
1424 want to hack on the source or improve the package, please go ahead.
1425 But please talk to me first on IRC or via email before you do major
1426 changes, to make sure we do not step on each others toes. :)&lt;/p&gt;
1427
1428 &lt;p&gt;If you wonder what &#39;isenkram&#39; is, it is a Norwegian word for iron
1429 stuff, typically meaning tools, nails, screws, etc. Typical hardware
1430 stuff, in other words. I&#39;ve been told it is the Norwegian variant of
1431 the German word eisenkram, for those that are familiar with that
1432 word.&lt;/p&gt;
1433
1434 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2013-01-26&lt;/strong&gt;: Added -us -us to build
1435 instructions, to avoid confusing people with an error from the signing
1436 process.&lt;/p&gt;
1437
1438 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2013-01-27&lt;/strong&gt;: Switch to HTTP URL for the git
1439 clone argument to avoid the need for authentication.&lt;/p&gt;
1440 </description>
1441 </item>
1442
1443 <item>
1444 <title>First prototype ready making hardware easier to use in Debian</title>
1445 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html</link>
1446 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html</guid>
1447 <pubDate>Mon, 21 Jan 2013 12:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
1448 <description>&lt;p&gt;Early this month I set out to try to
1449 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html&quot;&gt;improve
1450 the Debian support for pluggable hardware devices&lt;/a&gt;. Now my
1451 prototype is working, and it is ready for a larger audience. To test
1452 it, fetch the
1453 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/&quot;&gt;source
1454 from the Debian Edu subversion repository&lt;/a&gt;, build and install the
1455 package. You might have to log out and in again activate the
1456 autostart script.&lt;/p&gt;
1457
1458 &lt;p&gt;The design is simple:&lt;/p&gt;
1459
1460 &lt;ul&gt;
1461
1462 &lt;li&gt;Add desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ causing a program
1463 hw-support-handlerd to start when the user log in.&lt;/li&gt;
1464
1465 &lt;li&gt;This program listen for kernel events about new hardware (directly
1466 from the kernel like udev does), not using HAL dbus events as I
1467 initially did.&lt;/li&gt;
1468
1469 &lt;li&gt;When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware modalias in
1470 the APT database, a database
1471 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=markup&quot;&gt;available
1472 via HTTP&lt;/a&gt; and a database available as part of the package.&lt;/li&gt;
1473
1474 &lt;li&gt;If a package is mapped to the hardware in question, the package
1475 isn&#39;t installed yet and this is the first time the hardware was
1476 plugged in, show a desktop notification suggesting to install the
1477 package or packages.&lt;/li&gt;
1478
1479 &lt;li&gt;If the user click on the &#39;install package now&#39; button, ask
1480 aptdaemon via the PackageKit API to install the requrired package.&lt;/li&gt;
1481
1482 &lt;li&gt;aptdaemon ask for root password or sudo password, and install the
1483 package while showing progress information in a window.&lt;/li&gt;
1484
1485 &lt;/ul&gt;
1486
1487 &lt;p&gt;I still need to come up with a better name for the system. Here
1488 are some screen shots showing the prototype in action. First the
1489 notification, then the password request, and finally the request to
1490 approve all the dependencies. Sorry for the Norwegian Bokmål GUI.&lt;/p&gt;
1491
1492 &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-1-notification.png&quot;&gt;
1493 &lt;br&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-2-password.png&quot;&gt;
1494 &lt;br&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-3-dependencies.png&quot;&gt;
1495 &lt;br&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-4-installing.png&quot;&gt;
1496 &lt;br&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-5-installing-details.png&quot; width=&quot;70%&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1497
1498 &lt;p&gt;The prototype still need to be improved with longer timeouts, but
1499 is already useful. The database of hardware to package mappings also
1500 need more work. It is currently compatible with the Ubuntu way of
1501 storing such information in the package control file, but could be
1502 changed to use other formats instead or in addition to the current
1503 method. I&#39;ve dropped the use of discover for this mapping, as the
1504 modalias approach is more flexible and easier to use on Linux as long
1505 as the Linux kernel expose its modalias strings directly.&lt;/p&gt;
1506
1507 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2013-01-21 16:50&lt;/strong&gt;: Due to popular demand,
1508 here is the command required to check out and build the source: Use
1509 &#39;&lt;tt&gt;svn checkout
1510 svn://svn.debian.org/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/; cd
1511 hw-support-handler; debuild&lt;/tt&gt;&#39;. If you lack debuild, install the
1512 devscripts package.&lt;/p&gt;
1513
1514 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2013-01-23 12:00&lt;/strong&gt;: The project is now
1515 renamed to Isenkram and the source moved from the Debian Edu
1516 subversion repository to a Debian collab-maint git repository. See
1517 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html&quot;&gt;build
1518 instructions&lt;/a&gt; for details.&lt;/p&gt;
1519 </description>
1520 </item>
1521
1522 <item>
1523 <title>Thank you Thinkpad X41, for your long and trustworthy service</title>
1524 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html</link>
1525 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html</guid>
1526 <pubDate>Sat, 19 Jan 2013 09:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
1527 <description>&lt;p&gt;This Christmas my trusty old laptop died. It died quietly and
1528 suddenly in bed. With a quiet whimper, it went completely quiet and
1529 black. The power button was no longer able to turn it on. It was a
1530 IBM Thinkpad X41, and the best laptop I ever had. Better than both
1531 Thinkpads X30, X31, X40, X60, X61 and X61S. Far better than the
1532 Compaq I had before that. Now I need to find a replacement. To keep
1533 going during Christmas, I moved the one year old SSD disk to my old
1534 X40 where it fitted (only one I had left that could use it), but it is
1535 not a durable solution.
1536
1537 &lt;p&gt;My laptop needs are fairly modest. This is my wishlist from when I
1538 got a new one more than 10 years ago. It still holds true.:)&lt;/p&gt;
1539
1540 &lt;ul&gt;
1541
1542 &lt;li&gt;Lightweight (around 1 kg) and small volume (preferably smaller
1543 than A4).&lt;/li&gt;
1544 &lt;li&gt;Robust, it will be in my backpack every day.&lt;/li&gt;
1545 &lt;li&gt;Three button mouse and a mouse pin instead of touch pad.&lt;/li&gt;
1546 &lt;li&gt;Long battery life time. Preferable a week.&lt;/li&gt;
1547 &lt;li&gt;Internal WIFI network card.&lt;/li&gt;
1548 &lt;li&gt;Internal Twisted Pair network card.&lt;/li&gt;
1549 &lt;li&gt;Some USB slots (2-3 is plenty)&lt;/li&gt;
1550 &lt;li&gt;Good keyboard - similar to the Thinkpad.&lt;/li&gt;
1551 &lt;li&gt;Video resolution at least 1024x768, with size around 12&quot; (A4 paper
1552 size).&lt;/li&gt;
1553 &lt;li&gt;Hardware supported by Debian Stable, ie the default kernel and
1554 X.org packages.&lt;/li&gt;
1555 &lt;li&gt;Quiet, preferably fan free (or at least not using the fan most of
1556 the time).
1557
1558 &lt;/ul&gt;
1559
1560 &lt;p&gt;You will notice that there are no RAM and CPU requirements in the
1561 list. The reason is simply that the specifications on laptops the
1562 last 10-15 years have been sufficient for my needs, and I have to look
1563 at other features to choose my laptop. But are there still made as
1564 robust laptops as my X41? The Thinkpad X60/X61 proved to be less
1565 robust, and Thinkpads seem to be heading in the wrong direction since
1566 Lenovo took over. But I&#39;ve been told that X220 and X1 Carbon might
1567 still be useful.&lt;/p&gt;
1568
1569 &lt;p&gt;Perhaps I should rethink my needs, and look for a pad with an
1570 external keyboard? I&#39;ll have to check the
1571 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linux-laptop.net/&quot;&gt;Linux Laptops site&lt;/a&gt; for
1572 well-supported laptops, or perhaps just buy one preinstalled from one
1573 of the vendors listed on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://linuxpreloaded.com/&quot;&gt;Linux
1574 Pre-loaded site&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
1575 </description>
1576 </item>
1577
1578 <item>
1579 <title>How to find a browser plugin supporting a given MIME type</title>
1580 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_find_a_browser_plugin_supporting_a_given_MIME_type.html</link>
1581 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_find_a_browser_plugin_supporting_a_given_MIME_type.html</guid>
1582 <pubDate>Fri, 18 Jan 2013 10:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
1583 <description>&lt;p&gt;Some times I try to figure out which Iceweasel browser plugin to
1584 install to get support for a given MIME type. Thanks to
1585 &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Plugins&quot;&gt;specifications
1586 done by Ubuntu&lt;/a&gt; and Mozilla, it is possible to do this in Debian.
1587 Unfortunately, not very many packages provide the needed meta
1588 information, Anyway, here is a small script to look up all browser
1589 plugin packages announcing ther MIME support using this specification:&lt;/p&gt;
1590
1591 &lt;pre&gt;
1592 #!/usr/bin/python
1593 import sys
1594 import apt
1595 def pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
1596 cache = apt.Cache()
1597 cache.open(None)
1598 thepkgs = []
1599 for pkg in cache:
1600 version = pkg.candidate
1601 if version is None:
1602 version = pkg.installed
1603 if version is None:
1604 continue
1605 record = version.record
1606 if not record.has_key(&#39;Npp-MimeType&#39;):
1607 continue
1608 mime_types = record[&#39;Npp-MimeType&#39;].split(&#39;,&#39;)
1609 for t in mime_types:
1610 t = t.rstrip().strip()
1611 if t == mimetype:
1612 thepkgs.append(pkg.name)
1613 return thepkgs
1614 mimetype = &quot;audio/ogg&quot;
1615 if 1 &lt; len(sys.argv):
1616 mimetype = sys.argv[1]
1617 print &quot;Browser plugin packages supporting %s:&quot; % mimetype
1618 for pkg in pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
1619 print &quot; %s&quot; %pkg
1620 &lt;/pre&gt;
1621
1622 &lt;p&gt;It can be used like this to look up a given MIME type:&lt;/p&gt;
1623
1624 &lt;pre&gt;
1625 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype
1626 Browser plugin packages supporting audio/ogg:
1627 gecko-mediaplayer
1628 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype application/x-shockwave-flash
1629 Browser plugin packages supporting application/x-shockwave-flash:
1630 browser-plugin-gnash
1631 %
1632 &lt;/pre&gt;
1633
1634 &lt;p&gt;In Ubuntu this mechanism is combined with support in the browser
1635 itself to query for plugins and propose to install the needed
1636 packages. It would be great if Debian supported such feature too. Is
1637 anyone working on adding it?&lt;/p&gt;
1638
1639 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2013-01-18 14:20&lt;/strong&gt;: The Debian BTS
1640 request for icweasel support for this feature is
1641 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/484010&quot;&gt;#484010&lt;/a&gt; from 2008 (and
1642 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/698426&quot;&gt;#698426&lt;/a&gt; from today). Lack
1643 of manpower and wish for a different design is the reason thus feature
1644 is not yet in iceweasel from Debian.&lt;/p&gt;
1645 </description>
1646 </item>
1647
1648 <item>
1649 <title>What is the most supported MIME type in Debian?</title>
1650 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_most_supported_MIME_type_in_Debian_.html</link>
1651 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_most_supported_MIME_type_in_Debian_.html</guid>
1652 <pubDate>Wed, 16 Jan 2013 10:10:00 +0100</pubDate>
1653 <description>&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/AppStreamDebianProposal&quot;&gt;DEP-11
1654 proposal to add AppStream information to the Debian archive&lt;/a&gt;, is a
1655 proposal to make it possible for a Desktop application to propose to
1656 the user some package to install to gain support for a given MIME
1657 type, font, library etc. that is currently missing. With such
1658 mechanism in place, it would be possible for the desktop to
1659 automatically propose and install leocad if some LDraw file is
1660 downloaded by the browser.&lt;/p&gt;
1661
1662 &lt;p&gt;To get some idea about the current content of the archive, I decided
1663 to write a simple program to extract all .desktop files from the
1664 Debian archive and look up the claimed MIME support there. The result
1665 can be found on the
1666 &lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/pub/AppStreamTest&quot;&gt;Skolelinux FTP
1667 site&lt;/a&gt;. Using the collected information, it become possible to
1668 answer the question in the title. Here are the 20 most supported MIME
1669 types in Debian stable (Squeeze), testing (Wheezy) and unstable (Sid).
1670 The complete list is available from the link above.&lt;/p&gt;
1671
1672 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Debian Stable:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1673
1674 &lt;pre&gt;
1675 count MIME type
1676 ----- -----------------------
1677 32 text/plain
1678 30 audio/mpeg
1679 29 image/png
1680 28 image/jpeg
1681 27 application/ogg
1682 26 audio/x-mp3
1683 25 image/tiff
1684 25 image/gif
1685 22 image/bmp
1686 22 audio/x-wav
1687 20 audio/x-flac
1688 19 audio/x-mpegurl
1689 18 video/x-ms-asf
1690 18 audio/x-musepack
1691 18 audio/x-mpeg
1692 18 application/x-ogg
1693 17 video/mpeg
1694 17 audio/x-scpls
1695 17 audio/ogg
1696 16 video/x-ms-wmv
1697 &lt;/pre&gt;
1698
1699 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Debian Testing:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1700
1701 &lt;pre&gt;
1702 count MIME type
1703 ----- -----------------------
1704 33 text/plain
1705 32 image/png
1706 32 image/jpeg
1707 29 audio/mpeg
1708 27 image/gif
1709 26 image/tiff
1710 26 application/ogg
1711 25 audio/x-mp3
1712 22 image/bmp
1713 21 audio/x-wav
1714 19 audio/x-mpegurl
1715 19 audio/x-mpeg
1716 18 video/mpeg
1717 18 audio/x-scpls
1718 18 audio/x-flac
1719 18 application/x-ogg
1720 17 video/x-ms-asf
1721 17 text/html
1722 17 audio/x-musepack
1723 16 image/x-xbitmap
1724 &lt;/pre&gt;
1725
1726 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Debian Unstable:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1727
1728 &lt;pre&gt;
1729 count MIME type
1730 ----- -----------------------
1731 31 text/plain
1732 31 image/png
1733 31 image/jpeg
1734 29 audio/mpeg
1735 28 application/ogg
1736 27 image/gif
1737 26 image/tiff
1738 26 audio/x-mp3
1739 23 audio/x-wav
1740 22 image/bmp
1741 21 audio/x-flac
1742 20 audio/x-mpegurl
1743 19 audio/x-mpeg
1744 18 video/x-ms-asf
1745 18 video/mpeg
1746 18 audio/x-scpls
1747 18 application/x-ogg
1748 17 audio/x-musepack
1749 16 video/x-ms-wmv
1750 16 video/x-msvideo
1751 &lt;/pre&gt;
1752
1753 &lt;p&gt;I am told that PackageKit can provide an API to access the kind of
1754 information mentioned in DEP-11. I have not yet had time to look at
1755 it, but hope the PackageKit people in Debian are on top of these
1756 issues.&lt;/p&gt;
1757
1758 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2013-01-16 13:35&lt;/strong&gt;: Updated numbers after
1759 discovering a typo in my script.&lt;/p&gt;
1760 </description>
1761 </item>
1762
1763 <item>
1764 <title>Using modalias info to find packages handling my hardware</title>
1765 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_modalias_info_to_find_packages_handling_my_hardware.html</link>
1766 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_modalias_info_to_find_packages_handling_my_hardware.html</guid>
1767 <pubDate>Tue, 15 Jan 2013 08:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
1768 <description>&lt;p&gt;Yesterday, I wrote about the
1769 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html&quot;&gt;modalias
1770 values provided by the Linux kernel&lt;/a&gt; following my hope for
1771 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html&quot;&gt;better
1772 dongle support in Debian&lt;/a&gt;. Using this knowledge, I have tested how
1773 modalias values attached to package names can be used to map packages
1774 to hardware. This allow the system to look up and suggest relevant
1775 packages when I plug in some new hardware into my machine, and replace
1776 discover and discover-data as the database used to map hardware to
1777 packages.&lt;/p&gt;
1778
1779 &lt;p&gt;I create a modaliases file with entries like the following,
1780 containing package name, kernel module name (if relevant, otherwise
1781 the package name) and globs matching the relevant hardware
1782 modalias.&lt;/p&gt;
1783
1784 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
1785 Package: package-name
1786 &lt;br&gt;Modaliases: module(modaliasglob, modaliasglob, modaliasglob)&lt;/p&gt;
1787 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1788
1789 &lt;p&gt;It is fairly trivial to write code to find the relevant packages
1790 for a given modalias value using this file.&lt;/p&gt;
1791
1792 &lt;p&gt;An entry like this would suggest the video and picture application
1793 cheese for many USB web cameras (interface bus class 0E01):&lt;/p&gt;
1794
1795 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
1796 Package: cheese
1797 &lt;br&gt;Modaliases: cheese(usb:v*p*d*dc*dsc*dp*ic0Eisc01ip*)&lt;/p&gt;
1798 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1799
1800 &lt;p&gt;An entry like this would suggest the pcmciautils package when a
1801 CardBus bridge (bus class 0607) PCI device is present:&lt;/p&gt;
1802
1803 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
1804 Package: pcmciautils
1805 &lt;br&gt;Modaliases: pcmciautils(pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc06sc07i*)
1806 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1807
1808 &lt;p&gt;An entry like this would suggest the package colorhug-client when
1809 plugging in a ColorHug with USB IDs 04D8:F8DA:&lt;/p&gt;
1810
1811 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
1812 Package: colorhug-client
1813 &lt;br&gt;Modaliases: colorhug-client(usb:v04D8pF8DAd*)&lt;/p&gt;
1814 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1815
1816 &lt;p&gt;I believe the format is compatible with the format of the Packages
1817 file in the Debian archive. Ubuntu already uses their Packages file
1818 to store their mappings from packages to hardware.&lt;/p&gt;
1819
1820 &lt;p&gt;By adding a XB-Modaliases: header in debian/control, any .deb can
1821 announce the hardware it support in a way my prototype understand.
1822 This allow those publishing packages in an APT source outside the
1823 Debian archive as well as those backporting packages to make sure the
1824 hardware mapping are included in the package meta information. I&#39;ve
1825 tested such header in the pymissile package, and its modalias mapping
1826 is working as it should with my prototype. It even made it to Ubuntu
1827 Raring.&lt;/p&gt;
1828
1829 &lt;p&gt;To test if it was possible to look up supported hardware using only
1830 the shell tools available in the Debian installer, I wrote a shell
1831 implementation of the lookup code. The idea is to create files for
1832 each modalias and let the shell do the matching. Please check out and
1833 try the
1834 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/hw-support-lookup?view=co&quot;&gt;hw-support-lookup&lt;/a&gt;
1835 shell script. It run without any extra dependencies and fetch the
1836 hardware mappings from the Debian archive and the subversion
1837 repository where I currently work on my prototype.&lt;/p&gt;
1838
1839 &lt;p&gt;When I use it on a machine with a yubikey inserted, it suggest to
1840 install yubikey-personalization:&lt;/p&gt;
1841
1842 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
1843 % ./hw-support-lookup
1844 &lt;br&gt;yubikey-personalization
1845 &lt;br&gt;%
1846 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1847
1848 &lt;p&gt;When I run it on my Thinkpad X40 with a PCMCIA/CardBus slot, it
1849 propose to install the pcmciautils package:&lt;/p&gt;
1850
1851 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
1852 % ./hw-support-lookup
1853 &lt;br&gt;pcmciautils
1854 &lt;br&gt;%
1855 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1856
1857 &lt;p&gt;If you know of any hardware-package mapping that should be added to
1858 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=co&quot;&gt;my
1859 database&lt;/a&gt;, please tell me about it.&lt;/p&gt;
1860
1861 &lt;p&gt;It could be possible to generate several of the mappings between
1862 packages and hardware. One source would be to look at packages with
1863 kernel modules, ie packages with *.ko files in /lib/modules/, and
1864 extract their modalias information. Another would be to look at
1865 packages with udev rules, ie packages with files in
1866 /lib/udev/rules.d/, and extract their vendor/model information to
1867 generate a modalias matching rule. I have not tested any of these to
1868 see if it work.&lt;/p&gt;
1869
1870 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
1871 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
1872 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
1873 &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel&quot;&gt;#debian-devel&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
1874 </description>
1875 </item>
1876
1877 <item>
1878 <title>Modalias strings - a practical way to map &quot;stuff&quot; to hardware</title>
1879 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html</link>
1880 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html</guid>
1881 <pubDate>Mon, 14 Jan 2013 11:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
1882 <description>&lt;p&gt;While looking into how to look up Debian packages based on hardware
1883 information, to find the packages that support a given piece of
1884 hardware, I refreshed my memory regarding modalias values, and decided
1885 to document the details. Here are my findings so far, also available
1886 in
1887 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/&quot;&gt;the
1888 Debian Edu subversion repository&lt;/a&gt;:
1889
1890 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Modalias decoded&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1891
1892 &lt;p&gt;This document try to explain what the different types of modalias
1893 values stands for. It is in part based on information from
1894 &amp;lt;URL: &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias&quot;&gt;https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias&lt;/a&gt; &amp;gt;,
1895 &amp;lt;URL: &lt;a href=&quot;http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/26132/how-to-assign-usb-driver-to-device&quot;&gt;http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/26132/how-to-assign-usb-driver-to-device&lt;/a&gt; &amp;gt;,
1896 &amp;lt;URL: &lt;a href=&quot;http://code.metager.de/source/history/linux/stable/scripts/mod/file2alias.c&quot;&gt;http://code.metager.de/source/history/linux/stable/scripts/mod/file2alias.c&lt;/a&gt; &amp;gt; and
1897 &amp;lt;URL: &lt;a href=&quot;http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/dmidecode/dmidecode.c?root=dmidecode&amp;view=markup&quot;&gt;http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/dmidecode/dmidecode.c?root=dmidecode&amp;view=markup&lt;/a&gt; &amp;gt;.
1898
1899 &lt;p&gt;The modalias entries for a given Linux machine can be found using
1900 this shell script:&lt;/p&gt;
1901
1902 &lt;pre&gt;
1903 find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u
1904 &lt;/pre&gt;
1905
1906 &lt;p&gt;The supported modalias globs for a given kernel module can be found
1907 using modinfo:&lt;/p&gt;
1908
1909 &lt;pre&gt;
1910 % /sbin/modinfo psmouse | grep alias:
1911 alias: serio:ty05pr*id*ex*
1912 alias: serio:ty01pr*id*ex*
1913 %
1914 &lt;/pre&gt;
1915
1916 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;PCI subtype&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1917
1918 &lt;p&gt;A typical PCI entry can look like this. This is an Intel Host
1919 Bridge memory controller:&lt;/p&gt;
1920
1921 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
1922 pci:v00008086d00002770sv00001028sd000001ADbc06sc00i00
1923 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1924
1925 &lt;p&gt;This represent these values:&lt;/p&gt;
1926
1927 &lt;pre&gt;
1928 v 00008086 (vendor)
1929 d 00002770 (device)
1930 sv 00001028 (subvendor)
1931 sd 000001AD (subdevice)
1932 bc 06 (bus class)
1933 sc 00 (bus subclass)
1934 i 00 (interface)
1935 &lt;/pre&gt;
1936
1937 &lt;p&gt;The vendor/device values are the same values outputted from &#39;lspci
1938 -n&#39; as 8086:2770. The bus class/subclass is also shown by lspci as
1939 0600. The 0600 class is a host bridge. Other useful bus values are
1940 0300 (VGA compatible card) and 0200 (Ethernet controller).&lt;/p&gt;
1941
1942 &lt;p&gt;Not sure how to figure out the interface value, nor what it
1943 means.&lt;/p&gt;
1944
1945 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;USB subtype&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1946
1947 &lt;p&gt;Some typical USB entries can look like this. This is an internal
1948 USB hub in a laptop:&lt;/p&gt;
1949
1950 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
1951 usb:v1D6Bp0001d0206dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00
1952 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1953
1954 &lt;p&gt;Here is the values included in this alias:&lt;/p&gt;
1955
1956 &lt;pre&gt;
1957 v 1D6B (device vendor)
1958 p 0001 (device product)
1959 d 0206 (bcddevice)
1960 dc 09 (device class)
1961 dsc 00 (device subclass)
1962 dp 00 (device protocol)
1963 ic 09 (interface class)
1964 isc 00 (interface subclass)
1965 ip 00 (interface protocol)
1966 &lt;/pre&gt;
1967
1968 &lt;p&gt;The 0900 device class/subclass means hub. Some times the relevant
1969 class is in the interface class section. For a simple USB web camera,
1970 these alias entries show up:&lt;/p&gt;
1971
1972 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
1973 usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc01ip00
1974 &lt;br&gt;usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc02ip00
1975 &lt;br&gt;usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc01ip00
1976 &lt;br&gt;usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc02ip00
1977 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1978
1979 &lt;p&gt;Interface class 0E01 is video control, 0E02 is video streaming (aka
1980 camera), 0101 is audio control device and 0102 is audio streaming (aka
1981 microphone). Thus this is a camera with microphone included.&lt;/p&gt;
1982
1983 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;ACPI subtype&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1984
1985 &lt;p&gt;The ACPI type is used for several non-PCI/USB stuff. This is an IR
1986 receiver in a Thinkpad X40:&lt;/p&gt;
1987
1988 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
1989 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
1990 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1991
1992 &lt;p&gt;The values between the colons are IDs.&lt;/p&gt;
1993
1994 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;DMI subtype&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1995
1996 &lt;p&gt;The DMI table contain lots of information about the computer case
1997 and model. This is an entry for a IBM Thinkpad X40, fetched from
1998 /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/modalias:&lt;/p&gt;
1999
2000 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
2001 dmi:bvnIBM:bvr1UETB6WW(1.66):bd06/15/2005:svnIBM:pn2371H4G:pvrThinkPadX40:rvnIBM:rn2371H4G:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
2002 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2003
2004 &lt;p&gt;The values present are&lt;/p&gt;
2005
2006 &lt;pre&gt;
2007 bvn IBM (BIOS vendor)
2008 bvr 1UETB6WW(1.66) (BIOS version)
2009 bd 06/15/2005 (BIOS date)
2010 svn IBM (system vendor)
2011 pn 2371H4G (product name)
2012 pvr ThinkPadX40 (product version)
2013 rvn IBM (board vendor)
2014 rn 2371H4G (board name)
2015 rvr NotAvailable (board version)
2016 cvn IBM (chassis vendor)
2017 ct 10 (chassis type)
2018 cvr NotAvailable (chassis version)
2019 &lt;/pre&gt;
2020
2021 &lt;p&gt;The chassis type 10 is Notebook. Other interesting values can be
2022 found in the dmidecode source:&lt;/p&gt;
2023
2024 &lt;pre&gt;
2025 3 Desktop
2026 4 Low Profile Desktop
2027 5 Pizza Box
2028 6 Mini Tower
2029 7 Tower
2030 8 Portable
2031 9 Laptop
2032 10 Notebook
2033 11 Hand Held
2034 12 Docking Station
2035 13 All In One
2036 14 Sub Notebook
2037 15 Space-saving
2038 16 Lunch Box
2039 17 Main Server Chassis
2040 18 Expansion Chassis
2041 19 Sub Chassis
2042 20 Bus Expansion Chassis
2043 21 Peripheral Chassis
2044 22 RAID Chassis
2045 23 Rack Mount Chassis
2046 24 Sealed-case PC
2047 25 Multi-system
2048 26 CompactPCI
2049 27 AdvancedTCA
2050 28 Blade
2051 29 Blade Enclosing
2052 &lt;/pre&gt;
2053
2054 &lt;p&gt;The chassis type values are not always accurately set in the DMI
2055 table. For example my home server is a tower, but the DMI modalias
2056 claim it is a desktop.&lt;/p&gt;
2057
2058 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;SerIO subtype&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2059
2060 &lt;p&gt;This type is used for PS/2 mouse plugs. One example is from my
2061 test machine:&lt;/p&gt;
2062
2063 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
2064 serio:ty01pr00id00ex00
2065 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2066
2067 &lt;p&gt;The values present are&lt;/p&gt;
2068
2069 &lt;pre&gt;
2070 ty 01 (type)
2071 pr 00 (prototype)
2072 id 00 (id)
2073 ex 00 (extra)
2074 &lt;/pre&gt;
2075
2076 &lt;p&gt;This type is supported by the psmouse driver. I am not sure what
2077 the valid values are.&lt;/p&gt;
2078
2079 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Other subtypes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2080
2081 &lt;p&gt;There are heaps of other modalias subtypes according to
2082 file2alias.c. There is the rest of the list from that source: amba,
2083 ap, bcma, ccw, css, eisa, hid, i2c, ieee1394, input, ipack, isapnp,
2084 mdio, of, parisc, pcmcia, platform, scsi, sdio, spi, ssb, vio, virtio,
2085 vmbus, x86cpu and zorro. I did not spend time documenting all of
2086 these, as they do not seem relevant for my intended use with mapping
2087 hardware to packages when new stuff is inserted during run time.&lt;/p&gt;
2088
2089 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Looking up kernel modules using modalias values&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2090
2091 &lt;p&gt;To check which kernel modules provide support for a given modalias,
2092 one can use the following shell script:&lt;/p&gt;
2093
2094 &lt;pre&gt;
2095 for id in $(find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u); do \
2096 echo &quot;$id&quot; ; \
2097 /sbin/modprobe --show-depends &quot;$id&quot;|sed &#39;s/^/ /&#39; ; \
2098 done
2099 &lt;/pre&gt;
2100
2101 &lt;p&gt;The output can look like this (only the first few entries as the
2102 list is very long on my test machine):&lt;/p&gt;
2103
2104 &lt;pre&gt;
2105 acpi:ACPI0003:
2106 insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/acpi/ac.ko
2107 acpi:device:
2108 FATAL: Module acpi:device: not found.
2109 acpi:IBM0068:
2110 insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/char/nvram.ko
2111 insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/leds/led-class.ko
2112 insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko
2113 insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.ko
2114 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
2115 insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/lib/crc-ccitt.ko
2116 insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/irda/irda.ko
2117 insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/net/irda/nsc-ircc.ko
2118 [...]
2119 &lt;/pre&gt;
2120
2121 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
2122 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
2123 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
2124 &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel&quot;&gt;#debian-devel&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
2125
2126 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2013-01-15:&lt;/strong&gt; Rewrite &quot;cat $(find ...)&quot; to
2127 &quot;find ... -print0 | xargs -0 cat&quot; to make sure it handle directories
2128 in /sys/ with space in them.&lt;/p&gt;
2129 </description>
2130 </item>
2131
2132 <item>
2133 <title>Moved the pymissile Debian packaging to collab-maint</title>
2134 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Moved_the_pymissile_Debian_packaging_to_collab_maint.html</link>
2135 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Moved_the_pymissile_Debian_packaging_to_collab_maint.html</guid>
2136 <pubDate>Thu, 10 Jan 2013 20:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
2137 <description>&lt;p&gt;As part of my investigation on how to improve the support in Debian
2138 for hardware dongles, I dug up my old Mark and Spencer USB Rocket
2139 Launcher and updated the Debian package
2140 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile&quot;&gt;pymissile&lt;/a&gt; to make
2141 sure udev will fix the device permissions when it is plugged in. I
2142 also added a &quot;Modaliases&quot; header to test it in the Debian archive and
2143 hopefully make the package be proposed by jockey in Ubuntu when a user
2144 plug in his rocket launcher. In the process I moved the source to a
2145 git repository under collab-maint, to make it easier for any DD to
2146 contribute. &lt;a href=&quot;http://code.google.com/p/pymissile/&quot;&gt;Upstream&lt;/a&gt;
2147 is not very active, but the software still work for me even after five
2148 years of relative silence. The new git repository is not listed in
2149 the uploaded package yet, because I want to test the other changes a
2150 bit more before I upload the new version. If you want to check out
2151 the new version with a .desktop file included, visit the
2152 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/pymissile.git&quot;&gt;gitweb
2153 view&lt;/a&gt; or use &quot;&lt;tt&gt;git clone
2154 git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/pymissile.git&lt;/tt&gt;&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;
2155 </description>
2156 </item>
2157
2158 <item>
2159 <title>Lets make hardware dongles easier to use in Debian</title>
2160 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html</link>
2161 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html</guid>
2162 <pubDate>Wed, 9 Jan 2013 15:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
2163 <description>&lt;p&gt;One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
2164 general, is that there is a great package management system with the
2165 ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
2166 from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
2167 install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
2168 machine. Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
2169 Linux distribution. When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
2170 suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
2171 I need to talk to it. When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
2172 yubikey-personalization package. The information required to do this
2173 is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.&lt;/p&gt;
2174
2175 &lt;p&gt;Some years ago, I proposed to
2176 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg01206.html&quot;&gt;use
2177 the discover subsystem to implement this&lt;/a&gt;. The idea is fairly
2178 simple:
2179
2180 &lt;ul&gt;
2181
2182 &lt;li&gt;Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
2183 starting when a user log in.&lt;/li&gt;
2184
2185 &lt;li&gt;Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
2186 hardware is inserted into the computer.&lt;/li&gt;
2187
2188 &lt;li&gt;When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
2189 database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
2190 packages.&lt;/li&gt;
2191
2192 &lt;li&gt;Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
2193 package, and make it easy to install it.&lt;/li&gt;
2194
2195 &lt;/ul&gt;
2196
2197 &lt;p&gt;I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
2198 initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
2199 discover database to find packages and
2200 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.packagekit.org/&quot;&gt;PackageKit&lt;/a&gt; to install
2201 packages.&lt;/p&gt;
2202
2203 &lt;p&gt;Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
2204 draft package is now checked into
2205 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/&quot;&gt;the
2206 Debian Edu subversion repository&lt;/a&gt;. In the process, I updated the
2207 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html&quot;&gt;discover-data&lt;/a&gt;
2208 package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
2209 the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
2210 2.2013.01.09 to unstable. I also discovered that the current
2211 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html&quot;&gt;discover&lt;/a&gt;
2212 package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
2213 /proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present. I ported it to use
2214 libusb as a fall back option to get it working. The fixed package
2215 version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn&#39;t upload it to unstable
2216 because of the freeze).&lt;/p&gt;
2217
2218 &lt;p&gt;With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
2219 desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
2220 inserted):&lt;/p&gt;
2221
2222 &lt;p align=&quot;center&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-09-hw-autoinstall.png&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2223
2224 &lt;p&gt;For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
2225 install the proposed packages by pressing the &quot;Please install
2226 program(s)&quot; button should to be implemented.&lt;/p&gt;
2227
2228 &lt;p&gt;If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
2229 happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
2230 from hardware to Debian packages. Check if &#39;discover-pkginstall -l&#39;
2231 list the package you would like to have installed when a given
2232 hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
2233 reportbug if it isn&#39;t. Or, if you know of a better way to provide
2234 such mapping, please let me know.&lt;/p&gt;
2235
2236 &lt;p&gt;This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
2237 should be considered before it is ready for production use. Is dbus
2238 the correct way to detect new hardware? At the moment I look for HAL
2239 dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
2240 on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop. Are there better events to use?
2241 How should the user be notified? Is the desktop notification
2242 mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
2243 popup instead? How should packages be installed? When should they
2244 not be installed?&lt;/p&gt;
2245
2246 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
2247 please send me an email. :)&lt;/p&gt;
2248 </description>
2249 </item>
2250
2251 <item>
2252 <title>New IRC channel for LEGO designers using Debian</title>
2253 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html</link>
2254 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html</guid>
2255 <pubDate>Wed, 2 Jan 2013 15:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
2256 <description>&lt;p&gt;During Christmas, I have worked a bit on the Debian support for
2257 &lt;a href=&quot;http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx&quot;&gt;LEGO Mindstorm
2258 NXT&lt;/a&gt;. My son and I have played a bit with my NXT set, and I
2259 discovered I had to build all the tools myself because none were
2260 already in Debian Squeeze. If Debian support for LEGO is something
2261 you care about, please join me on the IRC channel
2262 &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego&quot;&gt;#debian-lego&lt;/a&gt; (server
2263 irc.debian.org). There is a lot that could be done to improve the
2264 Debian support for LEGO designers. For example both CAD software
2265 and Mindstorm compilers are missing. :)&lt;/p&gt;
2266
2267 &lt;p&gt;Update 2012-01-03: A
2268 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners&quot;&gt;project page&lt;/a&gt;
2269 including links to Lego related packages is now available.&lt;/p&gt;
2270 </description>
2271 </item>
2272
2273 <item>
2274 <title>How to backport bitcoin-qt version 0.7.2-2 to Debian Squeeze</title>
2275 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html</link>
2276 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html</guid>
2277 <pubDate>Tue, 25 Dec 2012 20:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
2278 <description>&lt;p&gt;Let me start by wishing you all marry Christmas and a happy new
2279 year! I hope next year will prove to be a good year.&lt;/p&gt;
2280
2281 &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bitcoin.org/&quot;&gt;Bitcoin&lt;/a&gt;, the digital
2282 decentralised &quot;currency&quot; that allow people to transfer bitcoins
2283 between each other with minimal overhead, is a very interesting
2284 experiment. And as I wrote a few days ago, the bitcoin situation in
2285 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/&quot;&gt;Debian&lt;/a&gt; is about to improve a bit.
2286 The &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin&quot;&gt;new debian source
2287 package&lt;/a&gt; (version 0.7.2-2) was uploaded yesterday, and is waiting
2288 in &lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html&quot;&gt;the NEW queue&lt;/A&gt;
2289 for one of the ftpmasters to approve the new bitcoin-qt package
2290 name.&lt;/p&gt;
2291
2292 &lt;p&gt;And thanks to the great work of Jonas and the rest of the bitcoin
2293 team in Debian, you can easily test the package in Debian Squeeze
2294 using the following steps to get a set of working packages:&lt;/p&gt;
2295
2296 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
2297 git clone git://git.debian.org/git/collab-maint/bitcoin
2298 cd bitcoin
2299 DEB_MAINTAINER_MODE=1 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp fakeroot debian/rules clean
2300 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp git-buildpackage --git-ignore-new
2301 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
2302
2303 &lt;p&gt;You might have to install some build dependencies as well. The
2304 list of commands should give you two packages, bitcoind and
2305 bitcoin-qt, ready for use in a Squeeze environment. Note that the
2306 client will download the complete set of bitcoin &quot;blocks&quot;, which need
2307 around 5.6 GiB of data on my machine at the moment. Make sure your
2308 ~/.bitcoin/ directory have lots of spare room if you want to download
2309 all the blocks. The client will warn if the disk is getting full, so
2310 there is not really a problem if you got too little room, but you will
2311 not be able to get all the features out of the client.&lt;/p&gt;
2312
2313 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2314 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2315 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&amp;label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
2316 </description>
2317 </item>
2318
2319 <item>
2320 <title>A word on bitcoin support in Debian</title>
2321 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html</link>
2322 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html</guid>
2323 <pubDate>Fri, 21 Dec 2012 23:59:00 +0100</pubDate>
2324 <description>&lt;p&gt;It has been a while since I wrote about
2325 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bitcoin.org/&quot;&gt;bitcoin&lt;/a&gt;, the decentralised
2326 peer-to-peer based crypto-currency, and the reason is simply that I
2327 have been busy elsewhere. But two days ago, I started looking at the
2328 state of &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin&quot;&gt;bitcoin in
2329 Debian&lt;/a&gt; again to try to recover my old bitcoin wallet. The package
2330 is now maintained by a
2331 &lt;a href=&quot;https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-bitcoin/&quot;&gt;team of
2332 people&lt;/a&gt;, and the grunt work had already been done by this team. We
2333 owe a huge thank you to all these team members. :)
2334 But I was sad to discover that the bitcoin client is missing in
2335 Wheezy. It is only available in Sid (and an outdated client from
2336 backports). The client had several RC bugs registered in BTS blocking
2337 it from entering testing. To try to help the team and improve the
2338 situation, I spent some time providing patches and triaging the bug
2339 reports. I also had a look at the bitcoin package available from Matt
2340 Corallo in a
2341 &lt;a href=&quot;https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin&quot;&gt;PPA for
2342 Ubuntu&lt;/a&gt;, and moved the useful pieces from that version into the
2343 Debian package.&lt;/p&gt;
2344
2345 &lt;p&gt;After checking with the main package maintainer Jonas Smedegaard on
2346 IRC, I pushed several patches into the collab-maint git repository to
2347 improve the package. It now contains fixes for the RC issues (not from
2348 me, but fixed by Scott Howard), build rules for a Qt GUI client
2349 package, konqueror support for the bitcoin: URI and bash completion
2350 setup. As I work on Debian Squeeze, I also created
2351 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-bitcoin-devel/Week-of-Mon-20121217/000041.html&quot;&gt;a
2352 patch to backport&lt;/a&gt; the latest version. Jonas is going to look at
2353 it and try to integrate it into the git repository before uploading a
2354 new version to unstable.
2355
2356 &lt;p&gt;I would very much like bitcoin to succeed, to get rid of the
2357 centralized control currently exercised in the monetary system. I
2358 find it completely unacceptable that the USA government is collecting
2359 transaction data for almost all international money transfers (most are done in USD and transaction logs shipped to the spooks), and
2360 that the major credit card companies can block legal money
2361 transactions to Wikileaks. But for bitcoin to succeed, more people
2362 need to use bitcoins, and more people need to accept bitcoins when
2363 they sell products and services. Improving the bitcoin support in
2364 Debian is a small step in the right direction, but not enough.
2365 Unfortunately the user experience when browsing the web and wanting to
2366 pay with bitcoin is still not very good. The bitcoin: URI is a step
2367 in the right direction, but need to work in most or every browser in
2368 use. Also the bitcoin-qt client is too heavy to fire up to do a
2369 quick transaction. I believe there are other clients available, but
2370 have not tested them.&lt;/p&gt;
2371
2372 &lt;p&gt;My
2373 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html&quot;&gt;experiment
2374 with bitcoins&lt;/a&gt; showed that at least some of my readers use bitcoin.
2375 I received 20.15 BTC so far on the address I provided in my blog two
2376 years ago, as can be
2377 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;seen
2378 on the blockexplorer service&lt;/a&gt;. Thank you everyone for your
2379 donation. The blockexplorer service demonstrates quite well that
2380 bitcoin is not quite anonymous and untracked. :) I wonder if the
2381 number of users have gone up since then. If you use bitcoin and want
2382 to show your support of my activity, please send Bitcoin donations to
2383 the same address as last time,
2384 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&amp;label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
2385 </description>
2386 </item>
2387
2388 <item>
2389 <title>Git repository for song book for Computer Scientists</title>
2390 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Git_repository_for_song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html</link>
2391 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Git_repository_for_song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html</guid>
2392 <pubDate>Fri, 7 Sep 2012 13:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
2393 <description>&lt;p&gt;As I
2394 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html&quot;&gt;mentioned
2395 this summer&lt;/a&gt;, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
2396 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
2397 &lt;a href=&quot;https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook&quot;&gt;Gitorious
2398 repository for the project&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
2399
2400 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
2401 to the HTML version. To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
2402 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
2403 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.&lt;/p&gt;
2404
2405 &lt;p&gt;Want to sing? You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
2406 PostScript formats at
2407 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/&quot;&gt;Petter&#39;s Computer
2408 Science Songbook&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
2409 </description>
2410 </item>
2411
2412 <item>
2413 <title>Gratulerer med 19-årsdagen, Debian!</title>
2414 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gratulerer_med_19__rsdagen__Debian_.html</link>
2415 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gratulerer_med_19__rsdagen__Debian_.html</guid>
2416 <pubDate>Thu, 16 Aug 2012 11:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
2417 <description>&lt;p&gt;I dag fyller
2418 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120813&quot;&gt;Debian-prosjektet 19
2419 år&lt;/a&gt;. Jeg har fulgt det de siste 12 årene, og er veldig glad for å kunne
2420 si gratulerer med dagen, Debian!&lt;/p&gt;
2421 </description>
2422 </item>
2423
2424 <item>
2425 <title>Song book for Computer Scientists</title>
2426 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html</link>
2427 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html</guid>
2428 <pubDate>Sun, 24 Jun 2012 13:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
2429 <description>&lt;p&gt;Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
2430 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uit.no/&quot;&gt;University of Tromsø&lt;/a&gt;, I started
2431 collecting computer related songs for use at parties. The original
2432 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
2433 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
2434 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format. I have
2435 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
2436 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
2437 help me extend and update the book. If anyone is volunteering to help
2438 me with this, send me an email. Also let me know if there are songs
2439 missing in my book.&lt;/p&gt;
2440
2441 &lt;p&gt;I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
2442 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
2443 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
2444 Especially now that &lt;a href=&quot;http://debconf12.debconf.org/&quot;&gt;Debconf
2445 12&lt;/a&gt; is about to start (and I am not going). Want to sing? Check
2446 out &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/&quot;&gt;Petter&#39;s
2447 Computer Science Songbook&lt;/a&gt;.
2448 </description>
2449 </item>
2450
2451 <item>
2452 <title>Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge</title>
2453 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html</link>
2454 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html</guid>
2455 <pubDate>Mon, 21 Nov 2011 12:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
2456 <description>&lt;p&gt;At work we have heaps of servers. I believe the total count is
2457 around 1000 at the moment. To be able to get help from the vendors
2458 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
2459 up to date. If the firmware isn&#39;t the latest and greatest, the
2460 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
2461 firmware is upgraded. So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
2462 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
2463 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
2464 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
2465 the tools to do so.&lt;/p&gt;
2466
2467 &lt;p&gt;To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
2468 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got. Most of
2469 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
2470 so far. This blog post is about the Dell part.&lt;/P&gt;
2471
2472 &lt;p&gt;On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
2473 &lt;a href=&quot;ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz&quot;&gt;an XML file&lt;/a&gt;
2474 with firmware information for all 11th generation servers, listing
2475 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
2476 site I can find it. Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
2477 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
2478 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
2479 be activated on the first reboot.&lt;/p&gt;
2480
2481 &lt;p&gt;This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
2482 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
2483 servers at a site? Please get in touch and lets share resources.&lt;/p&gt;
2484
2485 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
2486 #!/usr/bin/perl
2487 use strict;
2488 use warnings;
2489 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
2490 BEGIN {
2491 # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
2492 my %rhelmodules = (
2493 &#39;XML::Simple&#39; =&gt; &#39;perl-XML-Simple&#39;,
2494 );
2495 for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
2496 eval &quot;use $module;&quot;;
2497 if ($@) {
2498 my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
2499 system(&quot;yum install -y $pkg&quot;);
2500 eval &quot;use $module;&quot;;
2501 }
2502 }
2503 }
2504 my $errorsto = &#39;pere@hungry.com&#39;;
2505
2506 upgrade_dell();
2507
2508 exit 0;
2509
2510 sub run_firmware_script {
2511 my ($opts, $script) = @_;
2512 unless ($script) {
2513 print STDERR &quot;fail: missing script name\n&quot;;
2514 exit 1
2515 }
2516 print STDERR &quot;Running $script\n\n&quot;;
2517
2518 if (0 == system(&quot;sh $script $opts&quot;)) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
2519 print STDERR &quot;success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n&quot;;
2520 } else {
2521 print STDERR &quot;fail: firmware script returned error\n&quot;;
2522 }
2523 }
2524
2525 sub run_firmware_scripts {
2526 my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
2527 # Run firmware packages
2528 for my $dir (@dirs) {
2529 print STDERR &quot;info: Running scripts in $dir\n&quot;;
2530 opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die &quot;Unable to open directory $dir: $!&quot;;
2531 while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
2532 next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
2533 run_firmware_script($opts, &quot;$dir/$s&quot;);
2534 }
2535 closedir $dh;
2536 }
2537 }
2538
2539 sub download {
2540 my $url = shift;
2541 print STDERR &quot;info: Downloading $url\n&quot;;
2542 system(&quot;wget --quiet \&quot;$url\&quot;&quot;);
2543 }
2544
2545 sub upgrade_dell {
2546 my @dirs;
2547 my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
2548 chomp $product;
2549
2550 if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
2551
2552 # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
2553 system(&#39;yum install -y compat-libstdc++-33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail&#39;);
2554
2555 my $tmpdir = tempdir(
2556 CLEANUP =&gt; 1
2557 );
2558 chdir($tmpdir);
2559 fetch_dell_fw(&#39;catalog/Catalog.xml.gz&#39;);
2560 system(&#39;gunzip Catalog.xml.gz&#39;);
2561 my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list(&#39;Catalog.xml&#39;);
2562 # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
2563 my $fwopts = &quot;-q&quot;;
2564 if (@paths) {
2565 for my $url (@paths) {
2566 fetch_dell_fw($url);
2567 }
2568 run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
2569 } else {
2570 print STDERR &quot;error: Unsupported Dell model &#39;$product&#39;.\n&quot;;
2571 print STDERR &quot;error: Please report to $errorsto.\n&quot;;
2572 }
2573 chdir(&#39;/&#39;);
2574 } else {
2575 print STDERR &quot;error: Unsupported Dell model &#39;$product&#39;.\n&quot;;
2576 print STDERR &quot;error: Please report to $errorsto.\n&quot;;
2577 }
2578 }
2579
2580 sub fetch_dell_fw {
2581 my $path = shift;
2582 my $url = &quot;ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path&quot;;
2583 download($url);
2584 }
2585
2586 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
2587 # firmware packages to download from Dell. Only work for Linux
2588 # machines and 11th generation Dell servers.
2589 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
2590 my $filename = shift;
2591
2592 my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
2593 chomp $product;
2594 my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
2595
2596 print STDERR &quot;Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n&quot;;
2597
2598 my $xml = XMLin($filename);
2599 my @paths;
2600 for my $bundle (@{$xml-&gt;{SoftwareBundle}}) {
2601 my $brand = $bundle-&gt;{TargetSystems}-&gt;{Brand}-&gt;{Display}-&gt;{content};
2602 my $model = $bundle-&gt;{TargetSystems}-&gt;{Brand}-&gt;{Model}-&gt;{Display}-&gt;{content};
2603 my $oscode;
2604 if (&quot;ARRAY&quot; eq ref $bundle-&gt;{TargetOSes}-&gt;{OperatingSystem}) {
2605 $oscode = $bundle-&gt;{TargetOSes}-&gt;{OperatingSystem}[0]-&gt;{osCode};
2606 } else {
2607 $oscode = $bundle-&gt;{TargetOSes}-&gt;{OperatingSystem}-&gt;{osCode};
2608 }
2609 if ($mybrand eq $brand &amp;&amp; $mymodel eq $model &amp;&amp; &quot;LIN&quot; eq $oscode)
2610 {
2611 @paths = map { $_-&gt;{path} } @{$bundle-&gt;{Contents}-&gt;{Package}};
2612 }
2613 }
2614 for my $component (@{$xml-&gt;{SoftwareComponent}}) {
2615 my $componenttype = $component-&gt;{ComponentType}-&gt;{value};
2616
2617 # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
2618 next if &#39;APAC&#39; eq $componenttype;
2619
2620 my $cpath = $component-&gt;{path};
2621 for my $path (@paths) {
2622 if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
2623 push(@paths, $cpath);
2624 }
2625 }
2626 }
2627 return @paths;
2628 }
2629 &lt;/pre&gt;
2630
2631 &lt;p&gt;The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
2632 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking. Anyone know a
2633 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers? At the
2634 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
2635 outdated.&lt;/p&gt;
2636 </description>
2637 </item>
2638
2639 <item>
2640 <title>How is booting into runlevel 1 different from single user boots?</title>
2641 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_is_booting_into_runlevel_1_different_from_single_user_boots_.html</link>
2642 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_is_booting_into_runlevel_1_different_from_single_user_boots_.html</guid>
2643 <pubDate>Thu, 4 Aug 2011 12:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
2644 <description>&lt;p&gt;Wouter Verhelst have some
2645 &lt;a href=&quot;http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot&quot;&gt;interesting
2646 comments and opinions&lt;/a&gt; on my blog post on
2647 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html&quot;&gt;the
2648 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian&lt;/a&gt; and my blog post about
2649 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html&quot;&gt;the
2650 default KDE desktop in Debian&lt;/a&gt;. I only have time to address one
2651 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
2652 misunderstanding he bring forward:&lt;/p&gt;
2653
2654 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
2655 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
2656 single-user system (by adding &#39;single&#39; to the kernel command line;
2657 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
2658 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2659
2660 &lt;p&gt;This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
2661 and booting into runlevel 1 is the same. I am not surprised he
2662 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
2663 thing to believe. But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
2664 runlevel 1 do not work properly and it isn&#39;t the same as single user
2665 mode. I&#39;ll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
2666 hard to explain.&lt;/p&gt;
2667
2668 &lt;p&gt;Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
2669 &quot;&lt;tt&gt;~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin&lt;/tt&gt;&quot;. This means the only thing that is
2670 executed in single user mode is sulogin. Single user mode is a boot
2671 state &quot;between&quot; the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
2672 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
2673 enters the single user state. When switching to runlevel 1, the state
2674 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
2675 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
2676 runs &quot;init -t1 S&quot; to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
2677 1. It is confusing that the &#39;S&#39; (single user) init mode is not the
2678 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
2679 mode).&lt;/p&gt;
2680
2681 &lt;p&gt;This summary might make it clearer. When booting for the first
2682 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
2683 &quot;&lt;tt&gt;/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin&lt;/tt&gt;&quot;. When booting into
2684 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: &quot;&lt;tt&gt;/etc/init.d/rc
2685 S; /etc/init.d/rc 1; /sbin/sulogin&lt;/tt&gt;&quot;. A problem show up when
2686 trying to continue after visiting single user mode. Not all services
2687 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
2688 unpredicatble state. This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
2689 after visiting single user mode.&lt;/p&gt;
2690
2691 &lt;p&gt;A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
2692 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/. When switching from say runlevel 2
2693 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
2694 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
2695 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
2696 2-5. I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
2697 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not &lt;strong&gt;required&lt;/strong&gt; to get a
2698 functioning single user mode during boot.&lt;/p&gt;
2699
2700 &lt;p&gt;I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
2701 and discovered this problem a few years ago. I suspect it originates
2702 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.&lt;/p&gt;
2703 </description>
2704 </item>
2705
2706 <item>
2707 <title>What should start from /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian? - almost nothing</title>
2708 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html</link>
2709 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html</guid>
2710 <pubDate>Sat, 30 Jul 2011 14:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
2711 <description>&lt;p&gt;In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
2712 are started from /etc/rcS.d/. In fact, there is a bite more of them
2713 than make sense, and this causes a few problems. What kind of
2714 problems, you might ask. There are at least two problems. The first
2715 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
2716 runlevel 1. One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
2717 the expected state. The other is that single user boot will sometimes
2718 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
2719 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
2720 machine from a problem in that subsystem. A minor additional point is
2721 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
2722 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
2723 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.&lt;/p&gt;
2724
2725 &lt;p&gt;So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/. In short, only the
2726 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
2727 presented during a single user boot should go there. Everything else
2728 should go into the numeric runlevels. This means things like
2729 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
2730 the numeric runlevels. Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
2731 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
2732 out. Do your package have one of them? Please help us make single
2733 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.&lt;/p&gt;
2734
2735 &lt;p&gt;Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
2736 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
2737 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
2738 is presented.&lt;/p&gt;
2739
2740 &lt;p&gt;As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound. To keep
2741 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
2742 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
2743 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
2744 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
2745 moved first. This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
2746 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
2747 the system state correct. This will require some coordination when it
2748 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
2749 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
2750 on them. Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
2751 package, while others are still left to do. I wish I had time to work
2752 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
2753 find time to push this forward.&lt;/p&gt;
2754 </description>
2755 </item>
2756
2757 <item>
2758 <title>What is missing in the Debian desktop, or why my parents use Kubuntu</title>
2759 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html</link>
2760 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html</guid>
2761 <pubDate>Fri, 29 Jul 2011 08:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
2762 <description>&lt;p&gt;While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
2763 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
2764 desktop to be useful for more people. The use case for this is my
2765 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
2766 issues.&lt;/p&gt;
2767
2768 &lt;p&gt;I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
2769 implement. After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
2770 do this in Debian we would have a source.&lt;/p&gt;
2771
2772 &lt;ol&gt;
2773
2774 &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.&lt;/strong&gt; When there
2775 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
2776 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
2777 tool to handle it. I have no problem guiding both of my parents
2778 through the process over the phone. If a kernel reboot is required,
2779 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool. Last
2780 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
2781 Debian.&lt;/li&gt;
2782
2783 &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
2784 plugins.&lt;/strong&gt; When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
2785 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
2786 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
2787 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
2788 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
2789 Packages file in the APT archive). If one or more packages are found,
2790 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
2791 type. If the package require the user to accept some non-free
2792 license, this is explained to the user. The entire process make it
2793 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
2794 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
2795 not the browser for any missing features.&lt;/li&gt;
2796
2797 &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
2798 handlers.&lt;/strong&gt; When the media players encounter a format or codec
2799 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
2800 should search for a package that would add support for it. This
2801 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264. The selection
2802 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
2803 plugin handling. This is as far as I know implemented using a
2804 gstreamer hook. The end result is that the user easily get access to
2805 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
2806 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.&lt;/li&gt;
2807
2808 &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Better browser handling of some MIME types.&lt;/strong&gt; When
2809 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
2810 start emacs to show it. If I remember correctly, when doing the same
2811 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser. At least I
2812 know Opera will show text files within the browser. I much prefer the
2813 latter behaviour.&lt;/li&gt;
2814
2815 &lt;/ol&gt;
2816
2817 &lt;p&gt;There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
2818 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
2819 it do not matter much.&lt;/p&gt;
2820
2821 &lt;p&gt;I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
2822 Debian release. It would require the coordinated effort of several
2823 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.&lt;/p&gt;
2824 </description>
2825 </item>
2826
2827 <item>
2828 <title>Perl modules used by FixMyStreet which are missing in Debian/Squeeze</title>
2829 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Perl_modules_used_by_FixMyStreet_which_are_missing_in_Debian_Squeeze.html</link>
2830 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Perl_modules_used_by_FixMyStreet_which_are_missing_in_Debian_Squeeze.html</guid>
2831 <pubDate>Tue, 26 Jul 2011 12:25:00 +0200</pubDate>
2832 <description>&lt;p&gt;The Norwegian &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fiksgatami.no/&quot;&gt;FiksGataMi&lt;/A&gt;
2833 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
2834 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
2835 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
2836 security support for a few years.&lt;/p&gt;
2837
2838 &lt;p&gt;The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
2839 that are missing in Debian at the moment. It would be great if these
2840 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
2841 their own &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fixmystreet.com&quot;&gt;FixMyStreet&lt;/a&gt; clone
2842 in their own country using only Debian packages. The list of modules
2843 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn&#39;t very long, and I hope the perl group
2844 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
2845 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
2846 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
2847 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
2848 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
2849 easier in the future.&lt;/p&gt;
2850
2851 &lt;p&gt;Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
2852 installed on my server was a simple call to &#39;cpan2deb Module::Name&#39;
2853 and &#39;dpkg -i&#39; to install the resulting package. But this leave me
2854 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
2855 do not have time for.&lt;/p&gt;
2856 </description>
2857 </item>
2858
2859 <item>
2860 <title>A Norwegian FixMyStreet have kept me busy the last few weeks</title>
2861 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Norwegian_FixMyStreet_have_kept_me_busy_the_last_few_weeks.html</link>
2862 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Norwegian_FixMyStreet_have_kept_me_busy_the_last_few_weeks.html</guid>
2863 <pubDate>Sun, 3 Apr 2011 22:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
2864 <description>&lt;p&gt;Here is a small update for my English readers. Most of my blog
2865 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
2866 update in English.&lt;/p&gt;
2867
2868 &lt;p&gt;The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
2869 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
2870 of the British service
2871 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fixmystreet.com/&quot;&gt;FixMyStreet&lt;/a&gt; up and running,
2872 and it has been running for a month now. The entire project has been
2873 organised by me and two others. Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
2874 to fund the development work. In January I drafted a contract with
2875 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mysociety.org/&quot;&gt;mySociety&lt;/a&gt; on what to develop,
2876 and in February the development took place. Most of it involved
2877 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
2878 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
2879 running in any country by now. The Norwegian
2880 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fiksgatami.no/&quot;&gt;FiksGataMi&lt;/a&gt; is using
2881 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.openstreetmap.org/&quot;&gt;OpenStreetmap&lt;/a&gt; as the map
2882 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
2883 support for this had to be added/fixed.&lt;/p&gt;
2884
2885 &lt;p&gt;The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
2886 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th. The system is
2887 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
2888 problem reports in a few weeks. Soon we hope to announce the Android
2889 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
2890 public infrastructure.&lt;/p&gt;
2891
2892 &lt;p&gt;Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
2893 such service?&lt;/p&gt;
2894 </description>
2895 </item>
2896
2897 <item>
2898 <title>Using NVD and CPE to track CVEs in locally maintained software</title>
2899 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_NVD_and_CPE_to_track_CVEs_in_locally_maintained_software.html</link>
2900 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_NVD_and_CPE_to_track_CVEs_in_locally_maintained_software.html</guid>
2901 <pubDate>Fri, 28 Jan 2011 15:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
2902 <description>&lt;p&gt;The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
2903 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo. My idea is that
2904 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
2905 available on the Internet, and check our locally
2906 maintained/distributed software against this information. It should
2907 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten. The
2908 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
2909 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
2910 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
2911 out which security holes were present in our free software
2912 collection.&lt;/p&gt;
2913
2914 &lt;p&gt;After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
2915 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
2916 consistent way across data sources. I considered several ways to do
2917 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
2918 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
2919 existing naming scheme. And it seem like I am not the first one to
2920 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
2921 solution. Enter the &lt;a href=&quot;http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html&quot;&gt;Common
2922 Platform Enumeration&lt;/a&gt; dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
2923 software, hardware and other platform components. The CPE ids are
2924 mapped to CVEs in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.nvd.nist.gov/&quot;&gt;National
2925 Vulnerability Database&lt;/a&gt;, allowing me to look up know security
2926 issues for any CPE name. With this in place, all I need to do is to
2927 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
2928 This is fairly trivial (I google for &#39;cve cpe $package&#39; and check the
2929 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).&lt;/p&gt;
2930
2931 &lt;p&gt;To give you an example. The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
2932 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip. If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
2933 check out, one could look up
2934 &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/search?cpe=cpe%3A%2Fa%3Agnu%3Agzip:1.3.3&quot;&gt;cpe:/a:gnu:gzip:1.3.3
2935 in NVD&lt;/a&gt; and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
2936 The most recent one is
2937 &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2010-0001&quot;&gt;CVE-2010-0001&lt;/a&gt;,
2938 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
2939 list of affected versions is provided.&lt;/p&gt;
2940
2941 &lt;p&gt;The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
2942 for offline processing of issues. Using this dump, I&#39;ve written a
2943 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
2944 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs. One give it CPEs
2945 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
2946 security issues out.&lt;/p&gt;
2947
2948 &lt;p&gt;Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
2949 information need to be high. For that to happen, I believe as many as
2950 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database. I notice
2951 RHEL is providing
2952 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt&quot;&gt;a
2953 map from CVE to CPE&lt;/a&gt;, indicating that they are using the CPE
2954 information. I&#39;m not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.&lt;/p&gt;
2955
2956 &lt;p&gt;To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
2957 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
2958 the CVE database in NVD. The result look fairly good, but there are
2959 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
2960 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
2961 Debian believe are affected by a CVE). Hope to find time to improve
2962 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
2963 someone maintaining it. So far my three emails with questions and
2964 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
2965 established soon.&lt;/p&gt;
2966
2967 &lt;p&gt;An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
2968 mapping. It would be useful to know which packages in for example
2969 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
2970 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
2971 for their packages.&lt;/p&gt;
2972 </description>
2973 </item>
2974
2975 <item>
2976 <title>Which module is loaded for a given PCI and USB device?</title>
2977 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Which_module_is_loaded_for_a_given_PCI_and_USB_device_.html</link>
2978 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Which_module_is_loaded_for_a_given_PCI_and_USB_device_.html</guid>
2979 <pubDate>Sun, 23 Jan 2011 00:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
2980 <description>&lt;p&gt;In the
2981 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data&quot;&gt;discover-data&lt;/a&gt;
2982 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
2983 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
2984 information. One part of this script that I find very useful when
2985 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
2986 to the PCI device it claims. It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
2987 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with. To see
2988 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
2989 &lt;tt&gt;/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3&gt;&amp;1&lt;/tt&gt;. The relevant output on
2990 one of my machines like this:&lt;/p&gt;
2991
2992 &lt;pre&gt;
2993 loaded modules:
2994 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
2995 10de:03f1 ohci_hcd
2996 10de:03f2 ehci_hcd
2997 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
2998 10de:03ec pata_amd
2999 10de:03f6 sata_nv
3000 1022:1103 k8temp
3001 109e:036e bttv
3002 109e:0878 snd_bt87x
3003 11ab:4364 sky2
3004 &lt;/pre&gt;
3005
3006 &lt;p&gt;The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
3007 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:&lt;/p&gt;
3008
3009 &lt;pre&gt;
3010 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
3011 echo loaded pci modules:
3012 (
3013 cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
3014 for address in * ; do
3015 if [ -d &quot;$address/driver/module&quot; ] ; then
3016 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
3017 if grep -q &quot;^$module &quot; /proc/modules ; then
3018 address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
3019 id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk &#39;{print $3}&#39;`
3020 echo &quot;$id $module&quot;
3021 fi
3022 fi
3023 done
3024 )
3025 echo
3026 fi
3027 &lt;/pre&gt;
3028
3029 &lt;p&gt;Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
3030 mappings:&lt;/p&gt;
3031
3032 &lt;pre&gt;
3033 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
3034 echo loaded usb modules:
3035 (
3036 cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
3037 for address in * ; do
3038 if [ -d &quot;$address/driver/module&quot; ] ; then
3039 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
3040 if grep -q &quot;^$module &quot; /proc/modules ; then
3041 address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
3042 id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk &#39;{print $6}&#39;)
3043 if [ &quot;$id&quot; ] ; then
3044 echo &quot;$id $module&quot;
3045 fi
3046 fi
3047 fi
3048 done
3049 )
3050 echo
3051 fi
3052 &lt;/pre&gt;
3053
3054 &lt;p&gt;This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
3055 well.&lt;/p&gt;
3056 </description>
3057 </item>
3058
3059 <item>
3060 <title>How to test if a laptop is working with Linux</title>
3061 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_test_if_a_laptop_is_working_with_Linux.html</link>
3062 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_test_if_a_laptop_is_working_with_Linux.html</guid>
3063 <pubDate>Wed, 22 Dec 2010 14:55:00 +0100</pubDate>
3064 <description>&lt;p&gt;The last few days I have spent at work here at the &lt;a
3065 href=&quot;http://www.uio.no/&quot;&gt;University of Oslo&lt;/a&gt; testing if the new
3066 batch of computers will work with Linux. Every year for the last few
3067 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
3068 computers, and this year HP won the bid. Two different desktops and
3069 five different laptops are on the list this year. We in the UNIX
3070 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
3071 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
3072 university.&lt;/p&gt;
3073
3074 &lt;p&gt;My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
3075 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well. To test, I PXE
3076 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
3077 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware. When
3078 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
3079 on. If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
3080 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
3081 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.&lt;/p&gt;
3082
3083 &lt;p&gt;Anyway, to get to the point of this post. Here is the simple tests
3084 I perform on a new model.&lt;/p&gt;
3085
3086 &lt;ul&gt;
3087
3088 &lt;li&gt;Is PXE installation working? I&#39;m testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
3089 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment. If I feel like it, I also test with
3090 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.&lt;/li&gt;
3091
3092 &lt;li&gt;Is X.org working? If the graphical login screen show up after
3093 installation, X.org is working.&lt;/li&gt;
3094
3095 &lt;li&gt;Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working? Running glxgears (in
3096 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
3097 reported by the program.&lt;/li&gt;
3098
3099 &lt;li&gt;Is sound working? With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
3100 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful. If there
3101 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
3102 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound. I
3103 normally test this by playing
3104 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ &quot;&gt;a HTML5
3105 video&lt;/a&gt; in Firefox/Iceweasel.&lt;/li&gt;
3106
3107 &lt;li&gt;Is the USB subsystem working? I test this by plugging in a USB
3108 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.&lt;/li&gt;
3109
3110 &lt;li&gt;Is the CD/DVD player working? I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
3111 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.&lt;/li&gt;
3112
3113 &lt;li&gt;Is any built in camera working? Test using cheese, and see if a
3114 picture from the v4l device show up.&lt;/li&gt;
3115
3116 &lt;li&gt;Is bluetooth working? Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
3117 any bluetooth devices are discovered. In my office, I normally see a
3118 few.&lt;/li&gt;
3119
3120 &lt;li&gt;For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working. I have
3121 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
3122 notice this.&lt;/li&gt;
3123
3124 &lt;li&gt;For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working? I&#39;m testing if the
3125 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
3126 resume.&lt;/li&gt;
3127
3128 &lt;li&gt;For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
3129 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
3130 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc? The set of buttons differ from
3131 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
3132 not.&lt;/li&gt;
3133
3134 &lt;li&gt;Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
3135 acceleration sensors etc. I rarely test these, as I do not know how
3136 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
3137 existence.&lt;/li&gt;
3138
3139 &lt;/ul&gt;
3140
3141 &lt;p&gt;By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
3142 for the HP machines I am testing. I&#39;m not done yet, so I will report
3143 the test results later. For now I can report that HP 8100 Elite work
3144 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook 8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
3145 and audio fail on RHEL6. Ubuntu Maverik worked with 8440p. As you
3146 can see, I have most machines left to test. One interesting
3147 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
3148 RHEL6 with glxgears. No idea why.&lt;/p&gt;
3149 </description>
3150 </item>
3151
3152 <item>
3153 <title>Some thoughts on BitCoins</title>
3154 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html</link>
3155 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html</guid>
3156 <pubDate>Sat, 11 Dec 2010 15:10:00 +0100</pubDate>
3157 <description>&lt;p&gt;As I continue to explore
3158 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bitcoin.org/&quot;&gt;BitCoin&lt;/a&gt;, I&#39;ve starting to wonder
3159 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
3160 and regulations here in Norway. Here are some random notes.&lt;/p&gt;
3161
3162 &lt;p&gt;One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
3163 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
3164 is known to everyone. This means that if a BitCoin address has been
3165 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
3166 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
3167 that address. There is even a web service to look at the details for
3168 all transactions. There I can see that my address
3169 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;
3170 have received 16.06 Bitcoin, the
3171 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3&quot;&gt;1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3&lt;/a&gt;
3172 address of Simon Phipps have received 181.97 BitCoin and the address
3173 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt&quot;&gt;1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt&lt;/A&gt;
3174 of EFF have received 2447.38 BitCoins so far. Thank you to each and
3175 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
3176 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
3177 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
3178 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction. I&#39;m told
3179 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
3180 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
3181 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.&lt;/p&gt;
3182
3183 &lt;p&gt;In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
3184 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
3185 without declaring it. There are money laundering, tax and accounting
3186 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
3187 If the Skolelinux foundation
3188 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html&quot;&gt;SLX
3189 Debian Labs&lt;/a&gt;) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
3190 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
3191 Given that it is impossible to know if money can cross the border or
3192 not, should everything or nothing be declared? What exchange rate
3193 should be used when calculating taxes? Would receivers have to pay
3194 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
3195 BitCoin? I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.&lt;/p&gt;
3196
3197 &lt;p&gt;For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
3198 accepted by a lot of users. It must be possible to get easy access to
3199 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
3200 easy to spend it. At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
3201 access to, but there are very few places to spend it. I am not really
3202 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
3203 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins. I
3204 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
3205 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
3206 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
3207 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular. I&#39;m sure they
3208 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
3209 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
3210 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
3211 currencies.&lt;/p&gt;
3212
3213 &lt;p&gt;The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
3214 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
3215 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
3216 to see which one get the next lump of cash). The &quot;winner&quot; get 50
3217 BitCoin when this happen. Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
3218 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
3219 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
3220 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the 50
3221 BitCoins. Check out
3222 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/&quot;&gt;BitCoin Pool&lt;/a&gt;
3223 if this sounds interesting. I have not had time to try to set up a
3224 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
3225 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
3226 yet.&lt;/p&gt;
3227
3228 &lt;p&gt;Update 2010-12-15: Found an &lt;a
3229 href=&quot;http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi&quot;&gt;interesting
3230 criticism&lt;/a&gt; of bitcoin. Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
3231 it was interesting to read. The arguments presented seem to be
3232 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.&lt;/p&gt;
3233 </description>
3234 </item>
3235
3236 <item>
3237 <title>Now accepting bitcoins - anonymous and distributed p2p crypto-money</title>
3238 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html</link>
3239 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html</guid>
3240 <pubDate>Fri, 10 Dec 2010 08:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
3241 <description>&lt;p&gt;With this weeks lawless
3242 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html&quot;&gt;governmental
3243 attacks&lt;/a&gt; on Wikileak and
3244 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech&quot;&gt;free
3245 speech&lt;/a&gt;, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
3246 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
3247 A blog post from
3248 &lt;a href=&quot;http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/&quot;&gt;Simon
3249 Phipps on bitcoin&lt;/a&gt; reminded me about a project that a friend of
3250 mine mentioned earlier. I decided to follow Simon&#39;s example, and get
3251 involved with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bitcoin.org/&quot;&gt;BitCoin&lt;/a&gt;. I got
3252 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
3253 some bitcoins to get started. I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
3254 for helping me remember BitCoin.&lt;/p&gt;
3255
3256 &lt;p&gt;So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder? It is a digital
3257 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
3258 networks. It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
3259 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
3260 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions. The
3261 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets 2.9
3262 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
3263 line client builds just fine. Hopefully Jonas
3264 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/578157&quot;&gt;will get the package into
3265 Debian&lt;/a&gt; soon.&lt;/p&gt;
3266
3267 &lt;p&gt;Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
3268 There are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bitcoin.org/trade&quot;&gt;companies accepting
3269 bitcoins&lt;/a&gt; when selling services and goods, and there are even
3270 currency &quot;stock&quot; markets where the exchange rate is decided. There
3271 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising. If you
3272 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
3273 you can even get
3274 &lt;a href=&quot;https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/&quot;&gt;some for free&lt;/a&gt; (0.05
3275 bitcoin at the time of writing). Use
3276 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/&quot;&gt;BitcoinWatch&lt;/a&gt; to keep an eye
3277 on the current exchange rates.&lt;/p&gt;
3278
3279 &lt;p&gt;As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
3280 machines. If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
3281 donations to the address
3282 &lt;b&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/b&gt;. Thank you!&lt;/p&gt;
3283 </description>
3284 </item>
3285
3286 <item>
3287 <title>Why isn&#39;t Debian Edu using VLC?</title>
3288 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html</link>
3289 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html</guid>
3290 <pubDate>Sat, 27 Nov 2010 11:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
3291 <description>&lt;p&gt;In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
3292 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
3293 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
3294 to play a video file or stream. Only if VLC fail will I drag out
3295 gmplayer to see if it can do better. The reason is mostly the failure
3296 model and trust. When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
3297 reporting the problem. When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
3298 just hangs. The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.&lt;p&gt;
3299
3300 &lt;p&gt;But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
3301 mplayer in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian
3302 Edu/Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;. The reason is simple. We need a good browser
3303 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
3304 not very good. For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
3305 is no way for the user to pause the video. Also, when I
3306 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia&quot;&gt;last
3307 tested the browser plugins&lt;/a&gt; available in Debian, the VLC plugin
3308 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked. If
3309 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
3310 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.&lt;/P&gt;
3311
3312 &lt;p&gt;While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
3313 annoying. The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
3314 keyboard shortcuts. When the player is in full screen mode, its
3315 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
3316 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode. I
3317 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
3318 window mode. Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
3319 the current video. It is very nice when playing short videos from the
3320 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
3321 what is going on.&lt;/p&gt;
3322 </description>
3323 </item>
3324
3325 <item>
3326 <title>Lenny-&gt;Squeeze upgrades of the Gnome and KDE desktop, now with apt-get autoremove</title>
3327 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades_of_the_Gnome_and_KDE_desktop__now_with_apt_get_autoremove.html</link>
3328 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades_of_the_Gnome_and_KDE_desktop__now_with_apt_get_autoremove.html</guid>
3329 <pubDate>Mon, 22 Nov 2010 14:15:00 +0100</pubDate>
3330 <description>&lt;p&gt;Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
3331 upgrade testing of the
3332 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/&quot;&gt;Lenny
3333 Gnome and KDE Desktop&lt;/a&gt; to do &lt;tt&gt;apt-get autoremove&lt;/tt&gt; when using apt-get.
3334 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
3335 can now present the updated result from today:&lt;/p&gt;
3336
3337 &lt;p&gt;This is for Gnome:&lt;/p&gt;
3338
3339 &lt;p&gt;Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude&lt;/p&gt;
3340
3341 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
3342 apache2.2-bin
3343 aptdaemon
3344 baobab
3345 binfmt-support
3346 browser-plugin-gnash
3347 cheese-common
3348 cli-common
3349 cups-pk-helper
3350 dmz-cursor-theme
3351 empathy
3352 empathy-common
3353 freedesktop-sound-theme
3354 freeglut3
3355 gconf-defaults-service
3356 gdm-themes
3357 gedit-plugins
3358 geoclue
3359 geoclue-hostip
3360 geoclue-localnet
3361 geoclue-manual
3362 geoclue-yahoo
3363 gnash
3364 gnash-common
3365 gnome
3366 gnome-backgrounds
3367 gnome-cards-data
3368 gnome-codec-install
3369 gnome-core
3370 gnome-desktop-environment
3371 gnome-disk-utility
3372 gnome-screenshot
3373 gnome-search-tool
3374 gnome-session-canberra
3375 gnome-system-log
3376 gnome-themes-extras
3377 gnome-themes-more
3378 gnome-user-share
3379 gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
3380 gstreamer0.10-tools
3381 gtk2-engines
3382 gtk2-engines-pixbuf
3383 gtk2-engines-smooth
3384 hamster-applet
3385 libapache2-mod-dnssd
3386 libapr1
3387 libaprutil1
3388 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
3389 libaprutil1-ldap
3390 libart2.0-cil
3391 libboost-date-time1.42.0
3392 libboost-python1.42.0
3393 libboost-thread1.42.0
3394 libchamplain-0.4-0
3395 libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0
3396 libcheese-gtk18
3397 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
3398 libcryptui0
3399 libdiscid0
3400 libelf1
3401 libepc-1.0-2
3402 libepc-common
3403 libepc-ui-1.0-2
3404 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
3405 libfreerdp0
3406 libgconf2.0-cil
3407 libgdata-common
3408 libgdata7
3409 libgdu-gtk0
3410 libgee2
3411 libgeoclue0
3412 libgexiv2-0
3413 libgif4
3414 libglade2.0-cil
3415 libglib2.0-cil
3416 libgmime2.4-cil
3417 libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
3418 libgnome2.24-cil
3419 libgnomepanel2.24-cil
3420 libgpod-common
3421 libgpod4
3422 libgtk2.0-cil
3423 libgtkglext1
3424 libgtksourceview2.0-common
3425 libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
3426 libmono-addins0.2-cil
3427 libmono-cairo2.0-cil
3428 libmono-corlib2.0-cil
3429 libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
3430 libmono-posix2.0-cil
3431 libmono-security2.0-cil
3432 libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
3433 libmono-system2.0-cil
3434 libmtp8
3435 libmusicbrainz3-6
3436 libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
3437 libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
3438 libopal3.6.8
3439 libpolkit-gtk-1-0
3440 libpt2.6.7
3441 libpython2.6
3442 librpm1
3443 librpmio1
3444 libsdl1.2debian
3445 libsrtp0
3446 libssh-4
3447 libtelepathy-farsight0
3448 libtelepathy-glib0
3449 libtidy-0.99-0
3450 media-player-info
3451 mesa-utils
3452 mono-2.0-gac
3453 mono-gac
3454 mono-runtime
3455 nautilus-sendto
3456 nautilus-sendto-empathy
3457 p7zip-full
3458 pkg-config
3459 python-aptdaemon
3460 python-aptdaemon-gtk
3461 python-axiom
3462 python-beautifulsoup
3463 python-bugbuddy
3464 python-clientform
3465 python-coherence
3466 python-configobj
3467 python-crypto
3468 python-cupshelpers
3469 python-elementtree
3470 python-epsilon
3471 python-evolution
3472 python-feedparser
3473 python-gdata
3474 python-gdbm
3475 python-gst0.10
3476 python-gtkglext1
3477 python-gtksourceview2
3478 python-httplib2
3479 python-louie
3480 python-mako
3481 python-markupsafe
3482 python-mechanize
3483 python-nevow
3484 python-notify
3485 python-opengl
3486 python-openssl
3487 python-pam
3488 python-pkg-resources
3489 python-pyasn1
3490 python-pysqlite2
3491 python-rdflib
3492 python-serial
3493 python-tagpy
3494 python-twisted-bin
3495 python-twisted-conch
3496 python-twisted-core
3497 python-twisted-web
3498 python-utidylib
3499 python-webkit
3500 python-xdg
3501 python-zope.interface
3502 remmina
3503 remmina-plugin-data
3504 remmina-plugin-rdp
3505 remmina-plugin-vnc
3506 rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
3507 rhythmbox-plugins
3508 rpm-common
3509 rpm2cpio
3510 seahorse-plugins
3511 shotwell
3512 software-center
3513 system-config-printer-udev
3514 telepathy-gabble
3515 telepathy-mission-control-5
3516 telepathy-salut
3517 tomboy
3518 totem
3519 totem-coherence
3520 totem-mozilla
3521 totem-plugins
3522 transmission-common
3523 xdg-user-dirs
3524 xdg-user-dirs-gtk
3525 xserver-xephyr
3526 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
3527
3528 &lt;p&gt;Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude&lt;/p&gt;
3529
3530 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
3531 cheese
3532 ekiga
3533 eog
3534 epiphany-extensions
3535 evolution-exchange
3536 fast-user-switch-applet
3537 file-roller
3538 gcalctool
3539 gconf-editor
3540 gdm
3541 gedit
3542 gedit-common
3543 gnome-games
3544 gnome-games-data
3545 gnome-nettool
3546 gnome-system-tools
3547 gnome-themes
3548 gnuchess
3549 gucharmap
3550 guile-1.8-libs
3551 libavahi-ui0
3552 libdmx1
3553 libgalago3
3554 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
3555 libgtksourceview2.0-0
3556 liblircclient0
3557 libsdl1.2debian-alsa
3558 libspeexdsp1
3559 libsvga1
3560 rhythmbox
3561 seahorse
3562 sound-juicer
3563 system-config-printer
3564 totem-common
3565 transmission-gtk
3566 vinagre
3567 vino
3568 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
3569
3570 &lt;p&gt;Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get&lt;/p&gt;
3571
3572 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
3573 gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
3574 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
3575
3576 &lt;p&gt;Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get&lt;/p&gt;
3577
3578 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
3579 [nothing]
3580 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
3581
3582 &lt;p&gt;This is for KDE:&lt;/p&gt;
3583
3584 &lt;p&gt;Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude&lt;/p&gt;
3585
3586 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
3587 ksmserver
3588 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
3589
3590 &lt;p&gt;Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude&lt;/p&gt;
3591
3592 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
3593 kwin
3594 network-manager-kde
3595 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
3596
3597 &lt;p&gt;Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get&lt;/p&gt;
3598
3599 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
3600 arts
3601 dolphin
3602 freespacenotifier
3603 google-gadgets-gst
3604 google-gadgets-xul
3605 kappfinder
3606 kcalc
3607 kcharselect
3608 kde-core
3609 kde-plasma-desktop
3610 kde-standard
3611 kde-window-manager
3612 kdeartwork
3613 kdeartwork-emoticons
3614 kdeartwork-style
3615 kdeartwork-theme-icon
3616 kdebase
3617 kdebase-apps
3618 kdebase-workspace
3619 kdebase-workspace-bin
3620 kdebase-workspace-data
3621 kdeeject
3622 kdelibs
3623 kdeplasma-addons
3624 kdeutils
3625 kdewallpapers
3626 kdf
3627 kfloppy
3628 kgpg
3629 khelpcenter4
3630 kinfocenter
3631 konq-plugins-l10n
3632 konqueror-nsplugins
3633 kscreensaver
3634 kscreensaver-xsavers
3635 ktimer
3636 kwrite
3637 libgle3
3638 libkde4-ruby1.8
3639 libkonq5
3640 libkonq5-templates
3641 libnetpbm10
3642 libplasma-ruby
3643 libplasma-ruby1.8
3644 libqt4-ruby1.8
3645 marble-data
3646 marble-plugins
3647 netpbm
3648 nuvola-icon-theme
3649 plasma-dataengines-workspace
3650 plasma-desktop
3651 plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
3652 plasma-runners-addons
3653 plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
3654 plasma-scriptengine-python
3655 plasma-scriptengine-qedje
3656 plasma-scriptengine-ruby
3657 plasma-scriptengine-webkit
3658 plasma-scriptengines
3659 plasma-wallpapers-addons
3660 plasma-widget-folderview
3661 plasma-widget-networkmanagement
3662 ruby
3663 sweeper
3664 update-notifier-kde
3665 xscreensaver-data-extra
3666 xscreensaver-gl
3667 xscreensaver-gl-extra
3668 xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
3669 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
3670
3671 &lt;p&gt;Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get&lt;/p&gt;
3672
3673 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
3674 ark
3675 google-gadgets-common
3676 google-gadgets-qt
3677 htdig
3678 kate
3679 kdebase-bin
3680 kdebase-data
3681 kdepasswd
3682 kfind
3683 klipper
3684 konq-plugins
3685 konqueror
3686 ksysguard
3687 ksysguardd
3688 libarchive1
3689 libcln6
3690 libeet1
3691 libeina-svn-06
3692 libggadget-1.0-0b
3693 libggadget-qt-1.0-0b
3694 libgps19
3695 libkdecorations4
3696 libkephal4
3697 libkonq4
3698 libkonqsidebarplugin4a
3699 libkscreensaver5
3700 libksgrd4
3701 libksignalplotter4
3702 libkunitconversion4
3703 libkwineffects1a
3704 libmarblewidget4
3705 libntrack-qt4-1
3706 libntrack0
3707 libplasma-geolocation-interface4
3708 libplasmaclock4a
3709 libplasmagenericshell4
3710 libprocesscore4a
3711 libprocessui4a
3712 libqalculate5
3713 libqedje0a
3714 libqtruby4shared2
3715 libqzion0a
3716 libruby1.8
3717 libscim8c2a
3718 libsmokekdecore4-3
3719 libsmokekdeui4-3
3720 libsmokekfile3
3721 libsmokekhtml3
3722 libsmokekio3
3723 libsmokeknewstuff2-3
3724 libsmokeknewstuff3-3
3725 libsmokekparts3
3726 libsmokektexteditor3
3727 libsmokekutils3
3728 libsmokenepomuk3
3729 libsmokephonon3
3730 libsmokeplasma3
3731 libsmokeqtcore4-3
3732 libsmokeqtdbus4-3
3733 libsmokeqtgui4-3
3734 libsmokeqtnetwork4-3
3735 libsmokeqtopengl4-3
3736 libsmokeqtscript4-3
3737 libsmokeqtsql4-3
3738 libsmokeqtsvg4-3
3739 libsmokeqttest4-3
3740 libsmokeqtuitools4-3
3741 libsmokeqtwebkit4-3
3742 libsmokeqtxml4-3
3743 libsmokesolid3
3744 libsmokesoprano3
3745 libtaskmanager4a
3746 libtidy-0.99-0
3747 libweather-ion4a
3748 libxklavier16
3749 libxxf86misc1
3750 okteta
3751 oxygencursors
3752 plasma-dataengines-addons
3753 plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
3754 plasma-widget-lancelot
3755 plasma-widgets-addons
3756 plasma-widgets-workspace
3757 polkit-kde-1
3758 ruby1.8
3759 systemsettings
3760 update-notifier-common
3761 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
3762
3763 &lt;p&gt;Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
3764 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
3765 differences. I have no idea what packages should be installed after
3766 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.&lt;/p&gt;
3767 </description>
3768 </item>
3769
3770 <item>
3771 <title>Migrating Xen virtual machines using LVM to KVM using disk images</title>
3772 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Migrating_Xen_virtual_machines_using_LVM_to_KVM_using_disk_images.html</link>
3773 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Migrating_Xen_virtual_machines_using_LVM_to_KVM_using_disk_images.html</guid>
3774 <pubDate>Mon, 22 Nov 2010 11:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
3775 <description>&lt;p&gt;Most of the computers in use by the
3776 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu/Skolelinux project&lt;/a&gt;
3777 are virtual machines. And they have been Xen machines running on a
3778 fairly old IBM eserver xseries 345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
3779 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge 2950 host machine. This was a
3780 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
3781 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
3782 know is not supported by KVM. So to migrate, we had to convert
3783 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.&lt;/p&gt;
3784
3785 &lt;p&gt;I found
3786 &lt;a href=&quot;http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM&quot;&gt;a
3787 nice recipe&lt;/a&gt; to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
3788 migration. It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
3789 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
3790 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data. I NFS mounted the
3791 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.&lt;/p&gt;
3792
3793 &lt;pre&gt;
3794 #!/bin/sh
3795
3796 # Based on
3797 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
3798
3799 set -e
3800 set -x
3801
3802 if [ -z &quot;$1&quot; ] ; then
3803 echo &quot;Usage: $0 &amp;lt;hostname&amp;gt;&quot;
3804 exit 1
3805 else
3806 host=&quot;$1&quot;
3807 fi
3808
3809 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
3810 echo &quot;error: unable to find LVM volume for $host&quot;
3811 exit 1
3812 fi
3813
3814 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs. not sure why.
3815 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk &#39;{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }&#39;)
3816 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk &#39;{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }&#39;)
3817 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
3818
3819 img=$host.img
3820 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
3821 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
3822
3823 parted $img mklabel msdos
3824 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap 0 $disksize
3825 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
3826 parted $img set 1 boot on
3827
3828 modprobe dm-mod
3829 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
3830 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
3831
3832 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=1M
3833 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
3834 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
3835
3836 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
3837 losetup -d /dev/loop0
3838 &lt;/pre&gt;
3839
3840 &lt;p&gt;The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
3841 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.&lt;/p&gt;
3842
3843 &lt;p&gt;After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
3844 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-686 and
3845 set up grub to boot from the disk image. After this, the KVM machines
3846 seem to work just fine.&lt;/p&gt;
3847 </description>
3848 </item>
3849
3850 <item>
3851 <title>Lenny-&gt;Squeeze upgrades, apt vs aptitude with the Gnome and KDE desktop</title>
3852 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__apt_vs_aptitude_with_the_Gnome_and_KDE_desktop.html</link>
3853 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__apt_vs_aptitude_with_the_Gnome_and_KDE_desktop.html</guid>
3854 <pubDate>Sat, 20 Nov 2010 22:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
3855 <description>&lt;p&gt;I&#39;m still running upgrade testing of the
3856 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/&quot;&gt;Lenny
3857 Gnome and KDE Desktop&lt;/a&gt;, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
3858 status. Here is a short update based on a test I ran 20101118.&lt;/p&gt;
3859
3860 &lt;p&gt;I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
3861 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
3862 can see if anything should be changed.&lt;/p&gt;
3863
3864 &lt;p&gt;This is for Gnome:&lt;/p&gt;
3865
3866 &lt;p&gt;Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude&lt;/p&gt;
3867
3868 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
3869 apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
3870 browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-4.3 cups-pk-helper
3871 dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
3872 freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
3873 gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
3874 geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
3875 gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
3876 gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
3877 gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
3878 gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
3879 gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
3880 gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
3881 gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
3882 libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
3883 libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-0 libboost-date-time1.42.0
3884 libboost-python1.42.0 libboost-thread1.42.0 libchamplain-0.4-0
3885 libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
3886 libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-1.0-2
3887 libepc-common libepc-ui-1.0-2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
3888 libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
3889 libgdl-1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-0 libgif4
3890 libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
3891 libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
3892 libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
3893 libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
3894 libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
3895 libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
3896 libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
3897 libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
3898 libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-6
3899 libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6.8
3900 libpolkit-gtk-1-0 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
3901 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
3902 libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-4
3903 libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-0.99-0
3904 libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
3905 mono-2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
3906 nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
3907 openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-4suite-xml
3908 python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
3909 python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
3910 python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
3911 python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
3912 python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
3913 python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
3914 python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
3915 python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
3916 python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
3917 python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
3918 python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
3919 python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
3920 python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
3921 remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
3922 rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
3923 software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
3924 telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut tomboy
3925 totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
3926 transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
3927 zip
3928 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
3929
3930 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
3931
3932 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
3933 arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
3934 epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
3935 fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
3936 gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
3937 gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
3938 gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
3939 guile-1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
3940 libavahi-ui0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7
3941 libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
3942 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1
3943 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3 libfaad0 libgadu3
3944 libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
3945 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
3946 libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
3947 libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
3948 libgtkhtml2-0 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgtksourceview2.0-0
3949 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
3950 libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
3951 libmagick++10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
3952 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
3953 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9
3954 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8
3955 libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
3956 libspeexdsp1 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libsvga1
3957 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
3958 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
3959 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
3960 sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
3961 totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
3962 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
3963
3964 &lt;p&gt;Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get&lt;/p&gt;
3965
3966 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
3967 gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
3968 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
3969
3970 &lt;p&gt;Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get&lt;/p&gt;
3971
3972 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
3973 [nothing]
3974 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
3975
3976 &lt;p&gt;This is for KDE:&lt;/p&gt;
3977
3978 &lt;p&gt;Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude&lt;/p&gt;
3979
3980 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
3981 autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-4.3 dcoprss
3982 edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
3983 ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
3984 gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
3985 kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
3986 kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
3987 kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
3988 kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
3989 kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
3990 kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
3991 kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
3992 kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
3993 killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
3994 kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
3995 ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42.0
3996 libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
3997 libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
3998 libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
3999 libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
4000 libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
4001 libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
4002 libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
4003 libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
4004 libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
4005 lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
4006 openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
4007 parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
4008 pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
4009 speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
4010 ttf-sazanami-gothic
4011 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
4012
4013 &lt;p&gt;Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude&lt;/p&gt;
4014
4015 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
4016 amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
4017 dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
4018 kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
4019 kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
4020 keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
4021 kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
4022 kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
4023 klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
4024 kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
4025 kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
4026 kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
4027 ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
4028 ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
4029 kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
4030 kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
4031 libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
4032 libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2
4033 libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
4034 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
4035 libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0 libicu38
4036 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
4037 libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
4038 libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
4039 libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
4040 libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
4041 libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
4042 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
4043 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 librss1 libsensors3
4044 libsmbios2 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90
4045 libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
4046 mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
4047 texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
4048 ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
4049 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
4050
4051 &lt;p&gt;Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get&lt;/p&gt;
4052
4053 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
4054 dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
4055 kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
4056 kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
4057 kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
4058 netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
4059 xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
4060 xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
4061 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
4062
4063 &lt;p&gt;Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get&lt;/p&gt;
4064
4065 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
4066 kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
4067 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
4068 </description>
4069 </item>
4070
4071 <item>
4072 <title>Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd</title>
4073 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html</link>
4074 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html</guid>
4075 <pubDate>Sat, 20 Nov 2010 07:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
4076 <description>&lt;p&gt;Answering
4077 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html&quot;&gt;the
4078 call from the Gnash project&lt;/a&gt; for
4079 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gnashdev.org:8010&quot;&gt;buildbot&lt;/a&gt; slaves to test the
4080 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
4081 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
4082 Debian/Squeeze. I hope this can help the developers in getting new
4083 releases out more often.&lt;/p&gt;
4084
4085 &lt;p&gt;As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
4086 I have considered setting up a &lt;a
4087 href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/&quot;&gt;Debian/kfreebsd&lt;/a&gt;
4088 machine as well. I have also considered using the kfreebsd
4089 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the 5
4090 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video. Because of this, I
4091 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
4092 kfreebsd. Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
4093 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
4094 screen at random locations). Have not gotten very far with the
4095 testing. Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
4096 fatal problem. Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
4097 useful as a file server for NUUG. Will try to find time to set up a
4098 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.&lt;/p&gt;
4099 </description>
4100 </item>
4101
4102 <item>
4103 <title>Debian in 3D</title>
4104 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html</link>
4105 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html</guid>
4106 <pubDate>Tue, 9 Nov 2010 16:10:00 +0100</pubDate>
4107 <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4108
4109 &lt;p&gt;3D printing is just great. I just came across this Debian logo in
4110 3D linked in from
4111 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/&quot;&gt;the
4112 thingiverse blog&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
4113 </description>
4114 </item>
4115
4116 <item>
4117 <title>Software updates 2010-10-24</title>
4118 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html</link>
4119 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html</guid>
4120 <pubDate>Sun, 24 Oct 2010 22:45:00 +0200</pubDate>
4121 <description>&lt;p&gt;Some updates.&lt;/p&gt;
4122
4123 &lt;p&gt;My &lt;a href=&quot;http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2&quot;&gt;gnash pledge&lt;/a&gt; to
4124 raise money for the project is going well. The lower limit of 10
4125 signers was reached in 24 hours, and so far 13 people have signed it.
4126 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
4127 how far we can get before the time limit of December 24 is reached.
4128 :)&lt;/p&gt;
4129
4130 &lt;p&gt;On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
4131 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
4132 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
4133 It is called
4134 &lt;a href=&quot;http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html&quot;&gt;kcov&lt;/a&gt;,
4135 and can be used using &lt;tt&gt;kcov &amp;lt;directory&amp;gt; &amp;lt;binary&amp;gt;&lt;/tt&gt;.
4136 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
4137 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
4138 libglib2.0-dev. Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
4139 solvable. I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.&lt;/p&gt;
4140
4141 &lt;p&gt;Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for &lt;a
4142 href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html&quot;&gt;a
4143 new alpha release of Debian Edu&lt;/a&gt;, and just published the second
4144 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
4145 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;
4146 release. Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
4147 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
4148 client servers and diskless workstations. A nice touch added
4149 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
4150 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.&lt;/p&gt;
4151 </description>
4152 </item>
4153
4154 <item>
4155 <title>Some notes on Flash in Debian and Debian Edu</title>
4156 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_notes_on_Flash_in_Debian_and_Debian_Edu.html</link>
4157 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_notes_on_Flash_in_Debian_and_Debian_Edu.html</guid>
4158 <pubDate>Sat, 4 Sep 2010 10:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
4159 <description>&lt;p&gt;In the &lt;a href=&quot;http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote&quot;&gt;Debian
4160 popularity-contest numbers&lt;/a&gt;, the adobe-flashplugin package the
4161 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian. The sixth
4162 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla. This is a clear indication that
4163 working flash is important for Debian users. Around 10 percent of the
4164 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
4165 installed.&lt;/p&gt;
4166
4167 &lt;p&gt;In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
4168&lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&amp;do=view&amp;target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf&quot;&gt;Skolelinux
4169 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
4170 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs&lt;/a&gt;»), one of the most important problems
4171 schools experienced with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian
4172 Edu/Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; was the lack of working Flash. A lot of educational
4173 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
4174 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
4175 good reason to stay with Windows.&lt;/p&gt;
4176
4177 &lt;p&gt;I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
4178 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
4179 everything you told him but could work fairly well. This was a
4180 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
4181 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
4182 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
4183 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
4184 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
4185 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
4186 pages they want to visit.&lt;/p&gt;
4187
4188 &lt;p&gt;This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
4189 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
4190 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
4191 Video to working out of the box. For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
4192 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
4193 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
4194 unstable. The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
4195 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
4196 release team have not had time to reply to it yet. I hope they agree
4197 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
4198 accept the new package into Squeeze.&lt;/p&gt;
4199 </description>
4200 </item>
4201
4202 <item>
4203 <title>Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery</title>
4204 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html</link>
4205 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html</guid>
4206 <pubDate>Tue, 27 Jul 2010 23:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
4207 <description>&lt;p&gt;I discovered this while doing
4208 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html&quot;&gt;automated
4209 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze&lt;/a&gt;. A few packages
4210 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
4211 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
4212 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.&lt;/p&gt;
4213
4214 &lt;p&gt;An example is from todays
4215 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt&quot;&gt;upgrade
4216 of KDE using aptitude&lt;/a&gt;. In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
4217 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade. The cause is simple. If a
4218 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
4219 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
4220 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
4221 because its dependencies are unavailable.&lt;/p&gt;
4222
4223 &lt;p&gt;In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:&lt;/p&gt;
4224
4225 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
4226 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
4227 perl-modules depends on perl (&gt;= 5.10.1-1); however:
4228 Version of perl on system is 5.10.0-19lenny2.
4229 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
4230 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
4231 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
4232
4233 &lt;p&gt;The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
4234 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/527917&quot;&gt;reported as a bug&lt;/a&gt;, and will
4235 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
4236 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
4237 failures. Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
4238 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
4239 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
4240 of dependency loops.&lt;/p&gt;
4241
4242 &lt;p&gt;Thanks to
4243 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html&quot;&gt;the
4244 tireless effort by Bill Allombert&lt;/a&gt;, the number of circular
4245 dependencies
4246 &lt;a href=&quot;http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html&quot;&gt;left in Debian
4247 is dropping&lt;/a&gt;, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)&lt;/p&gt;
4248
4249 &lt;p&gt;Todays testing also exposed a bug in
4250 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/590605&quot;&gt;update-notifier&lt;/a&gt; and
4251 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/590604&quot;&gt;different behaviour&lt;/a&gt; between
4252 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
4253 dependency. Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
4254 it.&lt;/p&gt;
4255 </description>
4256 </item>
4257
4258 <item>
4259 <title>What are they searching for - PowerDNS and ISC DHCP in LDAP</title>
4260 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_are_they_searching_for___PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_in_LDAP.html</link>
4261 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_are_they_searching_for___PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_in_LDAP.html</guid>
4262 <pubDate>Sat, 17 Jul 2010 21:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
4263 <description>&lt;p&gt;This is a
4264 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html&quot;&gt;followup&lt;/a&gt;
4265 on my
4266 &lt;a href=&quot;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&quot;&gt;previous
4267 work&lt;/a&gt; on
4268 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html&quot;&gt;merging
4269 all&lt;/a&gt; the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.&lt;/p&gt;
4270
4271 &lt;p&gt;As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
4272 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
4273 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server. The two
4274 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.&lt;/p&gt;
4275
4276 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
4277 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
4278 on a Debian Edu main-server. Here is a summary.
4279
4280 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;powerdns&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4281
4282 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend&quot;&gt;Clues
4283 on how to&lt;/a&gt; set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
4284 the web.
4285
4286 &lt;p&gt;PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
4287 One &quot;strict&quot; mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
4288 using the same LDAP objects, and a &quot;tree&quot; mode where the forward and
4289 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
4290 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
4291 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.&lt;/p&gt;
4292
4293 &lt;p&gt;In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
4294 base, and uses a &quot;base&quot; scoped search for the DNS name by adding
4295 &quot;dc=tjener,dc=intern,&quot; to the base with a filter for
4296 &quot;(associateddomain=tjener.intern)&quot; for the forward entry and
4297 &quot;dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,&quot; with a filter for
4298 &quot;(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)&quot; for the reverse entry. For
4299 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
4300 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
4301 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
4302 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
4303 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
4304 spfrecord and modifytimestamp. For reverse entries it is looking for
4305 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
4306 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
4307 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp. The equivalent
4308 ldapsearch commands could look like this:&lt;/p&gt;
4309
4310 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
4311 ldapsearch -h ldap \
4312 -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
4313 -s base -x &#39;(associateddomain=tjener.intern)&#39; dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
4314 cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
4315 rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
4316 nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
4317 rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
4318
4319 ldapsearch -h ldap \
4320 -b dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
4321 -s base -x &#39;(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)&#39;
4322 dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
4323 hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
4324 srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
4325 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
4326
4327 &lt;p&gt;In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
4328 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
4329 example LDAP objects used there. In addition to these objects, the
4330 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
4331 also exist.&lt;/p&gt;
4332
4333 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
4334 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
4335 objectclass: top
4336 objectclass: dnsdomain
4337 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
4338 dc: tjener
4339 arecord: 10.0.2.2
4340 associateddomain: tjener.intern
4341
4342 dn: dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
4343 objectclass: top
4344 objectclass: dnsdomain2
4345 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
4346 dc: 2
4347 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
4348 associateddomain: 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
4349 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
4350
4351 &lt;p&gt;In strict mode, the server behaves differently. When looking for
4352 forward DNS entries, it is doing a &quot;subtree&quot; scoped search with the
4353 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
4354 &quot;(associateddomain=tjener.intern)&quot; and requests the attributes dnsttl,
4355 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
4356 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
4357 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp. For reverse entires it also do a
4358 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is &quot;(arecord=10.0.2.2)&quot;
4359 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
4360 modifytimestamp. In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
4361 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
4362 instead.&lt;/p&gt;
4363
4364 &lt;p&gt;The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
4365 like this:&lt;/p&gt;
4366
4367 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
4368 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
4369 &#39;(associateddomain=tjener.intern)&#39; dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
4370 cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
4371 rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
4372 nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
4373 rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
4374
4375 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
4376 &#39;(arecord=10.0.2.2)&#39; associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
4377 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
4378
4379 &lt;p&gt;In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
4380 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
4381 reverse lookups.&lt;/p&gt;
4382
4383 &lt;p&gt;A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
4384 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
4385 need to generate a DNS reply. This make it able to work with any
4386 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.&lt;/p&gt;
4387
4388 &lt;p&gt;The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC 1274) and
4389 dnsdomain2 schemas. The latter is used for reverse entries like
4390 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.&lt;/p&gt;
4391
4392 &lt;p&gt;In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
4393 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
4394 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain). The use
4395 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
4396 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.&lt;/p&gt;
4397
4398 &lt;p&gt;There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
4399 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
4400 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
4401 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
4402 (zonename and relativedomainname).&lt;/p&gt;
4403
4404 &lt;p&gt;My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
4405 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
4406 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
4407 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
4408 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
4409 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):&lt;/p&gt;
4410
4411 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
4412 objectclass ( some-oid NAME &#39;dnsDomainAux&#39;
4413 SUP top
4414 AUXILIARY
4415 MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
4416 DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
4417 TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
4418 NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
4419 A6Record $ DNAMERecord
4420 ))
4421 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
4422
4423 &lt;p&gt;This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
4424 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
4425 all the attributes PowerDNS wants. I&#39;ve sent an email to the PowerDNS
4426 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
4427 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
4428 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.&lt;/p&gt;
4429
4430 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;ISC dhcp&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4431
4432 &lt;p&gt;The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
4433 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want. This
4434 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
4435 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
4436 what is needed without having to read the source code.&lt;/p&gt;
4437
4438 &lt;p&gt;In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
4439 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
4440 stored. These are the relevant entries from
4441 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:&lt;/p&gt;
4442
4443 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
4444 ldap-base-dn &quot;dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no&quot;;
4445 ldap-dhcp-server-cn &quot;dhcp&quot;;
4446 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
4447
4448 &lt;p&gt;The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
4449 configuration it need. The cn &quot;dhcp&quot; is located using the given LDAP
4450 base and the filter &quot;(&amp;(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))&quot;. The
4451 search result is this entry:&lt;/p&gt;
4452
4453 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
4454 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
4455 cn: dhcp
4456 objectClass: top
4457 objectClass: dhcpServer
4458 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
4459 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
4460
4461 &lt;p&gt;The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
4462 subtree with DHCP configuration. The DHCP configuration subtree base
4463 is located using a base scope search with base &quot;cn=DHCP
4464 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no&quot; and filter
4465 &quot;(&amp;(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))&quot;.
4466 The search result is this entry:&lt;/p&gt;
4467
4468 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
4469 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
4470 cn: DHCP Config
4471 objectClass: top
4472 objectClass: dhcpService
4473 objectClass: dhcpOptions
4474 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
4475 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
4476 dhcpStatements: authoritative
4477 dhcpOption: smtp-server code 69 = array of ip-address
4478 dhcpOption: www-server code 72 = array of ip-address
4479 dhcpOption: wpad-url code 252 = text
4480 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
4481
4482 &lt;p&gt;Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time. When
4483 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
4484 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
4485 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
4486 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost. These provide options
4487 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc. Leaving out the
4488 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
4489 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
4490 related computer objects.&lt;/p&gt;
4491
4492 &lt;p&gt;When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
4493 of the client (00:00:00:00:00:00 in this example), using a subtree
4494 scoped search with &quot;cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no&quot; as
4495 the base and &quot;(&amp;(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
4496 00:00:00:00:00:00))&quot; as the filter. This is what a host object look
4497 like:&lt;/p&gt;
4498
4499 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
4500 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
4501 cn: hostname
4502 objectClass: top
4503 objectClass: dhcpHost
4504 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
4505 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
4506 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
4507
4508 &lt;p&gt;There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
4509 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
4510 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure. On the
4511 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
4512 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries. The latter should make
4513 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
4514 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
4515 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
4516 structural object class.
4517
4518 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4519
4520 &lt;p&gt;The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
4521 to which LDAP schemas to use. While its &quot;tree&quot; mode is rigid when it
4522 come to the the LDAP structure, the &quot;strict&quot; mode is very flexible,
4523 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
4524 in the configuration.&lt;/p&gt;
4525
4526 &lt;p&gt;The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
4527 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
4528 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
4529 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
4530 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
4531 structure.&lt;/p&gt;
4532
4533 &lt;p&gt;Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
4534 this might work for Debian Edu:&lt;/p&gt;
4535
4536 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
4537 ou=services
4538 cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
4539 cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
4540 cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
4541 cn=10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
4542 cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
4543 cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
4544 cn=192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
4545 cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
4546 ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
4547 cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
4548 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
4549
4550 &lt;P&gt;This is not tested yet. If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
4551 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
4552 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
4553 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.&lt;/p&gt;
4554
4555 &lt;p&gt;The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
4556 like this:&lt;/p&gt;
4557
4558 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
4559 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
4560 dc: hostname
4561 objectClass: top
4562 objectClass: dhcpHost
4563 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
4564 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
4565 associateddomain: hostname.intern
4566 arecord: 10.11.12.13
4567 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
4568 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
4569 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
4570
4571 &lt;/p&gt;One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
4572 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
4573 auxiliary object class.&lt;/p&gt;
4574 </description>
4575 </item>
4576
4577 <item>
4578 <title>Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects</title>
4579 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html</link>
4580 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html</guid>
4581 <pubDate>Wed, 14 Jul 2010 23:45:00 +0200</pubDate>
4582 <description>&lt;p&gt;For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
4583 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
4584 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
4585 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
4586 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.&lt;/p&gt;
4587
4588 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;ve looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
4589 information finally found a solution that seem to work.&lt;/p&gt;
4590
4591 &lt;p&gt;The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
4592 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry. If
4593 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
4594 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
4595 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
4596 to a slave DNS server.&lt;/p&gt;
4597
4598 &lt;p&gt;If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
4599 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
4600 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
4601 I&#39;ve written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
4602 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup. It
4603 seem to work.&lt;/p&gt;
4604
4605 &lt;p&gt;With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
4606 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
4607 an earlier email. The combined LDAP object will look something like
4608 this:&lt;/p&gt;
4609
4610 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
4611 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
4612 cn: hostname
4613 objectClass: dhcphost
4614 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
4615 objectclass: dnsdomainaux
4616 associateddomain: hostname.intern
4617 arecord: 10.11.12.13
4618 dhcphwaddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
4619 dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
4620 ldapconfigsound: Y
4621 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
4622
4623 &lt;p&gt;The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
4624 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
4625 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress. LTSP will use
4626 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.&lt;/p&gt;
4627
4628 &lt;p&gt;I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
4629 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
4630 outside the &quot;DHCP Config&quot; subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
4631 that. If I can&#39;t figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
4632 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
4633 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
4634 content. I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
4635 might be a good place to put it.&lt;/p&gt;
4636
4637 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
4638 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.&lt;/p&gt;
4639 </description>
4640 </item>
4641
4642 <item>
4643 <title>Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP</title>
4644 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html</link>
4645 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html</guid>
4646 <pubDate>Sun, 11 Jul 2010 22:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
4647 <description>&lt;p&gt;Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
4648 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
4649 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
4650 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.&lt;/p&gt;
4651
4652 &lt;p&gt;Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
4653 to get configuration from LDAP. The idea is to look up the MAC
4654 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
4655 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
4656 LTSP clients.&lt;/p&gt;
4657
4658 &lt;p&gt;The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
4659 in a &quot;computer&quot; LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
4660 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.&lt;/p&gt;
4661
4662 &lt;p&gt;This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
4663 this approach. A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
4664 need to be written. Comments, suggestions, etc?&lt;/p&gt;
4665
4666 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
4667 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
4668 #
4669 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
4670 #
4671 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
4672 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
4673 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
4674 #
4675 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
4676 # existence of attribute names.
4677 #
4678 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
4679 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
4680 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
4681 #
4682 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
4683 # configuration settings. Something like this should work:
4684 #
4685 # objectclass ( 1.1.2.2 NAME &#39;ltspClientAux&#39;
4686 # SUP top
4687 # AUXILIARY
4688 # MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
4689
4690 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
4691 if [ &quot;$LDAPSERVER&quot; ] ; then
4692 LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
4693 for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk &#39;{print $5}&#39;|sort -u) ; do
4694 filter=&quot;(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))&quot;
4695 ldapsearch -h &quot;$LDAPSERVER&quot; -b &quot;$LDAPBASE&quot; -v -x &quot;$filter&quot; | \
4696 grep &#39;^ltspConfig&#39; | while read attr value ; do
4697 # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
4698 attr=$(echo $attr | sed &#39;s/^ltspConfig//i&#39; | tr a-z A-Z)
4699 # bass value on to clients
4700 eval &quot;$attr=$value; export $attr&quot;
4701 done
4702 done
4703 fi
4704 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
4705
4706 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;m not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
4707 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
4708 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
4709 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
4710 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)&lt;/p&gt;
4711
4712 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
4713 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.&lt;/p&gt;
4714
4715 &lt;p&gt;Update 2010-07-17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
4716 configuration in LDAP that was created around year 2000 by
4717 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html&quot;&gt;PC
4718 Xperience, Inc., 2000&lt;/a&gt;. I found its
4719 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/&quot;&gt;files&lt;/a&gt; on a
4720 personal home page over at redhat.com.&lt;/p&gt;
4721 </description>
4722 </item>
4723
4724 <item>
4725 <title>jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI</title>
4726 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html</link>
4727 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html</guid>
4728 <pubDate>Fri, 9 Jul 2010 12:55:00 +0200</pubDate>
4729 <description>&lt;p&gt;Since
4730 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html&quot;&gt;my
4731 last post&lt;/a&gt; about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
4732 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma. The java application
4733 &lt;a href=&quot;http://jxplorer.org/&quot;&gt;jXplorer&lt;/a&gt; is claimed to be capable of
4734 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
4735 authenticate using Kerberos. I have only tested the Kerberos
4736 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
4737 LDAP with my test user yet. It is
4738 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html&quot;&gt;available in
4739 Debian&lt;/a&gt; testing and unstable at the moment. The only problem I
4740 have with it is how it handle errors. If something go wrong, its
4741 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
4742 and remove the failing query. Nothing big, but very annoying.&lt;/p&gt;
4743 </description>
4744 </item>
4745
4746 <item>
4747 <title>Lenny-&gt;Squeeze upgrades, apt vs aptitude with the Gnome desktop</title>
4748 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__apt_vs_aptitude_with_the_Gnome_desktop.html</link>
4749 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__apt_vs_aptitude_with_the_Gnome_desktop.html</guid>
4750 <pubDate>Sat, 3 Jul 2010 23:55:00 +0200</pubDate>
4751 <description>&lt;p&gt;Here is a short update on my &lt;a
4752 href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/&quot;&gt;my
4753 Debian Lenny-&gt;Squeeze upgrade testing&lt;/a&gt;. Here is a summary of the
4754 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude. I&#39;m
4755 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
4756 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
4757 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/584861&quot;&gt;#584861&lt;/a&gt; and
4758 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/585716&quot;&gt;#585716&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;
4759
4760 &lt;p&gt;At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
4761 complete list of the installed packages. Based on this I see these
4762 differences when I did a test run today. As usual, I do not really
4763 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
4764 publish the difference.&lt;/p&gt;
4765
4766 &lt;p&gt;Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude&lt;/p&gt;
4767
4768 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
4769 at-spi cpp-4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
4770 libatspi1.0-0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-1-common
4771 libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
4772 libgtksourceview-common libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
4773 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
4774 libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
4775 python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
4776 python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
4777 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
4778
4779 &lt;p&gt;Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude&lt;/p&gt;
4780
4781 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
4782 bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
4783 gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
4784 libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-50
4785 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
4786 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9
4787 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3
4788 libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
4789 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
4790 libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
4791 libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
4792 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
4793 libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++10
4794 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
4795 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5
4796 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
4797 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
4798 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1
4799 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
4800 libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
4801 mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
4802 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
4803
4804 &lt;p&gt;Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get&lt;/p&gt;
4805
4806 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
4807 gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
4808 python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
4809 xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
4810 xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
4811 xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
4812 xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
4813 xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
4814 xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
4815 xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
4816 xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
4817 xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
4818 xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
4819 xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
4820 xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
4821 xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
4822 xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
4823 xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
4824 xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
4825 xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
4826 xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
4827 xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
4828 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
4829
4830 &lt;p&gt;Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get&lt;/p&gt;
4831
4832 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
4833 deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
4834 xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
4835 xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
4836 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
4837
4838 &lt;p&gt;I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
4839 &lt;a href=&quot;http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120&quot;&gt;changed
4840 in git&lt;/a&gt; today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
4841 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
4842 the difference somewhat.
4843 </description>
4844 </item>
4845
4846 <item>
4847 <title>LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI</title>
4848 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html</link>
4849 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html</guid>
4850 <pubDate>Mon, 28 Jun 2010 00:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
4851 <description>&lt;p&gt;The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
4852 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
4853 tool to browse the LDAP tree. The only one I was able to find in
4854 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
4855 &lt;a href=&quot;http://luma.sourceforge.net/&quot;&gt;LUMA&lt;/a&gt;, which has proved to
4856 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
4857 populated by default in Skolelinux. Thanks to it, I have been able to
4858 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
4859 objects. It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze. If you
4860 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)&lt;/p&gt;
4861
4862 &lt;p&gt;I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
4863 the BTS yet. There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
4864 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
4865 Debian submenu in KDE. I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
4866 released.&lt;/p&gt;
4867
4868 &lt;p&gt;I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet. I would
4869 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
4870 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet. So in the mean time, I use
4871 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/&quot;&gt;ldapvi&lt;/a&gt; for that.&lt;/p&gt;
4872
4873 &lt;p&gt;If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
4874 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.&lt;/p&gt;
4875
4876 &lt;p&gt;Update 2010-06-29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
4877 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html&quot;&gt;gq&lt;/a&gt; package as a
4878 useful GUI alternative. It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
4879 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze. Unless that
4880 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.&lt;/p&gt;
4881 </description>
4882 </item>
4883
4884 <item>
4885 <title>Idea for a change to LDAP schemas allowing DNS and DHCP info to be combined into one object</title>
4886 <link>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</link>
4887 <guid isPermaLink="true">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</guid>
4888 <pubDate>Thu, 24 Jun 2010 00:35:00 +0200</pubDate>
4889 <description>&lt;p&gt;A while back, I
4890 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html&quot;&gt;complained
4891 about the fact&lt;/a&gt; that it is not possible with the provided schemas
4892 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
4893 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.&lt;/p&gt;
4894
4895 &lt;p&gt;In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
4896 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
4897 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
4898 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.&lt;/p&gt;
4899
4900 &lt;p&gt;If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
4901 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
4902 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
4903 Debian Edu.&lt;/p&gt;
4904
4905 &lt;p&gt;Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
4906 the
4907 &lt;a href=&quot;http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00&quot;&gt;DHCP
4908 schema&lt;/a&gt; to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
4909 available today from IETF.&lt;/p&gt;
4910
4911 &lt;pre&gt;
4912 --- dhcp.schema (revision 65192)
4913 +++ dhcp.schema (working copy)
4914 @@ -376,7 +376,7 @@
4915 objectclass ( 2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
4916 NAME &#39;dhcpHost&#39;
4917 DESC &#39;This represents information about a particular client&#39;
4918 - SUP top
4919 + SUP top AUXILIARY
4920 MUST cn
4921 MAY (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
4922 X-NDS_CONTAINMENT (&#39;dhcpService&#39; &#39;dhcpSubnet&#39; &#39;dhcpGroup&#39;) )
4923 &lt;/pre&gt;
4924
4925 &lt;p&gt;I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
4926 Edu/Squeeze. We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
4927 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.&lt;/p&gt;
4928
4929 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
4930 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.&lt;/p&gt;
4931 </description>
4932 </item>
4933
4934 <item>
4935 <title>Calling tasksel like the installer, while still getting useful output</title>
4936 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Calling_tasksel_like_the_installer__while_still_getting_useful_output.html</link>
4937 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Calling_tasksel_like_the_installer__while_still_getting_useful_output.html</guid>
4938 <pubDate>Wed, 16 Jun 2010 14:55:00 +0200</pubDate>
4939 <description>&lt;p&gt;A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
4940 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run. Until now,
4941 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
4942 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
4943 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
4944 this:
4945
4946 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
4947 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
4948 tasksel --new-install
4949 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
4950
4951 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
4952 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
4953 any output what so ever.
4954
4955 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
4956 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
4957 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
4958 happen. Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
4959 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
4960 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run. I ended up using
4961 code like this:
4962
4963 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
4964 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
4965 cmd=&quot;$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed &#39;s/debconf-apt-progress -- //&#39;)&quot;
4966 $cmd
4967 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
4968
4969 &lt;p&gt;The content of $cmd is typically something like &quot;&lt;tt&gt;aptitude -q
4970 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
4971 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
4972 ~pimportant&lt;/tt&gt;&quot;, which will install the gnome desktop task, the
4973 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
4974 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
4975 installation.&lt;/p&gt;
4976
4977 &lt;p&gt;A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
4978 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
4979 like this.&lt;/p&gt;
4980 </description>
4981 </item>
4982
4983 <item>
4984 <title>Lenny-&gt;Squeeze upgrades, removals by apt and aptitude</title>
4985 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__removals_by_apt_and_aptitude.html</link>
4986 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__removals_by_apt_and_aptitude.html</guid>
4987 <pubDate>Sun, 13 Jun 2010 09:05:00 +0200</pubDate>
4988 <description>&lt;p&gt;My
4989 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html&quot;&gt;testing
4990 of Debian upgrades&lt;/a&gt; from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I&#39;ve
4991 finally made the upgrade logs available from
4992 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/&quot;&gt;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/&lt;/a&gt;.
4993 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
4994 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting. This time
4995 I will only focus on their removal plans.&lt;/p&gt;
4996
4997 &lt;p&gt;After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
4998 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze. The
4999 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
5000 xserver-xorg-video* drivers. Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
5001 sure why. When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
5002 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
5003 longer needed. Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
5004 I do not know. Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?&lt;/p&gt;
5005
5006 &lt;p&gt;For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
5007 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
5008 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
5009 too surprising.&lt;/p&gt;
5010
5011 &lt;p&gt;I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
5012 and avoided, and perhaps others as well. Here are the complete list
5013 of planned removals. The complete logs is available from the URL
5014 above. Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
5015 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
5016 conffile questions. No idea why. I worked around it by using
5017 &#39;&lt;tt&gt;echo &gt;&gt; /proc/&lt;em&gt;pidofdpkg&lt;/em&gt;/fd/0&lt;/tt&gt;&#39; to tell dpkg to
5018 continue.&lt;/p&gt;
5019
5020 &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;apt-get gnome 72&lt;/b&gt;
5021 &lt;br&gt;bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
5022 gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
5023 iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
5024 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
5025 nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
5026 serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
5027 xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
5028 xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
5029 xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
5030 xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
5031 xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
5032 xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
5033 xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
5034 xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
5035 xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
5036 xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
5037 xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
5038 xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
5039 xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
5040 xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
5041 xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
5042 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
5043 xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
5044 xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
5045 xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
5046 xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
5047 xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
5048 xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
5049 xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support&lt;/p&gt;
5050
5051 &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;aptitude gnome 129&lt;/b&gt;
5052
5053 &lt;br&gt;bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
5054 djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
5055 gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
5056 gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
5057 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
5058 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
5059 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
5060 libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
5061 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
5062 libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
5063 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
5064 libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
5065 libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
5066 libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
5067 libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
5068 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
5069 libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
5070 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
5071 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
5072 libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
5073 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
5074 libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
5075 libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
5076 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
5077 openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
5078 python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
5079 python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
5080 python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
5081 swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
5082 xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
5083 xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
5084 zip&lt;/p&gt;
5085
5086 &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;apt-get kde 82&lt;/b&gt;
5087
5088 &lt;br&gt;cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
5089 kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
5090 kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
5091 kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
5092 kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
5093 libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
5094 xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
5095 xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
5096 xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
5097 xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
5098 xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
5099 xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
5100 xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
5101 xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
5102 xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
5103 xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
5104 xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
5105 xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
5106 xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
5107 xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
5108 xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
5109 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
5110 xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
5111 xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
5112 xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
5113 xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
5114 xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
5115 xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9&lt;/p&gt;
5116
5117 &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;aptitude kde 192&lt;/b&gt;
5118 &lt;br&gt;bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
5119 djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
5120 ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
5121 kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
5122 kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
5123 kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
5124 kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
5125 kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
5126 kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
5127 kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
5128 kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
5129 klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
5130 kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
5131 krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
5132 ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
5133 kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
5134 kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
5135 libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
5136 libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
5137 libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
5138 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
5139 libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
5140 libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
5141 libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
5142 libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
5143 libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
5144 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
5145 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
5146 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
5147 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
5148 libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
5149 openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
5150 superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
5151 texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
5152 xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
5153 xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
5154 xulrunner-1.9&lt;/p&gt;
5155
5156 </description>
5157 </item>
5158
5159 <item>
5160 <title>Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</title>
5161 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html</link>
5162 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html</guid>
5163 <pubDate>Fri, 11 Jun 2010 22:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
5164 <description>&lt;p&gt;The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
5165 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly. A few bugs
5166 have been discovered and reported in the process
5167 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/585410&quot;&gt;#585410&lt;/a&gt; in nagios3-cgi,
5168 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/584879&quot;&gt;#584879&lt;/a&gt; already fixed in
5169 enscript and &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/584861&quot;&gt;#584861&lt;/a&gt; in
5170 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
5171 am working on a script to automate the test.&lt;/p&gt;
5172
5173 &lt;p&gt;The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
5174 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
5175 it. To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
5176 script is inserted. To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
5177 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
5178 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).&lt;/p&gt;
5179
5180 &lt;p&gt;A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
5181 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
5182 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
5183 is created. The bug report
5184 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/566000&quot;&gt;#566000&lt;/a&gt; make me suspect
5185 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
5186 to make sure the upgrade go well. Testing on virtual and real
5187 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
5188 do the trick in such settings anyway. This is a
5189 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/&quot;&gt;known
5190 issue&lt;/a&gt; and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
5191 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
5192 working with old kernels or something like that. I really wish the
5193 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
5194 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
5195 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
5196 Debian Squeeze.&lt;/p&gt;
5197
5198 &lt;p&gt;Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades. This test
5199 script, which I call &lt;tt&gt;upgrade-test&lt;/tt&gt; for now, is doing the
5200 trick:&lt;/p&gt;
5201
5202 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
5203 #!/bin/sh
5204 set -ex
5205
5206 if [ &quot;$1&quot; ] ; then
5207 desktop=$1
5208 else
5209 desktop=gnome
5210 fi
5211
5212 from=lenny
5213 to=squeeze
5214
5215 exec &amp;lt; /dev/null
5216 unset LANG
5217 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
5218 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
5219 fuser -mv .
5220 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
5221 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
5222 cat &gt; $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d &amp;lt;&amp;lt;EOF
5223 #!/bin/sh
5224 exit 101
5225 EOF
5226 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
5227 exit_cleanup() {
5228 umount $tmpdir/proc
5229 }
5230 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
5231 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
5232 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
5233
5234 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
5235
5236 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger. It need the test scripts
5237 # to return the correct answers.
5238 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
5239 chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
5240
5241 # Include the desktop and laptop task
5242 for test in desktop laptop ; do
5243 echo &gt; $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test &amp;lt;&amp;lt;EOF
5244 #!/bin/sh
5245 exit 2
5246 EOF
5247 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
5248 done
5249
5250 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
5251 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
5252 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
5253 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
5254
5255 echo deb $mirror $to main &gt; $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
5256 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
5257 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
5258 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
5259 fuser -mv
5260 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
5261
5262 &lt;p&gt;I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
5263 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
5264 differently so far. I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
5265 regularly and post the result on the web. The Gnome upgrade currently
5266 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
5267 kdebase-workspace-data&lt;/p&gt;
5268
5269 &lt;p&gt;I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
5270 (KDE 167 KiB, Gnome 516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
5271 post, so I will refrain from trying. I can report that for Gnome,
5272 aptitude report 760 packages upgraded, 448 newly installed, 129 to
5273 remove and 1 not upgraded and 1024MB need to be downloaded while for
5274 KDE the same numbers are 702 packages upgraded, 507 newly installed,
5275 193 to remove and 0 not upgraded and 1117MB need to be downloaded&lt;/p&gt;
5276
5277 &lt;p&gt;I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
5278 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
5279 booting without a hitch. Was unsure if there were still bugs with
5280 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
5281 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
5282 packages.&lt;/p&gt;
5283 </description>
5284 </item>
5285
5286 <item>
5287 <title>Upstart or sysvinit - as init.d scripts see it</title>
5288 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Upstart_or_sysvinit___as_init_d_scripts_see_it.html</link>
5289 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Upstart_or_sysvinit___as_init_d_scripts_see_it.html</guid>
5290 <pubDate>Sun, 6 Jun 2010 23:55:00 +0200</pubDate>
5291 <description>&lt;p&gt;If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
5292 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
5293 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd. The packages with such
5294 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
5295 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart. Because of
5296 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
5297 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.&lt;/p&gt;
5298
5299 &lt;p&gt;With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
5300 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
5301 COLUMNS):&lt;/p&gt;
5302
5303 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
5304 DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
5305 previous=N
5306 PREVLEVEL=
5307 RUNLEVEL=
5308 runlevel=S
5309 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
5310 UPSTART_INSTANCE=
5311 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
5312 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
5313
5314 &lt;p&gt;With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
5315 script.&lt;/p&gt;
5316
5317 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
5318 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
5319 previous=N
5320 PREVLEVEL=N
5321 RUNLEVEL=S
5322 runlevel=S
5323 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
5324
5325 &lt;p&gt;The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
5326 sysvinit are not set by upstart. Not sure if it is intentional or not
5327 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.&lt;/p&gt;
5328
5329 &lt;p&gt;For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
5330 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
5331 choice.&lt;/p&gt;
5332 </description>
5333 </item>
5334
5335 <item>
5336 <title>A manual for standards wars...</title>
5337 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html</link>
5338 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html</guid>
5339 <pubDate>Sun, 6 Jun 2010 14:15:00 +0200</pubDate>
5340 <description>&lt;p&gt;Via the
5341 &lt;a href=&quot;http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html&quot;&gt;blog
5342 of Rob Weir&lt;/a&gt; I came across the very interesting essay named
5343 &lt;a href=&quot;http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf&quot;&gt;The Art of
5344 Standards Wars&lt;/a&gt; (PDF 25 pages). I recommend it for everyone
5345 following the standards wars of today.&lt;/p&gt;
5346 </description>
5347 </item>
5348
5349 <item>
5350 <title>Sitesummary tip: Listing computer hardware models used at site</title>
5351 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sitesummary_tip__Listing_computer_hardware_models_used_at_site.html</link>
5352 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sitesummary_tip__Listing_computer_hardware_models_used_at_site.html</guid>
5353 <pubDate>Thu, 3 Jun 2010 12:05:00 +0200</pubDate>
5354 <description>&lt;p&gt;When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
5355 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
5356 information extracted from each machine. The script to do so is
5357 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
5358 the Skolelinux build servers:&lt;/p&gt;
5359
5360 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
5361 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
5362 vendor count
5363 Dell Computer Corporation 1
5364 PowerEdge 1750 1
5365 IBM 1
5366 eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]- 1
5367 Intel 2
5368 [no-dmi-info] 3
5369 maintainer:~#
5370 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
5371
5372 &lt;p&gt;The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
5373 provided in each machine. Here there are Intel machines without model
5374 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
5375 machines listed as [no-dmi-info]. One can add -l as a command line
5376 option to list the individual machines.&lt;/p&gt;
5377
5378 &lt;p&gt;A larger list is
5379 &lt;a href=&quot;http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/&quot;&gt;available from the the
5380 city of Narvik&lt;/a&gt;, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
5381 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly. In their report there
5382 are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
5383 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
5384 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
5385 collector.&lt;/p&gt;
5386 </description>
5387 </item>
5388
5389 <item>
5390 <title>KDM fail at boot with NVidia cards - and no one try to fix it?</title>
5391 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/KDM_fail_at_boot_with_NVidia_cards___and_no_one_try_to_fix_it_.html</link>
5392 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/KDM_fail_at_boot_with_NVidia_cards___and_no_one_try_to_fix_it_.html</guid>
5393 <pubDate>Tue, 1 Jun 2010 17:05:00 +0200</pubDate>
5394 <description>&lt;p&gt;It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
5395 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled. The
5396 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
5397 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
5398 wait.&lt;/p&gt;
5399
5400 &lt;p&gt;I came across two bugs related to this issue,
5401 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/583312&quot;&gt;#583312&lt;/a&gt; initially filed
5402 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
5403 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
5404 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/524751&quot;&gt;#524751&lt;/a&gt; initially filed against
5405 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.&lt;/p&gt;
5406
5407 &lt;p&gt;To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
5408 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
5409 distribution work out of the box for these users. The nvidia driver
5410 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
5411 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
5412 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
5413 distribution that work for them. I have no idea what the solution is,
5414 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.&lt;/p&gt;
5415
5416 &lt;p&gt;I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.&lt;/p&gt;
5417 </description>
5418 </item>
5419
5420 <item>
5421 <title>Parallellized boot seem to hold up well in Debian/testing</title>
5422 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellized_boot_seem_to_hold_up_well_in_Debian_testing.html</link>
5423 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellized_boot_seem_to_hold_up_well_in_Debian_testing.html</guid>
5424 <pubDate>Thu, 27 May 2010 23:55:00 +0200</pubDate>
5425 <description>&lt;p&gt;A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
5426 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
5427 issues are known and should be solved:
5428
5429 &lt;p&gt;&lt;ul&gt;
5430
5431 &lt;li&gt;The wicd package seen to
5432 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/508289&quot;&gt;break NFS mounting&lt;/a&gt; and
5433 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/581586&quot;&gt;network setup&lt;/a&gt; when
5434 parallel booting is enabled. No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
5435 seem to be on the case.&lt;/li&gt;
5436
5437 &lt;li&gt;The nvidia X driver seem to
5438 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/583312&quot;&gt;have a race condition&lt;/a&gt;
5439 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect. The
5440 maintainer is on the case.&lt;/li&gt;
5441
5442 &lt;li&gt;The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
5443 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
5444 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/575080&quot;&gt;try to switch back&lt;/a&gt; to
5445 sysv-rc. One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
5446 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
5447 sysv-rc more robust. Will investigate some more and probably upload a
5448 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
5449 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.&lt;/li&gt;
5450
5451 &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5452
5453 &lt;p&gt;All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
5454 solvable before Squeeze is released. In addition to these there are
5455 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
5456 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.&lt;/p&gt;
5457
5458 &lt;p&gt;If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
5459 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
5460 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org&quot;&gt;the
5461 list of usertagged bugs related to this&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
5462
5463 &lt;p&gt;Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.&lt;/p&gt;
5464 </description>
5465 </item>
5466
5467 <item>
5468 <title>More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</title>
5469 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html</link>
5470 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html</guid>
5471 <pubDate>Sat, 22 May 2010 21:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
5472 <description>&lt;p&gt;After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
5473 found time today to return to the project. Having to spend less time
5474 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
5475 definitely helped freeing some time.&lt;/p&gt;
5476
5477 &lt;p&gt;A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu. We
5478 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
5479 get disk and network controllers working. Without having these
5480 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
5481 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
5482 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
5483 an external medium is a support pain. Initially, I expected it to be
5484 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
5485 debian-installer to find and use them. This proved to be wrong.
5486 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
5487 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
5488 /cdrom/firmware/). This also proved to not work, and at this point I
5489 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
5490 going to work.&lt;/p&gt;
5491
5492 &lt;p&gt;The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
5493 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
5494 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
5495 packages. It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
5496 &quot;external&quot; media devices. Today I changed it to also look in the
5497 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
5498 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu. I also changed it to
5499 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
5500 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
5501 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
5502 Edu.&lt;/p&gt;
5503
5504 &lt;p&gt;To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
5505 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
5506 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
5507 run these before activating the firmware during installation. The
5508 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
5509 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.&lt;/p&gt;
5510
5511 &lt;p&gt;If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
5512 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.&lt;/p&gt;
5513 </description>
5514 </item>
5515
5516 <item>
5517 <title>Parallellized boot is now the default in Debian/unstable</title>
5518 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellized_boot_is_now_the_default_in_Debian_unstable.html</link>
5519 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellized_boot_is_now_the_default_in_Debian_unstable.html</guid>
5520 <pubDate>Fri, 14 May 2010 22:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
5521 <description>&lt;p&gt;Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
5522 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
5523 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
5524 expected, if I am to believe the
5525 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html&quot;&gt;input
5526 on debian-devel@&lt;/a&gt;, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
5527 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
5528 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen. If serious problems are
5529 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
5530 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
5531 version.&lt;/p&gt;
5532
5533 More information about
5534 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot&quot;&gt;dependency
5535 based boot sequencing&lt;/a&gt; is available from the Debian wiki. It is
5536 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
5537 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:&lt;/p&gt;
5538
5539 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
5540 CONCURRENCY=none
5541 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
5542
5543 &lt;p&gt;If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
5544 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
5545 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org&quot;&gt;the
5546 list of usertagged bugs related to this&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
5547 </description>
5548 </item>
5549
5550 <item>
5551 <title>Sitesummary tip: Listing MAC address of all clients</title>
5552 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sitesummary_tip__Listing_MAC_address_of_all_clients.html</link>
5553 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sitesummary_tip__Listing_MAC_address_of_all_clients.html</guid>
5554 <pubDate>Fri, 14 May 2010 21:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
5555 <description>&lt;p&gt;In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
5556 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary&quot;&gt;sitesummary
5557 system&lt;/a&gt; is used to keep track of the machines in the school
5558 network. Each machine will automatically report its status to the
5559 central server after boot and once per night. The network setup is
5560 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
5561 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines. This is useful
5562 to update the DHCP configuration.&lt;/p&gt;
5563
5564 &lt;p&gt;To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
5565 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary. Run
5566 this on the collector host:&lt;/p&gt;
5567
5568 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
5569 perl -MSiteSummary -e &#39;for_all_hosts(sub { print join(&quot; &quot;, get_macaddresses(shift)), &quot;\n&quot;; });&#39;
5570 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
5571
5572 &lt;p&gt;This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
5573 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.&lt;/p&gt;
5574
5575 &lt;p&gt;To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
5576 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
5577 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
5578 tables in LDAP using this information. Such tool is unfortunately not
5579 written yet.&lt;/p&gt;
5580 </description>
5581 </item>
5582
5583 <item>
5584 <title>systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart</title>
5585 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html</link>
5586 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html</guid>
5587 <pubDate>Thu, 13 May 2010 22:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
5588 <description>&lt;p&gt;The last few days a new boot system called
5589 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd&quot;&gt;systemd&lt;/a&gt;
5590 has been
5591 &lt;a href=&quot;http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html&quot;&gt;introduced&lt;/a&gt;
5592
5593 to the free software world. I have not yet had time to play around
5594 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
5595 &lt;a href=&quot;http://upstart.ubuntu.com/&quot;&gt;upstart&lt;/a&gt;, and might prove to be
5596 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
5597 based boot system. Tollef is
5598 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/580814&quot;&gt;in the process&lt;/a&gt; of getting
5599 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work. I
5600 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
5601 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
5602 at the moment do not.&lt;/p&gt;
5603
5604 &lt;p&gt;Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
5605 platform support. It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
5606 some new kernel features enabled to function properly. This means
5607 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
5608 system. Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
5609 way forward.&lt;/p&gt;
5610
5611 &lt;p&gt;In the mean time, based on the
5612 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html&quot;&gt;input
5613 on debian-devel@&lt;/a&gt; regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
5614 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
5615 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
5616 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies. A
5617 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
5618 already in experimental. If all go well, Squeeze will be released
5619 with parallel booting enabled by default.&lt;/p&gt;
5620 </description>
5621 </item>
5622
5623 <item>
5624 <title>Parallellizing the boot in Debian Squeeze - ready for wider testing</title>
5625 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellizing_the_boot_in_Debian_Squeeze___ready_for_wider_testing.html</link>
5626 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellizing_the_boot_in_Debian_Squeeze___ready_for_wider_testing.html</guid>
5627 <pubDate>Thu, 6 May 2010 23:25:00 +0200</pubDate>
5628 <description>&lt;p&gt;These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
5629 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
5630 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies. If you want
5631 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
5632 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot&quot;&gt;dependency
5633 based boot sequencing&lt;/a&gt; is enabled, and add this line to
5634 /etc/default/rcS:&lt;/p&gt;
5635
5636 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
5637 CONCURRENCY=makefile
5638 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
5639
5640 &lt;p&gt;That is it. It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
5641 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
5642 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
5643 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts. Startpar is configured
5644 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
5645 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
5646 make this happen.&lt;/p&gt;
5647
5648 &lt;p&gt;Give it a try, and see if you like the result. If some services
5649 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
5650 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
5651 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies). Report bugs and get
5652 the package maintainers to fix it. :)&lt;/p&gt;
5653
5654 &lt;p&gt;Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
5655 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct. I
5656 expect we will get there in Squeeze+1, if we get manage to test and
5657 fix the remaining issues.&lt;/p&gt;
5658
5659 &lt;p&gt;If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
5660 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
5661 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org&quot;&gt;the
5662 list of usertagged bugs related to this&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
5663 </description>
5664 </item>
5665
5666 <item>
5667 <title>Debian has switched to dependency based boot sequencing</title>
5668 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_has_switched_to_dependency_based_boot_sequencing.html</link>
5669 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_has_switched_to_dependency_based_boot_sequencing.html</guid>
5670 <pubDate>Mon, 27 Jul 2009 23:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
5671 <description>&lt;p&gt;Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
5672 and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
5673 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing. This
5674 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
5675 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
5676 installation. Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
5677 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.&lt;/p&gt;
5678
5679 &lt;p&gt;The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
5680 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
5681 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.&lt;/p&gt;
5682 </description>
5683 </item>
5684
5685 <item>
5686 <title>Taking over sysvinit development</title>
5687 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html</link>
5688 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html</guid>
5689 <pubDate>Wed, 22 Jul 2009 23:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
5690 <description>&lt;p&gt;After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
5691 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
5692 take over the package and become the new upstream. The number of
5693 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
5694 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
5695 the package up to date.&lt;/p&gt;
5696
5697 &lt;p&gt;On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
5698 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman. About 10 days ago, I made
5699 a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
5700 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
5701 distributions. We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
5702 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge. Since the
5703 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
5704 upstream project at &lt;a href=&quot;http://savannah.nongnu.org/&quot;&gt;Savannah&lt;/a&gt;, and continue
5705 development there. The project is registered and currently waiting
5706 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
5707 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
5708 working on the future release.&lt;/p&gt;
5709
5710 &lt;p&gt;It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
5711 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.&lt;/p&gt;
5712 </description>
5713 </item>
5714
5715 <item>
5716 <title>Debian boots quicker and quicker</title>
5717 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html</link>
5718 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html</guid>
5719 <pubDate>Wed, 24 Jun 2009 21:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
5720 <description>&lt;p&gt;I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
5721 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
5722 could find more ways to speed up the boot system. This was an Ubuntu
5723 funded
5724 &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint&quot;&gt;developer
5725 gathering&lt;/a&gt;. It was quite productive. We also discussed the future
5726 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
5727 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
5728 asynchronous and event base. The Ubuntu approach using udev and
5729 upstart might be a good way forward. Time will show.&lt;/p&gt;
5730
5731 &lt;p&gt;Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
5732 process in Debian. All of these should be applied to get a quick
5733 boot:&lt;/p&gt;
5734
5735 &lt;ul&gt;
5736
5737 &lt;li&gt;Use dash as /bin/sh.&lt;/li&gt;
5738
5739 &lt;li&gt;Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
5740 clock is in UTC.&lt;/li&gt;
5741
5742 &lt;li&gt;Install and activate the insserv package to enable
5743 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot&quot;&gt;dependency
5744 based boot sequencing&lt;/a&gt;, and enable concurrent booting.&lt;/li&gt;
5745
5746 &lt;/ul&gt;
5747
5748 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
5749 &lt;a href=&quot;http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/&quot;&gt;Carlos
5750 Villegas&lt;/a&gt;.
5751
5752 &lt;p&gt;Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
5753 unstable yesterday. When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
5754 from the boot sequence. It depend on very correct dependency
5755 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
5756 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
5757 using this.&lt;/p&gt;
5758
5759 &lt;p&gt;On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
5760 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
5761 startup speed as well. Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
5762 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
5763 possible to run a of them in the same process. A quick way to test
5764 this would be to enable insserv and run &#39;mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
5765 insserv&#39;. Will need to test if that work. :)&lt;/p&gt;
5766 </description>
5767 </item>
5768
5769 <item>
5770 <title>BSAs påstander om piratkopiering møter motstand</title>
5771 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/BSAs_p_stander_om_piratkopiering_m_ter_motstand.html</link>
5772 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/BSAs_p_stander_om_piratkopiering_m_ter_motstand.html</guid>
5773 <pubDate>Sun, 17 May 2009 23:05:00 +0200</pubDate>
5774 <description>&lt;p&gt;Hvert år de siste årene har BSA, lobbyfronten til de store
5775 programvareselskapene som Microsoft og Apple, publisert en rapport der
5776 de gjetter på hvor mye piratkopiering påfører i tapte inntekter i
5777 ulike land rundt om i verden. Resultatene er tendensiøse. For noen
5778 dager siden kom
5779 &lt;a href=&quot;http://global.bsa.org/globalpiracy2008/studies/globalpiracy2008.pdf&quot;&gt;siste
5780 rapport&lt;/a&gt;, og det er flere kritiske kommentarer publisert de siste
5781 dagene. Et spesielt interessant kommentar fra Sverige,
5782 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.idg.se/2.1085/1.229795/bsa-hoftade-sverigesiffror&quot;&gt;BSA
5783 höftade Sverigesiffror&lt;/a&gt;, oppsummeres slik:&lt;/p&gt;
5784
5785 &lt;blockquote&gt;
5786 I sin senaste rapport slår BSA fast att 25 procent av all mjukvara i
5787 Sverige är piratkopierad. Det utan att ha pratat med ett enda svenskt
5788 företag. &quot;Man bör nog kanske inte se de här siffrorna som helt
5789 exakta&quot;, säger BSAs Sverigechef John Hugosson.
5790 &lt;/blockquote&gt;
5791
5792 &lt;p&gt;Mon tro om de er like metodiske når de gjetter på andelen piratkopiering i Norge? To andre kommentarer er &lt;a
5793 href=&quot;http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/comment/2242134/bsa-piracy-figures-shot-reality&quot;&gt;BSA
5794 piracy figures need a shot of reality&lt;/a&gt; og &lt;a
5795 href=&quot;http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/3958/125/&quot;&gt;Does The WIPO
5796 Copyright Treaty Work?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5797
5798 &lt;p&gt;Fant lenkene via &lt;a
5799 href=&quot;http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/17/1632242&quot;&gt;oppslag
5800 på Slashdot&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
5801 </description>
5802 </item>
5803
5804 <item>
5805 <title>IDG mener linux i servermarkedet vil vokse med 21% i 2009</title>
5806 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IDG_mener_linux_i_servermarkedet_vil_vokse_med_21__i_2009.html</link>
5807 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IDG_mener_linux_i_servermarkedet_vil_vokse_med_21__i_2009.html</guid>
5808 <pubDate>Thu, 7 May 2009 22:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
5809 <description>&lt;p&gt;Kom over
5810 &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10216873-16.html&quot;&gt;interessante
5811 tall&lt;/a&gt; fra IDG om utviklingen av linuxservermarkedet. Fikk meg til
5812 å tenke på antall tjenermaskiner ved Universitetet i Oslo der jeg
5813 jobber til daglig. En rask opptelling forteller meg at vi har 490
5814 (61%) fysiske unix-tjener (mest linux men også noen solaris) og 196
5815 (25%) windowstjenere, samt 112 (14%) virtuelle unix-tjenere. Med den
5816 bakgrunnskunnskapen kan jeg godt tro at IDG er inne på noe.&lt;/p&gt;
5817 </description>
5818 </item>
5819
5820 <item>
5821 <title>Kryptert harddisk - naturligvis</title>
5822 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kryptert_harddisk___naturligvis.html</link>
5823 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kryptert_harddisk___naturligvis.html</guid>
5824 <pubDate>Sat, 2 May 2009 15:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
5825 <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dagensit.no/trender/article1658676.ece&quot;&gt;Dagens
5826 IT melder&lt;/a&gt; at Intel hevder at det er dyrt å miste en datamaskin,
5827 når en tar tap av arbeidstid, fortrolige dokumenter,
5828 personopplysninger og alt annet det innebærer. Det er ingen tvil om
5829 at det er en kostbar affære å miste sin datamaskin, og det er årsaken
5830 til at jeg har kryptert harddisken på både kontormaskinen og min
5831 bærbare. Begge inneholder personopplysninger jeg ikke ønsker skal
5832 komme på avveie, den første informasjon relatert til jobben min ved
5833 Universitetet i Oslo, og den andre relatert til blant annet
5834 foreningsarbeide. Kryptering av diskene gjør at det er lite
5835 sannsynlig at dophoder som kan finne på å rappe maskinene får noe ut
5836 av dem. Maskinene låses automatisk etter noen minutter uten bruk,
5837 og en reboot vil gjøre at de ber om passord før de vil starte opp.
5838 Jeg bruker Debian på begge maskinene, og installasjonssystemet der
5839 gjør det trivielt å sette opp krypterte disker. Jeg har LVM på toppen
5840 av krypterte partisjoner, slik at alt av datapartisjoner er kryptert.
5841 Jeg anbefaler alle å kryptere diskene på sine bærbare. Kostnaden når
5842 det er gjort slik jeg gjør det er minimale, og gevinstene er
5843 betydelige. En bør dog passe på passordet. Hvis det går tapt, må
5844 maskinen reinstalleres og alt er tapt.&lt;/p&gt;
5845
5846 &lt;p&gt;Krypteringen vil ikke stoppe kompetente angripere som f.eks. kjøler
5847 ned minnebrikkene før maskinen rebootes med programvare for å hente ut
5848 krypteringsnøklene. Kostnaden med å forsvare seg mot slike angripere
5849 er for min del høyere enn gevinsten. Jeg tror oddsene for at
5850 f.eks. etteretningsorganisasjoner har glede av å titte på mine
5851 maskiner er minimale, og ulempene jeg ville oppnå ved å forsøke å
5852 gjøre det vanskeligere for angripere med kompetanse og ressurser er
5853 betydelige.&lt;/p&gt;
5854 </description>
5855 </item>
5856
5857 <item>
5858 <title>Two projects that have improved the quality of free software a lot</title>
5859 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Two_projects_that_have_improved_the_quality_of_free_software_a_lot.html</link>
5860 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Two_projects_that_have_improved_the_quality_of_free_software_a_lot.html</guid>
5861 <pubDate>Sat, 2 May 2009 15:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
5862 <description>&lt;p&gt;There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
5863 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
5864 do not yet know them.&lt;/p&gt;
5865
5866 &lt;p&gt;The first one is &lt;a href=&quot;http://valgrind.org/&quot;&gt;valgrind&lt;/a&gt;, a
5867 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
5868 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run &#39;valgrind program&#39;,
5869 and it will report any problems on stdout. It is even better if the
5870 program include debug information. With debug information, it is able
5871 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
5872 occurs. It can report things like &#39;reading past memory block in file
5873 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M&#39;, and
5874 &#39;using uninitialised value in control logic&#39;. This tool has made it
5875 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
5876 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
5877
5878 &lt;p&gt;The second one is
5879 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity&quot;&gt;Coverity&lt;/a&gt; which is
5880 a source code checker. It is able to process the source of a program
5881 and find problems in the logic without running the program. It
5882 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
5883 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel. It is now a commercial tool
5884 and the company behind it is running
5885 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scan.coverity.com/&quot;&gt;a community service&lt;/a&gt; for the
5886 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
5887 their source checked for free. Several thousand defects have been
5888 found and fixed so far. It can find errors like &#39;lock L taken in file
5889 X line N is never released if exiting in line M&#39;, or &#39;the code in file
5890 Y lines O to P can never be executed&#39;. The projects included in the
5891 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
5892 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.&lt;/p&gt;
5893
5894 &lt;p&gt;I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
5895 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
5896 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
5897 surrounded by today.&lt;/p&gt;
5898 </description>
5899 </item>
5900
5901 <item>
5902 <title>No patch is not better than a useless patch</title>
5903 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/No_patch_is_not_better_than_a_useless_patch.html</link>
5904 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/No_patch_is_not_better_than_a_useless_patch.html</guid>
5905 <pubDate>Tue, 28 Apr 2009 09:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
5906 <description>&lt;p&gt;Julien Blache
5907 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214&quot;&gt;claim that no
5908 patch is better than a useless patch&lt;/a&gt;. I completely disagree, as a
5909 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
5910 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
5911 time on fixing it. No patch do not provide any of these positive
5912 properties.&lt;/p&gt;
5913 </description>
5914 </item>
5915
5916 <item>
5917 <title>Standardize on protocols and formats, not vendors and applications</title>
5918 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Standardize_on_protocols_and_formats__not_vendors_and_applications.html</link>
5919 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Standardize_on_protocols_and_formats__not_vendors_and_applications.html</guid>
5920 <pubDate>Mon, 30 Mar 2009 11:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
5921 <description>&lt;p&gt;Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
5922 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure. It is the
5923 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
5924 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
5925 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
5926 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
5927 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
5928 application.&lt;/p&gt;
5929
5930 &lt;p&gt;This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
5931 independently of the server applications. One can even allow users to
5932 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
5933 protocol and format. In the normal case, only one client application
5934 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
5935 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
5936 blocked from doing so.&lt;/p&gt;
5937
5938 &lt;p&gt;It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
5939 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
5940 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
5941 requirements change.&lt;/p&gt;
5942
5943 &lt;p&gt;I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
5944 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
5945 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.&lt;/p&gt;
5946 </description>
5947 </item>
5948
5949 <item>
5950 <title>Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering</title>
5951 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html</link>
5952 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html</guid>
5953 <pubDate>Sun, 29 Mar 2009 21:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
5954 <description>&lt;p&gt;I&#39;m sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
5955 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering. I got a bit done tuning the
5956 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
5957 implementation avahi. It look like it could be useful for us. Almost
5958 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
5959 get to know the Skolelinux system. Walter Bender, involved in the
5960 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
5961 also helped me improve my OLPC installation. He also showed me that
5962 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
5963 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian. As a
5964 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu. We also
5965 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
5966 proved to be too hard for us. The application seem to need more work
5967 before it is ready for me. I look forward to getting home and relax
5968 now. :)&lt;/p&gt;
5969 </description>
5970 </item>
5971
5972 <item>
5973 <title>Time for new LDAP schemas replacing RFC 2307?</title>
5974 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html</link>
5975 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html</guid>
5976 <pubDate>Sun, 29 Mar 2009 20:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
5977 <description>&lt;p&gt;The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
5978 optimal. There is RFC 2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
5979 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC 2307bis, with
5980 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory. The RFC
5981 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
5982 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.&lt;/p&gt;
5983
5984 &lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu/Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;,
5985 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
5986 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
5987 and LTSP configuration in LDAP. These objects have a lot in common,
5988 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
5989 object per entity. For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
5990 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
5991 DNS information and another with DHCP information. The schemas
5992 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
5993 object. In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
5994 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
5995 It just do not scale. I believe it is time for a few RFC
5996 specifications to cleam up this mess.&lt;/p&gt;
5997
5998 &lt;p&gt;I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
5999 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
6000 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
6001 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.&lt;/p&gt;
6002
6003 &lt;p&gt;I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
6004 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.&lt;/p&gt;
6005
6006 &lt;p&gt;Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
6007 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up. Time to start a
6008 new IETF work group?&lt;/p&gt;
6009 </description>
6010 </item>
6011
6012 <item>
6013 <title>Endelig er Debian Lenny gitt ut</title>
6014 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Endelig_er_Debian_Lenny_gitt_ut.html</link>
6015 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Endelig_er_Debian_Lenny_gitt_ut.html</guid>
6016 <pubDate>Sun, 15 Feb 2009 11:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
6017 <description>&lt;p&gt;Endelig er &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/&quot;&gt;Debian&lt;/a&gt;
6018 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/News/2009/20090214&quot;&gt;Lenny&lt;/a&gt; gitt ut.
6019 Et langt steg videre for Debian-prosjektet, og en rekke nye
6020 programpakker blir nå tilgjengelig for de av oss som bruker den
6021 stabile utgaven av Debian. Neste steg er nå å få
6022 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; /
6023 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu&lt;/a&gt; ferdig
6024 oppdatert for den nye utgaven, slik at en oppdatert versjon kan
6025 slippes løs på skolene. Takk til alle debian-utviklerne som har
6026 gjort dette mulig. Endelig er f.eks. fungerende avhengighetsstyrt
6027 bootsekvens tilgjengelig i stabil utgave, vha pakken
6028 &lt;tt&gt;insserv&lt;/tt&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
6029 </description>
6030 </item>
6031
6032 <item>
6033 <title>Devcamp brought us closer to the Lenny based Debian Edu release</title>
6034 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Devcamp_brought_us_closer_to_the_Lenny_based_Debian_Edu_release.html</link>
6035 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Devcamp_brought_us_closer_to_the_Lenny_based_Debian_Edu_release.html</guid>
6036 <pubDate>Sun, 7 Dec 2008 12:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
6037 <description>&lt;p&gt;This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
6038 Oslo. Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
6039 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
6040 LTSP installation. LTSP now work out of the box on the 10-network.
6041 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
6042 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box. Was working on getting the
6043 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
6044 finish it before the weekend was up.&lt;/p&gt;
6045
6046 &lt;p&gt;Did not find time to look at the 4 VGA cards in one box we got from
6047 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
6048 development gathering. Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
6049 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
6050 of these cards.&lt;/p&gt;
6051 </description>
6052 </item>
6053
6054 <item>
6055 <title>The sorry state of multimedia browser plugins in Debian</title>
6056 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_sorry_state_of_multimedia_browser_plugins_in_Debian.html</link>
6057 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_sorry_state_of_multimedia_browser_plugins_in_Debian.html</guid>
6058 <pubDate>Tue, 25 Nov 2008 00:10:00 +0100</pubDate>
6059 <description>&lt;p&gt;Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
6060 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
6061 default in Debian Edu. We need an embedded video playing plugin with
6062 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
6063 all the multimedia content available on the web. The test results and
6064 notes are available on
6065 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia&quot;&gt;the
6066 Debian wiki&lt;/a&gt;. I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
6067 fill this need. My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
6068 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages. A lot of the MIME
6069 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
6070 video/ogg), just do not work. And simple formats like the
6071 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn&#39;t supported by the
6072 totem and vlc plugins. I hope the situation will improve soon. No
6073 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.&lt;/p&gt;
6074
6075 &lt;p&gt;For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin. It seem to
6076 be the only one fitting our needs. :/&lt;/p&gt;
6077 </description>
6078 </item>
6079
6080 </channel>
6081 </rss>