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14 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/">Petter Reinholdtsen
</a>
21 <h3>Entries tagged "debian".
</h3>
25 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/121_packages_in_Debian_mapped_to_hardware_for_automatic_recommendation.html">121 packages in Debian mapped to hardware for automatic recommendation
</a>
31 <p>For some years now, I have been working on a automatic hardware
32 based package recommendation system for Debian and other Linux
33 distributions. The isenkram system I started on back in
2013 now
34 consist of two subsystems, one locating firmware files using the
35 information provided by apt-file, and one matching hardware to
36 packages using information provided by AppStream. The former is very
37 similar to the mechanism implemented in debian-installer to pick the
38 right firmware packages to install. This post is about the latter
39 system. Thanks to steady progress and good help from both other
40 Debian and upstream developers, I am happy to report that
41 <a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/isenkram">the Isenkram
42 system
</a> now are able to recommend
121 packages using information
44 <a href=
"https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Distributions/AppStream/">AppStream
</a>.
</p>
46 <p>The mapping is done using modalias information provided by the
47 kernel, the same information used by udev when creating device files,
48 and the kernel when deciding which kernel modules to load. To get all
49 the modalias identifiers relevant for your machine, you can run the
50 following command on the command line:
</p>
53 find /sys/devices -name modalias -print0 | xargs -
0 sort -u
56 <p>The modalias identifiers can look something like this:
</p>
60 cpu:type:x86,ven0000fam0006mod003F:feature:,
0000,
0001,
0002,
0003,
0004,
0005,
0006,
0007,
0008,
0009,
000B,
000C,
000D,
000E,
000F,
0010,
0011,
0013,
0015,
0016,
0017,
0018,
0019,
001A,
001B,
001C,
001D,
001F,
002B,
0034,
003A,
003B,
003D,
0068,
006B,
006C,
006D,
006F,
0070,
0072,
0074,
0075,
0076,
0078,
0079,
007C,
0080,
0081,
0082,
0083,
0084,
0085,
0086,
0087,
0088,
0089,
008B,
008C,
008D,
008E,
008F,
0091,
0092,
0093,
0094,
0095,
0096,
0097,
0098,
0099,
009A,
009B,
009C,
009D,
009E,
00C0,
00C5,
00E1,
00E3,
00EB,
00ED,
00F0,
00F1,
00F3,
00F5,
00F6,
00F9,
00FA,
00FB,
00FD,
00FF,
0100,
0101,
0102,
0103,
0111,
0120,
0121,
0123,
0125,
0127,
0128,
0129,
012A,
012C,
012D,
0140,
0160,
0161,
0165,
016C,
017B,
01C0,
01C1,
01C2,
01C4,
01C5,
01C6,
01F9,
024A,
025A,
025B,
025C,
025F,
0282
61 dmi:bvnDellInc.:bvr2.18
.1:bd08/
14/
2023:br2.18:svnDellInc.:pnPowerEdgeR730:pvr:rvnDellInc.:rn0H21J3:rvrA09:cvnDellInc.:ct23:cvr:skuSKU=NotProvided
62 pci:v00008086d00008D3Bsv00001028sd00000600bc07sc80i00
65 usb:v413CpA001d0000dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00in00
68 <p>The entries above are a selection of the complete set available on
69 a Dell PowerEdge R730 machine I have access to, to give an idea about
70 the various styles of hardware identifiers presented in the modalias
71 format. When looking up relevant packages in a Debian Testing
72 installation on the same R730, I get this list of packages
76 % sudo isenkram-lookup
78 firmware-nvidia-graphics
85 <p>The list consist of firmware packages requested by kernel modules,
86 as well packages with program to get the status from the RAID
87 controller and to maintain the LAN console. When the edac-utils
88 package providing tools to check the ECC RAM status will enter testing
89 in a few days, it will also show up as a proposal from isenkram. In
90 addition, once the mfiutil package we uploaded in October get past the
91 NEW processing, it will also propose a tool to configure the RAID
94 <p>Another example is the trusty old Lenovo Thinkpad X230, which have
95 hardware handled by several packages in the archive. This is running
105 firmware-misc-nonfree
119 <p>Here there proposal consist of software to handle the camera,
120 bluetooth, network card, wifi card, GPU, fan, fingerprint reader and
121 acceleration sensor on the machine.
</p>
123 <p>Here is the complete set of packages currently providing hardware
124 mapping via AppStream in Debian Unstable: air-quality-sensor,
125 alsa-firmware-loaders, antpm, array-info, avarice, avrdude,
126 bmusb-v4l2proxy, brltty, calibre, colorhug-client, concordance-common,
127 consolekit, dahdi-firmware-nonfree, dahdi-linux, edac-utils,
128 eegdev-plugins-free, ekeyd, elogind, firmware-amd-graphics,
129 firmware-ath9k-htc, firmware-atheros, firmware-b43-installer,
130 firmware-b43legacy-installer, firmware-bnx2, firmware-bnx2x,
131 firmware-brcm80211, firmware-carl9170, firmware-cavium,
132 firmware-intel-graphics, firmware-intel-misc, firmware-ipw2x00,
133 firmware-ivtv, firmware-iwlwifi, firmware-libertas,
134 firmware-linux-free, firmware-mediatek, firmware-misc-nonfree,
135 firmware-myricom, firmware-netronome, firmware-netxen,
136 firmware-nvidia-graphics, firmware-qcom-soc, firmware-qlogic,
137 firmware-realtek, firmware-ti-connectivity, fpga-icestorm, g810-led,
138 galileo, garmin-forerunner-tools, gkrellm-thinkbat, goldencheetah,
139 gpsman, gpstrans, gqrx-sdr, i8kutils, imsprog, ledger-wallets-udev,
140 libairspy0, libam7xxx0.1, libbladerf2, libgphoto2-
6t64,
141 libhamlib-utils, libm2k0.9
.0, libmirisdr4, libnxt, libopenxr1-monado,
142 libosmosdr0, librem5-flash-image, librtlsdr0, libticables2-
8,
143 libx52pro0, libykpers-
1-
1, libyubikey-udev, limesuite,
144 linuxcnc-uspace, lomoco, madwimax, media-player-info, megactl, mixxx,
145 mkgmap, msi-keyboard, mu-editor, mustang-plug, nbc, nitrokey-app, nqc,
146 ola, openfpgaloader, openocd, openrazer-driver-dkms, pcmciautils,
147 pcscd, pidgin-blinklight, ponyprog, printer-driver-splix,
148 python-yubico-tools, python3-btchip, qlcplus, rosegarden, scdaemon,
149 sispmctl, solaar, spectools, sunxi-tools, t2n, thinkfan, tlp,
150 tp-smapi-dkms, trezor, tucnak, ubertooth, usbrelay, uuu, viking,
151 w1retap, wsl, xawtv, xinput-calibrator, xserver-xorg-input-wacom and
154 <p>In addition to these, there are several
155 <a href=
"https://udd.debian.org/cgi-bin/bts-usertags.cgi?user=pere%40hungry.com&tag=appstream-modalias">with
156 patches pending in the Debian bug tracking system
</a>, and even more
157 where no-one wrote patches yet. Good candiates for the latter are
159 <a href=
"https://udd.debian.org/lintian-tag.cgi?tag=appstream-metadata-missing-modalias-provide">with
160 udev rules but no AppStream hardware information
</a>.
</p>
162 <p>The isenkram system consist of two packages, isenkram-cli with the
163 command line tools, and isenkram with a GUI background process. The
164 latter will listen for dbus events from udev emitted when new hardware
165 become available (like when inserting a USB dongle or discovering a
166 new bluetooth device), look up the modalias entry for this piece of
167 hardware in AppStream (and a hard coded list of mappings from isenkram
168 - currently working hard to move this list to AppStream), and pop up a
169 dialog proposing to install any not already installed packages
170 supporting this hardware. It work very well today when inserting the
171 LEGO Mindstorms RCX, NXT and EV3 controllers. :) If you want to make
172 sure more hardware related packages get recommended, please help out
173 fixing the remaining packages in Debian to provide AppStream metadata
174 with hardware mappings.
</p>
176 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
177 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
178 <b><a href=
"bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a></b>.
</p>
184 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram
</a>.
189 <div class=
"padding"></div>
193 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/What_is_the_most_supported_MIME_type_in_Debian_in_2025_.html">What is the most supported MIME type in Debian in
2025?
</a>
199 <p><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/What_is_the_most_supported_MIME_type_in_Debian_in_2018_.html">Seven
</a>
201 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/What_is_the_most_supported_MIME_type_in_Debian_.html">twelve
</a>
202 years ago, I measured what the most supported MIME type in Debian
203 was
</a>, first by analysing the desktop files in all packages in the
204 archive, then by analysing the DEP-
11 AppStream data set. I guess it
205 is time to repeat the measurement, only for unstable as last time:
</p>
207 <p><strong>Debian Unstable:
</strong></p>
211 ----- -----------------------
223 36 audio/x-vorbis+ogg
234 <p>The list was created like this using a sid chroot:
</p>
237 cat /var/lib/apt/lists/*sid*_dep11_Components-amd64.yml.gz | \
238 zcat | awk '/^ - \S+\/\S+$/ {print $
2 }' | sort | \
239 uniq -c | sort -nr | head -
20
242 <p>It is nice to see that the same number of packages now support PNG
243 and JPEG. Last time JPEG had more support than PNG. Most of the MIME
244 types are known to me, but the 'audio/x-scpls' one I have no idea what
245 represent, except it being an audio format. To find the packages
246 claiming support for this format, the appstreamcli command from the
247 appstream package can be used:
250 % appstreamcli what-provides mediatype audio/x-scpls | grep Package: | sort -u
251 Package: alsaplayer-common
258 Package: cynthiune.app
263 Package: kylin-burner
265 Package: mediaconch-gui
266 Package: mediainfo-gui
278 Package: soundconverter
285 <p>Look like several video and auto tools understand the format.
286 Similarly one can check out the number of packages supporting the STL
287 format commonly used for
3D printing:
</p>
290 % appstreamcli what-provides mediatype model/stl | grep Package: | sort -u
293 Package: open3d-viewer
298 <a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/slic3r">slic3r
</a> and
299 <a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/slic3r-prusa">prusa-slicer
</a>
300 packages do not support STL. Perhaps just missing package metadata?
301 Luckily the amount of package metadata in Debian is getting better,
302 and hopefully this way of locating relevant packages for any file
303 format will be the preferred one soon.
305 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
306 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
307 <b><a href=
"bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a></b>.
</p>
313 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram
</a>.
318 <div class=
"padding"></div>
322 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/The_2025_LinuxCNC_Norwegian_developer_gathering.html">The
2025 LinuxCNC Norwegian developer gathering
</a>
328 <p><a href=
"https://linuxcnc.org/">The LinuxCNC project
</a> is
329 trotting along. And I believe this great software system for
330 numerical control of machines such as milling machines, lathes, plasma
331 cutters, routers, cutting machines, robots and hexapods, would do even
332 better with more in-person developer gatherings, so we plan to
333 organise such gathering this summer too.
</p>
335 <p>This year we would like to invite to a small LinuxCNC and free
336 software fabrication workshop/gathering in Norway this summer for the
337 weekend starting July
4th
2025. New this year is the slightly larger
338 scope, and we invite people also outside the LinuxCNC community to
339 join. As earlier, we suggest to organize it as an
340 <a href=
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconference">unconference
</a>,
341 where the participants create the program upon arrival.
</p>
343 <p>The location is a metal workshop
15 minutes drive away from to the
344 Gardermoen airport (OSL), where there is a lot of space and a hotel only
345 5 minutes away by car. We plan to fire up the barbeque in the evenings.
</p>
347 <p>Please let us know if you would like to join. We track the list of
348 participants on
<a href=
"https://pad.efn.no/p/linuxcnc-2025-norway">a
349 simple pad
</a>, please add yourself there if you are interested in joining.
</p>
351 <p><a href=
"https://www.nuugfoundation.no/">The NUUG Foundation
</a> has on
352 our request offered to handle any money involved with this gathering,
353 in other words holding any sponsor funds and paying any bills.
354 NUUG Foundation is a spinnoff from the NUUG member organisation here
355 in Norway with long ties to the free software and open standards
358 <p>As usual we hope to find sponsors to pay for food, lodging and travel.
</p>
360 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
361 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
362 <b><a href=
"bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a></b>.
</p>
368 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/linuxcnc">linuxcnc
</a>.
373 <div class=
"padding"></div>
377 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/New_lsdvd_release_0_18_after_ten_years.html">New lsdvd release
0.18 after ten years
</a>
383 <p>The rumors of the death of
384 <a href=
"https://sourceforge.net/projects/lsdvd/">the lsdvd project
</a>
385 is slightly exaggerated. And the last few months, we have been
386 working on fixing and improving it, culminating in a new release last
387 night. This is the list of changes in the new
0.18 release, as
388 <a href=
"https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/message/59108028/">announced
389 on the project mailing list
</a>:
</p>
393 <li>Simplified autoconf setup, dropped --enable-debug option.
</li>
394 <li>Improved video resolution reporting (
<a href=
"https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/patches/8/">Fixes #
8</a>).
</li>
395 <li>Applied patches fetched from BSDs (
<a href=
"https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/patches/7/">Fixes #
7</a>).
</li>
396 <li>Corrected Perl output (
<a href=
"https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/patches/1/">Fixes #
1</a>).
</li>
397 <li>Adjusted Pan and Scan entries to produce valid XML.
</li>
398 <li>Changed --help output from stderr to stdout.
</li>
399 <li>Corrected aspect ratio and audio format formatting.
</li>
400 <li>Avoid segfault when hitting a NULL pointer in the IFO structure.
</li>
401 <li>Change build rules to supress compiler flags, to make it easier to
403 <li>Set default DVD device based on OS (Linux, *BSD, Darwin)
</li>
404 <li>Added libdvdread DVDDiscID to output.
</li>
405 <li>Corrected typo in longest track value in XML format.
</li>
406 <li>Switched XML output to use libxml to avoid string encoding issues.
</li>
407 <li>Added simple build time test suite.
</li>
408 <li>Cleaned up language code handling and adding missing mapping for
409 language codes 'nb' and 'nn'.
</li>
410 <li>Added JSON output support using -Oj.
</li>
413 <p>The most exciting news to me is easy access to the DVDDiscID, which
414 make it a lot easier to identify DVD duplicates across a large
415 collection of DVDs. During testing it has proved to be very effective
416 ad identifying when DVDs in a DVD box (say all Star Wars movies) is
417 identical to DVDs sold individually (like the same Star Wars movies
418 packaged individually).
</p>
420 <p>Because none of the current developers got access to do tarball
421 releases on Sourceforge any more, the release is only available as
422 <a href=
"https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/git/ci/0.18/tree/">a git
423 tag
</a> in the repository. Lets hope it do not take ten years for the
424 next release. The project are discussing to move away from
425 Sourceforge, but it has not yet concluded.
</p>
427 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
428 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
429 <b><a href=
"bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a></b>.
</p>
435 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
440 <div class=
"padding"></div>
444 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/More_than_200_orphaned_Debian_packages_moved_to_git__216_to_go.html">More than
200 orphaned Debian packages moved to git,
216 to go
</a>
450 <p><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Time_to_move_orphaned_Debian_packages_to_git.html">In
451 April
</a>, I started migrating orphaned Debian packages without any
452 version control system listed in debian/control to git. This morning,
453 my Debian QA page finally reached
200 QA packages migrated. In
454 reality there are a few more, as the packages uploaded by someone else
455 after my initial upload have disappeared from my QA uploads list. As
456 I am running out of steam and will most likely focus on other parts of
457 Debian moving forward, I hope someone else will find time to continue
458 the migration to bring the number of orphaned packages without any
459 version control system down to zero. Here is the updated recipe if
460 someone want to help out.
</p>
462 <p>To locate packages to work on, the following one-liner can be used:
</p>
465 PGPASSWORD="udd-mirror" psql --port=
5432 --host=udd-mirror.debian.net \
466 --username=udd-mirror udd -c "select source from sources \
467 where release = 'sid' and (vcs_url ilike '%anonscm.debian.org%' \
468 OR vcs_browser ilike '%anonscm.debian.org%' or vcs_url IS NULL \
469 OR vcs_browser IS NULL) AND maintainer ilike '%packages@qa.debian.org%' \
470 order by random() limit
10;"
473 <p>Pick a random package from the list and run the latest edition of
475 <tt><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2024-07-11-debian-snap-to-salsa.sh">debian-snap-to-salsa
</a></tt>
476 with the package name as the argument to prepare a git repository with
477 the existing packaging. This will download old Debian packages from
478 <tt>snapshot.debian.org
</tt>. Note that very recent uploads will not
479 be included, so check out the package on
<tt>tracker.debian.org
</tt>.
480 Next, run
<tt>gbp buildpackage --git-ignore-new
</tt> to verify that
481 the package build as it should, and then visit
482 <a href=
"https://salsa.debian.org/debian/">https://salsa.debian.org/debian/
</a>
483 and make sure there is not already a git repository for the package
484 there. I also did
<tt>git log -p debian/control
</tt> and look for vcs
485 entries to check if the package used to have a git repository on
486 Alioth, and see if it can be a useful starting point moving forward.
487 If all this check out, I created a new gitlab project below the Debian
488 group on salsa, push the package source there and upload a new version.
489 I tend to also ensure build hardening is enabled, if it prove to be
490 easy, and check if I can easily fix any lintian issues or bug reports.
491 If the process took more than
20 minutes, I dropped it and moved on to
494 <p>If I found patches in debian/patches/ that were not yet passed
495 upstream, I would send an email to make sure upstream know about them.
496 This has proved to be a valuable step, and caused several new releases
497 for software that initially appeared abandoned. :)
</p>
499 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
500 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
501 <b><a href=
"bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a></b>.
</p>
507 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
512 <div class=
"padding"></div>
516 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Some_notes_from_the_2024_LinuxCNC_Norwegian_developer_gathering.html">Some notes from the
2024 LinuxCNC Norwegian developer gathering
</a>
522 <p>The Norwegian
<a href=
"https://linuxcnc.org/">The LinuxCNC
</a>
523 developer gathering
2024 is over. It was a great and productive
524 weekend, and I am sad that it is over.
</p>
526 <p>Regular readers probably still remember what LinuxCNC is, but her
527 is a quick summary for those that forgot? LinuxCNC is a free software
528 system for numerical control of machines such as milling machines,
529 lathes, plasma cutters, routers, cutting machines, robots and
530 hexapods. It eats G-code and produce motor movement and other changes
531 to the physical world, while reading sensor input.
</p>
533 <p>I am not quite sure about the total head count, as not all people
534 were present at the gathering the entire weekend, but I believe it was
535 close to
10 people showing their faces at the gathering. The "hard
536 core" of the group, who stayed the entire weekend, were two from
537 Norway, two from Germany and one from England. I am happy with the
538 outcome from the gathering. We managed to wrap up a new stable
539 LinuxCNC release
2.9.3 and even tested it on real hardware within
540 minutes of the release. The release notes for
2.9.3 are still being
541 written, but should show up on on the project site in the next few
542 days. We managed to go through around twenty pull requests and merge
543 then into either the stable release (
2.9) or the development branch
544 (master). There are still around thirty pull requests left to
545 process, so we are not out of work yet. We even managed to
546 fix/improve a slightly worn lathe, and experiment with running a
547 mechanical clock using G-code.
</p>
549 <p>The evening barbeque worked well both on Saturday and Sunday. It
550 is quite fun to light up a charcoal grill using compressed air. Sadly
551 the weather was not the best, so we stayed indoors most of the
554 <p>This gathering was made possible partly with sponsoring from both
555 <a href=
"https://www.redpill-linpro.com/">Redpill Linpro
</a>,
556 <a href=
"https://debian.org/">Debian
</a> and
557 <a href=
"https://nuugfoundation.no/">NUUG Foundation
</a>, and we are
558 most grateful for the support. I would also like to thank the local
559 school for lending us some furniture, and of course the rest of the
560 members of the organizers team, Asle and Bosse, for their countless
561 contributions. The gathering was such success that we want to do it
564 <p>We plan to organize the next Norwegian LinuxCNC developer gathering
565 at the end of June next year, the weekend Friday
27th to Sunday
29th
566 of June
2025. I recommend you reserve the dates on your calendar
567 today. Other related communities are also welcome to join in, for
568 example those working on systems like FreeCAD and opencamlib, as I am
569 sure we have much in common and sharing experiences would be very
570 useful to all involved. We are of course looking for sponsors for
571 this gathering already. The total budget for this gathering was
572 around NOK
25.000 (around EUR
2.300), so our needs are quite modest.
573 Perhaps a machine or tools company would like to help out the free
574 software manufacturing community by sponsoring food, lodging and
575 transport for such gathering?
</p>
581 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/linuxcnc">linuxcnc
</a>.
586 <div class=
"padding"></div>
590 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/The_2024_LinuxCNC_Norwegian_developer_gathering.html">The
2024 LinuxCNC Norwegian developer gathering
</a>
596 <p><a href=
"https://linuxcnc.org/">The LinuxCNC project
</a> is still
597 going strong. And I believe this great software system for numerical control of
598 machines such as milling machines, lathes, plasma cutters, routers,
599 cutting machines, robots and hexapods, would do even better with more
600 in-person developer gatherings, so we plan to organise such gathering
603 <p>The Norwegian LinuxCNC developer gathering take place the weekend
604 Friday July
5th to
7th this year, and is open for everyone interested
605 in contributing to LinuxCNC and free software manufacturing. Up to
606 date information about the gathering can be found in
607 <a href=
"https://sourceforge.net/p/emc/mailman/emc-developers/thread/123eaae0-f3b9-4170-a251-b7d608f1e974%40bofh.no/">the
608 developer mailing list thread
</a> where the gathering was announced.
609 Thanks to the good people at
611 <a href=
"https://www.debian.org/">Debian
</a> as well as leftover money
612 from last years gathering from
613 <a href=
"https://www.redpill-linpro.com/">Redpill-Linpro
</a> and
614 <a href=
"https://www.nuugfoundation.no/no/">NUUG Foundation
</a>, we
615 have enough sponsor funds to pay for food, and probably also shelter
616 for the people traveling from afar to join us. If you would like to
617 join the gathering, get in touch and add your details on
618 <a href=
"https://pad.efn.no/p/linuxcnc-2024-norway">the pad
</a>.
</p>
620 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
621 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
622 <b><a href=
"bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a></b>.
</p>
628 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/linuxcnc">linuxcnc
</a>.
633 <div class=
"padding"></div>
637 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/45_orphaned_Debian_packages_moved_to_git__391_to_go.html">45 orphaned Debian packages moved to git,
391 to go
</a>
643 <p>Nine days ago, I started migrating orphaned Debian packages with no
644 version control system listed in debian/control of the source to git.
645 At the time there were
438 such packages. Now there are
391,
646 according to the UDD. In reality it is slightly less, as there is a
647 delay between uploads and UDD updates. In the nine days since, I have
648 thus been able to work my way through ten percent of the packages. I
649 am starting to run out of steam, and hope someone else will also help
650 brushing some dust of these packages. Here is a recipe how to do it.
652 I start by picking a random package by querying the UDD for a list of
653 10 random packages from the set of remaining packages:
656 PGPASSWORD="udd-mirror" psql --port=
5432 --host=udd-mirror.debian.net \
657 --username=udd-mirror udd -c "select source from sources \
658 where release = 'sid' and (vcs_url ilike '%anonscm.debian.org%' \
659 OR vcs_browser ilike '%anonscm.debian.org%' or vcs_url IS NULL \
660 OR vcs_browser IS NULL) AND maintainer ilike '%packages@qa.debian.org%' \
661 order by random() limit
10;"
664 <p>Next, I visit http://salsa.debian.org/debian and search for the
665 package name, to ensure no git repository already exist. If it does,
666 I clone it and try to get it to an uploadable state, and add the Vcs-*
667 entries in d/control to make the repository more widely known. These
668 packages are a minority, so I will not cover that use case here.
</p>
670 <p>For packages without an existing git repository, I run the
671 following script
<tt>debian-snap-to-salsa
</tt> to prepare a git
672 repository with the existing packaging.
</p>
677 # See also https://bugs.debian.org/
804722#
31
681 # Move to this Standards-Version.
686 if [ -z "$PKG" ]; then
687 echo "usage: $
0 <pkgname>"
691 if [ -e "${PKG}-salsa
" ]; then
692 echo "error: ${PKG}-salsa already exist, aborting.
"
696 if [ -z "ALLOWFAILURE
" ] ; then
700 # Fetch every snapshotted source package. Manually loop until all
701 # transfers succeed, as 'gbp import-dscs --debsnap' do not fail on
703 until debsnap --force -v $PKG || $ALLOWFAILURE ; do sleep 1; done
704 mkdir ${PKG}-salsa; cd ${PKG}-salsa
707 # Specify branches to override any debian/gbp.conf file present in the
709 gbp import-dscs --debian-branch=master --upstream-branch=upstream \
710 --pristine-tar ../source-$PKG/*.dsc
712 # Add Vcs pointing to Salsa Debian project (must be manually created
714 if ! grep -q ^Vcs- debian/control ; then
715 awk "BEGIN { s=
1 } /^\$/ { if (s==
1) { print \
"Vcs-Browser: https://salsa.debian.org/debian/$PKG\"; print \
"Vcs-Git: https://salsa.debian.org/debian/$PKG.git\" }; s=
0 } { print }
" < debian/control > debian/control.new && mv debian/control.new debian/control
716 git commit -m "Updated vcs in d/control to Salsa." debian/control
719 # Tell gbp to enforce the use of pristine-tar.
720 inifile +inifile debian/gbp.conf +create +section DEFAULT +key pristine-tar +value True
721 git add debian/gbp.conf
722 git commit -m "Added d/gbp.conf to enforce the use of pristine-tar." debian/gbp.conf
724 # Update to latest Standards-Version.
725 SV="$(grep ^Standards-Version: debian/control|awk '{print $
2}')"
726 if [ $SV_LATEST != $SV ]; then
727 sed -i "s/\(Standards-Version: \)\(.*\)/\
1$SV_LATEST/" debian/control
728 git commit -m "Updated Standards-Version from $SV to $SV_LATEST." debian/control
731 if grep -q pkg-config debian/control; then
732 sed -i s/pkg-config/pkgconf/ debian/control
733 git commit -m "Replaced obsolete pkg-config build dependency with pkgconf." debian/control
736 if grep -q libncurses5-dev debian/control; then
737 sed -i s/libncurses5-dev/libncurses-dev/ debian/control
738 git commit -m "Replaced obsolete libncurses5-dev build dependency with libncurses-dev." debian/control
742 Some times the debsnap script fail to download some of the versions.
743 In those cases I investigate, and if I decide the failing versions
744 will not be missed, I call it using ALLOWFAILURE=true to ignore the
745 problem and create the git repository anyway.
</p>
747 <p>With the git repository in place, I do a test build (gbp
748 buildpackage) to ensure the build is actually working. If it does not
749 I pick a different package, or if the build failure is trivial to fix,
750 I fix it before continuing. At this stage I revisit
751 http://salsa.debian.org/debian and create the project under this group
752 for the package. I then follow the instructions to publish the local
753 git repository. Here is from a recent example:
</p>
756 git remote add origin git@salsa.debian.org:debian/perl-byacc.git
757 git push --set-upstream origin master upstream pristine-tar
761 <p>With a working build, I have a look at the build rules if I want to
762 remove some more dust. I normally try to move to debhelper compat
763 level
13, which involves removing debian/compat and modifying
764 debian/control to build depend on debhelper-compat (=
13). I also test
765 with 'Rules-Requires-Root: no' in debian/control and verify in
766 debian/rules that hardening is enabled, and include all of these if
767 the package still build. If it fail to build with level
13, I try
768 with
12,
11,
10 and so on until I find a level where it build, as I do
769 not want to spend a lot of time fixing build issues.
</p>
771 <p>Some times, when I feel inspired, I make sure debian/copyright is
772 converted to the machine readable format, often by starting with
773 'debhelper -cc' and then cleaning up the autogenerated content until
774 it matches realities. If I feel like it, I might also clean up
775 non-dh-based debian/rules files to use the short style dh build
778 <p>Once I have removed all the dust I care to process for the package,
779 I run 'gbp dch' to generate a debian/changelog entry based on the
780 commits done so far, run 'dch -r' to switch from 'UNRELEASED' to
781 'unstable' and get an editor to make sure the 'QA upload' marker is in
782 place and that all long commit descriptions are wrapped into sensible
783 lengths, run 'debcommit --release -a' to commit and tag the new
784 debian/changelog entry, run 'debuild -S' to build a source only
785 package, and 'dput ../perl-byacc_2.0-
10_source.changes' to do the
786 upload. During the entire process, and many times per step, I run
787 'debuild' to verify the changes done still work. I also some times
788 verify the set of built files using 'find debian' to see if I can spot
789 any problems (like no file in usr/bin any more or empty package). I
790 also try to fix all lintian issues reported at the end of each
793 <p>If I find Debian specific patches, I try to ensure their metadata
794 is fairly up to date and some times I even try to reach out to
795 upstream, to make the upstream project aware of the patches. Most of
796 my emails bounce, so the success rate is low. For projects with no
797 Homepage entry in debian/control I try to track down one, and for
798 packages with no debian/watch file I try to create one. But at least
799 for some of the packages I have been unable to find a functioning
800 upstream, and must skip both of these.
</p>
802 <p>If I could handle ten percent in nine days, twenty people could
803 complete the rest in less then five days. I use approximately twenty
804 minutes per package, when I have twenty minutes spare time to spend.
805 Perhaps you got twenty minutes to spare too?
</p>
807 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
808 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
809 <b><a href=
"bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a></b>.
</p>
811 <p><strong>Update
2024-
05-
04:
</strong> There is
812 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2024-05-04-debian-snap-to-salsa.sh">an
813 updated edition of my migration script
</a>, last updated
820 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
825 <div class=
"padding"></div>
829 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Time_to_move_orphaned_Debian_packages_to_git.html">Time to move orphaned Debian packages to git
</a>
835 <p>There are several packages in Debian without a associated git
836 repository with the packaging history. This is unfortunate and it
837 would be nice if more of these would do so. Quote a lot of these are
838 without a maintainer, ie listed as maintained by the
839 '
<a href=
"https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?email=packages%40qa.debian.org">Debian
840 QA Group
</a>' place holder. In fact,
438 packages have this property
841 according to UDD (
<tt>SELECT source FROM sources WHERE release = 'sid'
842 AND (vcs_url ilike '%anonscm.debian.org%' OR vcs_browser ilike
843 '%anonscm.debian.org%' or vcs_url IS NULL OR vcs_browser IS NULL) AND
844 maintainer ilike '%packages@qa.debian.org%';
</tt>). Such packages can
845 be updated without much coordination by any Debian developer, as they
846 are considered orphaned.
</p>
848 <p>To try to improve the situation and reduce the number of packages
849 without associated git repository, I started a few days ago to search
850 out candiates and provide them with a git repository under the
851 'debian' collaborative Salsa project. I started with the packages
852 pointing to obsolete Alioth git repositories, and am now working my
853 way across the ones completely without git references. In addition to
854 updating the Vcs-* debian/control fields, I try to update
855 Standards-Version, debhelper compat level, simplify d/rules, switch to
856 Rules-Requires-Root: no and fix lintian issues reported. I only
857 implement those that are trivial to fix, to avoid spending too much
858 time on each orphaned package. So far my experience is that it take
859 aproximately
20 minutes to convert a package without any git
860 references, and a lot more for packages with existing git repositories
861 incompatible with git-buildpackages.
</p>
863 <p>So far I have converted
10 packages, and I will keep going until I
864 run out of steam. As should be clear from the numbers, there is
865 enough packages remaining for more people to do the same without
866 stepping on each others toes. I find it useful to start by searching
867 for a git repo already on salsa, as I find that some times a git repo
868 has already been created, but no new version is uploaded to Debian
869 yet. In those cases I start with the existing git repository. I
870 convert to the git-buildpackage+pristine-tar workflow, and ensure a
871 debian/gbp.conf file with "pristine-tar=True" is added early, to avoid
872 uploading a orig.tar.gz with the wrong checksum by mistake. Did that
873 three times in the begin before I remembered my mistake.
</p>
875 <p>So, if you are a Debian Developer and got some spare time, perhaps
876 considering migrating some orphaned packages to git?
</p>
878 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
879 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
880 <b><a href=
"bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a></b>.
</p>
886 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
891 <div class=
"padding"></div>
895 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/New_and_improved_sqlcipher_in_Debian_for_accessing_Signal_database.html">New and improved sqlcipher in Debian for accessing Signal database
</a>
901 <p>For a while now I wanted to have direct access to the
902 <a href=
"https://signal.org/">Signal
</a> database of messages and
903 channels of my Desktop edition of Signal. I prefer the enforced end
904 to end encryption of Signal these days for my communication with
905 friends and family, to increase the level of safety and privacy as
906 well as raising the cost of the mass surveillance government and
907 non-government entities practice these days. In August I came across
909 <a href=
"https://www.yoranbrondsema.com/post/the-guide-to-extracting-statistics-from-your-signal-conversations/">recipe
910 on how to use sqlcipher to extract statistics from the Signal
911 database
</a> explaining how to do this. Unfortunately this did not
912 work with the version of sqlcipher in Debian. The
913 <a href=
"http://tracker.debian.org/sqlcipher/">sqlcipher
</a>
914 package is a "fork" of the sqlite package with added support for
915 encrypted databases. Sadly the current Debian maintainer
916 <a href=
"https://bugs.debian.org/961598">announced more than three
917 years ago that he did not have time to maintain sqlcipher
</a>, so it
918 seemed unlikely to be upgraded by the maintainer. I was reluctant to
919 take on the job myself, as I have very limited experience maintaining
920 shared libraries in Debian. After waiting and hoping for a few
921 months, I gave up the last week, and set out to update the package. In
922 the process I orphaned it to make it more obvious for the next person
923 looking at it that the package need proper maintenance.
</p>
925 <p>The version in Debian was around five years old, and quite a lot of
926 changes had taken place upstream into the Debian maintenance git
927 repository. After spending a few days importing the new upstream
928 versions, realising that upstream did not care much for SONAME
929 versioning as I saw library symbols being both added and removed with
930 minor version number changes to the project, I concluded that I had to
931 do a SONAME bump of the library package to avoid surprising the
932 reverse dependencies. I even added a simple
933 autopkgtest script to ensure the package work as intended. Dug deep
934 into the hole of learning shared library maintenance, I set out a few
935 days ago to upload the new version to Debian experimental to see what
936 the quality assurance framework in Debian had to say about the result.
937 The feedback told me the pacakge was not too shabby, and yesterday I
938 uploaded the latest version to Debian unstable. It should enter
939 testing today or tomorrow, perhaps delayed by
940 <a href=
"https://bugs.debian.org/1055812">a small library
943 <p>Armed with a new version of sqlcipher, I can now have a look at the
944 SQL database in ~/.config/Signal/sql/db.sqlite. First, one need to
945 fetch the encryption key from the Signal configuration using this
946 simple JSON extraction command:
</p>
948 <pre>/usr/bin/jq -r '."key"' ~/.config/Signal/config.json
</pre>
950 <p>Assuming the result from that command is 'secretkey', which is a
951 hexadecimal number representing the key used to encrypt the database.
952 Next, one can now connect to the database and inject the encryption
953 key for access via SQL to fetch information from the database. Here
954 is an example dumping the database structure:
</p>
957 % sqlcipher ~/.config/Signal/sql/db.sqlite
958 sqlite
> PRAGMA key = "x'secretkey'";
960 CREATE TABLE sqlite_stat1(tbl,idx,stat);
961 CREATE TABLE conversations(
962 id STRING PRIMARY KEY ASC,
970 , profileFamilyName TEXT, profileFullName TEXT, e164 TEXT, serviceId TEXT, groupId TEXT, profileLastFetchedAt INTEGER);
971 CREATE TABLE identityKeys(
972 id STRING PRIMARY KEY ASC,
976 id STRING PRIMARY KEY ASC,
979 CREATE TABLE sessions(
983 , ourServiceId STRING, serviceId STRING);
984 CREATE TABLE attachment_downloads(
985 id STRING primary key,
990 CREATE TABLE sticker_packs(
995 coverStickerId INTEGER,
997 downloadAttempts INTEGER,
1001 stickerCount INTEGER,
1003 , attemptedStatus STRING, position INTEGER DEFAULT
0 NOT NULL, storageID STRING, storageVersion INTEGER, storageUnknownFields BLOB, storageNeedsSync
1004 INTEGER DEFAULT
0 NOT NULL);
1005 CREATE TABLE stickers(
1006 id INTEGER NOT NULL,
1007 packId TEXT NOT NULL,
1011 isCoverOnly INTEGER,
1016 PRIMARY KEY (id, packId),
1017 CONSTRAINT stickers_fk
1018 FOREIGN KEY (packId)
1019 REFERENCES sticker_packs(id)
1022 CREATE TABLE sticker_references(
1025 CONSTRAINT sticker_references_fk
1027 REFERENCES sticker_packs(id)
1030 CREATE TABLE emojis(
1031 shortName TEXT PRIMARY KEY,
1034 CREATE TABLE messages(
1035 rowid INTEGER PRIMARY KEY ASC,
1041 schemaVersion INTEGER,
1042 conversationId STRING,
1043 received_at INTEGER,
1045 hasAttachments INTEGER,
1046 hasFileAttachments INTEGER,
1047 hasVisualMediaAttachments INTEGER,
1048 expireTimer INTEGER,
1049 expirationStartTimestamp INTEGER,
1052 messageTimer INTEGER,
1053 messageTimerStart INTEGER,
1054 messageTimerExpiresAt INTEGER,
1057 sourceServiceId TEXT, serverGuid STRING NULL, sourceDevice INTEGER, storyId STRING, isStory INTEGER
1058 GENERATED ALWAYS AS (type IS 'story'), isChangeCreatedByUs INTEGER NOT NULL DEFAULT
0, isTimerChangeFromSync INTEGER
1059 GENERATED ALWAYS AS (
1060 json_extract(json, '$.expirationTimerUpdate.fromSync') IS
1
1061 ), seenStatus NUMBER default
0, storyDistributionListId STRING, expiresAt INT
1064 expirationStartTimestamp + (expireTimer *
1000),
1066 )), shouldAffectActivity INTEGER
1067 GENERATED ALWAYS AS (
1071 'change-number-notification',
1072 'contact-removed-notification',
1073 'conversation-merge',
1074 'group-v1-migration',
1076 'message-history-unsynced',
1079 'universal-timer-notification',
1082 ), shouldAffectPreview INTEGER
1083 GENERATED ALWAYS AS (
1087 'change-number-notification',
1088 'contact-removed-notification',
1089 'conversation-merge',
1090 'group-v1-migration',
1092 'message-history-unsynced',
1095 'universal-timer-notification',
1098 ), isUserInitiatedMessage INTEGER
1099 GENERATED ALWAYS AS (
1103 'change-number-notification',
1104 'contact-removed-notification',
1105 'conversation-merge',
1106 'group-v1-migration',
1109 'message-history-unsynced',
1112 'universal-timer-notification',
1115 ), mentionsMe INTEGER NOT NULL DEFAULT
0, isGroupLeaveEvent INTEGER
1116 GENERATED ALWAYS AS (
1117 type IS 'group-v2-change' AND
1118 json_array_length(json_extract(json, '$.groupV2Change.details')) IS
1 AND
1119 json_extract(json, '$.groupV2Change.details[
0].type') IS 'member-remove' AND
1120 json_extract(json, '$.groupV2Change.from') IS NOT NULL AND
1121 json_extract(json, '$.groupV2Change.from') IS json_extract(json, '$.groupV2Change.details[
0].aci')
1122 ), isGroupLeaveEventFromOther INTEGER
1123 GENERATED ALWAYS AS (
1124 isGroupLeaveEvent IS
1
1126 isChangeCreatedByUs IS
0
1128 GENERATED ALWAYS AS (
1129 json_extract(json, '$.callId')
1131 CREATE TABLE sqlite_stat4(tbl,idx,neq,nlt,ndlt,sample);
1133 id TEXT PRIMARY KEY,
1134 queueType TEXT STRING NOT NULL,
1135 timestamp INTEGER NOT NULL,
1138 CREATE TABLE reactions(
1139 conversationId STRING,
1142 messageReceivedAt INTEGER,
1143 targetAuthorAci STRING,
1144 targetTimestamp INTEGER,
1146 , messageId STRING);
1147 CREATE TABLE senderKeys(
1148 id TEXT PRIMARY KEY NOT NULL,
1149 senderId TEXT NOT NULL,
1150 distributionId TEXT NOT NULL,
1152 lastUpdatedDate NUMBER NOT NULL
1154 CREATE TABLE unprocessed(
1155 id STRING PRIMARY KEY ASC,
1162 serverTimestamp INTEGER,
1163 sourceServiceId STRING
1164 , serverGuid STRING NULL, sourceDevice INTEGER, receivedAtCounter INTEGER, urgent INTEGER, story INTEGER);
1165 CREATE TABLE sendLogPayloads(
1166 id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY ASC,
1168 timestamp INTEGER NOT NULL,
1169 contentHint INTEGER NOT NULL,
1171 , urgent INTEGER, hasPniSignatureMessage INTEGER DEFAULT
0 NOT NULL);
1172 CREATE TABLE sendLogRecipients(
1173 payloadId INTEGER NOT NULL,
1175 recipientServiceId STRING NOT NULL,
1176 deviceId INTEGER NOT NULL,
1178 PRIMARY KEY (payloadId, recipientServiceId, deviceId),
1180 CONSTRAINT sendLogRecipientsForeignKey
1181 FOREIGN KEY (payloadId)
1182 REFERENCES sendLogPayloads(id)
1185 CREATE TABLE sendLogMessageIds(
1186 payloadId INTEGER NOT NULL,
1188 messageId STRING NOT NULL,
1190 PRIMARY KEY (payloadId, messageId),
1192 CONSTRAINT sendLogMessageIdsForeignKey
1193 FOREIGN KEY (payloadId)
1194 REFERENCES sendLogPayloads(id)
1197 CREATE TABLE preKeys(
1198 id STRING PRIMARY KEY ASC,
1200 , ourServiceId NUMBER
1201 GENERATED ALWAYS AS (json_extract(json, '$.ourServiceId')));
1202 CREATE TABLE signedPreKeys(
1203 id STRING PRIMARY KEY ASC,
1205 , ourServiceId NUMBER
1206 GENERATED ALWAYS AS (json_extract(json, '$.ourServiceId')));
1207 CREATE TABLE badges(
1208 id TEXT PRIMARY KEY,
1209 category TEXT NOT NULL,
1211 descriptionTemplate TEXT NOT NULL
1213 CREATE TABLE badgeImageFiles(
1214 badgeId TEXT REFERENCES badges(id)
1217 'order' INTEGER NOT NULL,
1222 CREATE TABLE storyReads (
1223 authorId STRING NOT NULL,
1224 conversationId STRING NOT NULL,
1225 storyId STRING NOT NULL,
1226 storyReadDate NUMBER NOT NULL,
1228 PRIMARY KEY (authorId, storyId)
1230 CREATE TABLE storyDistributions(
1231 id STRING PRIMARY KEY NOT NULL,
1234 senderKeyInfoJson STRING
1235 , deletedAtTimestamp INTEGER, allowsReplies INTEGER, isBlockList INTEGER, storageID STRING, storageVersion INTEGER, storageUnknownFields BLOB, storageNeedsSync INTEGER);
1236 CREATE TABLE storyDistributionMembers(
1237 listId STRING NOT NULL REFERENCES storyDistributions(id)
1240 serviceId STRING NOT NULL,
1242 PRIMARY KEY (listId, serviceId)
1244 CREATE TABLE uninstalled_sticker_packs (
1245 id STRING NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY,
1246 uninstalledAt NUMBER NOT NULL,
1248 storageVersion NUMBER,
1249 storageUnknownFields BLOB,
1250 storageNeedsSync INTEGER NOT NULL
1252 CREATE TABLE groupCallRingCancellations(
1253 ringId INTEGER PRIMARY KEY,
1254 createdAt INTEGER NOT NULL
1256 CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS 'messages_fts_data'(id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY, block BLOB);
1257 CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS 'messages_fts_idx'(segid, term, pgno, PRIMARY KEY(segid, term)) WITHOUT ROWID;
1258 CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS 'messages_fts_content'(id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY, c0);
1259 CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS 'messages_fts_docsize'(id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY, sz BLOB);
1260 CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS 'messages_fts_config'(k PRIMARY KEY, v) WITHOUT ROWID;
1261 CREATE TABLE edited_messages(
1262 messageId STRING REFERENCES messages(id)
1266 , conversationId STRING);
1267 CREATE TABLE mentions (
1268 messageId REFERENCES messages(id) ON DELETE CASCADE,
1273 CREATE TABLE kyberPreKeys(
1274 id STRING PRIMARY KEY NOT NULL,
1275 json TEXT NOT NULL, ourServiceId NUMBER
1276 GENERATED ALWAYS AS (json_extract(json, '$.ourServiceId')));
1277 CREATE TABLE callsHistory (
1278 callId TEXT PRIMARY KEY,
1279 peerId TEXT NOT NULL, -- conversation id (legacy) | uuid | groupId | roomId
1280 ringerId TEXT DEFAULT NULL, -- ringer uuid
1281 mode TEXT NOT NULL, -- enum "Direct" | "Group"
1282 type TEXT NOT NULL, -- enum "Audio" | "Video" | "Group"
1283 direction TEXT NOT NULL, -- enum "Incoming" | "Outgoing
1284 -- Direct: enum "Pending" | "Missed" | "Accepted" | "Deleted"
1285 -- Group: enum "GenericGroupCall" | "OutgoingRing" | "Ringing" | "Joined" | "Missed" | "Declined" | "Accepted" | "Deleted"
1286 status TEXT NOT NULL,
1287 timestamp INTEGER NOT NULL,
1288 UNIQUE (callId, peerId) ON CONFLICT FAIL
1290 [ dropped all indexes to save space in this blog post ]
1291 CREATE TRIGGER messages_on_view_once_update AFTER UPDATE ON messages
1293 new.body IS NOT NULL AND new.isViewOnce =
1
1295 DELETE FROM messages_fts WHERE rowid = old.rowid;
1297 CREATE TRIGGER messages_on_insert AFTER INSERT ON messages
1298 WHEN new.isViewOnce IS NOT
1 AND new.storyId IS NULL
1300 INSERT INTO messages_fts
1303 (new.rowid, new.body);
1305 CREATE TRIGGER messages_on_delete AFTER DELETE ON messages BEGIN
1306 DELETE FROM messages_fts WHERE rowid = old.rowid;
1307 DELETE FROM sendLogPayloads WHERE id IN (
1308 SELECT payloadId FROM sendLogMessageIds
1309 WHERE messageId = old.id
1311 DELETE FROM reactions WHERE rowid IN (
1312 SELECT rowid FROM reactions
1313 WHERE messageId = old.id
1315 DELETE FROM storyReads WHERE storyId = old.storyId;
1317 CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE messages_fts USING fts5(
1319 tokenize = 'signal_tokenizer'
1321 CREATE TRIGGER messages_on_update AFTER UPDATE ON messages
1323 (new.body IS NULL OR old.body IS NOT new.body) AND
1324 new.isViewOnce IS NOT
1 AND new.storyId IS NULL
1326 DELETE FROM messages_fts WHERE rowid = old.rowid;
1327 INSERT INTO messages_fts
1330 (new.rowid, new.body);
1332 CREATE TRIGGER messages_on_insert_insert_mentions AFTER INSERT ON messages
1334 INSERT INTO mentions (messageId, mentionAci, start, length)
1336 SELECT messages.id, bodyRanges.value -
>> 'mentionAci' as mentionAci,
1337 bodyRanges.value -
>> 'start' as start,
1338 bodyRanges.value -
>> 'length' as length
1339 FROM messages, json_each(messages.json -
>> 'bodyRanges') as bodyRanges
1340 WHERE bodyRanges.value -
>> 'mentionAci' IS NOT NULL
1342 AND messages.id = new.id;
1344 CREATE TRIGGER messages_on_update_update_mentions AFTER UPDATE ON messages
1346 DELETE FROM mentions WHERE messageId = new.id;
1347 INSERT INTO mentions (messageId, mentionAci, start, length)
1349 SELECT messages.id, bodyRanges.value -
>> 'mentionAci' as mentionAci,
1350 bodyRanges.value -
>> 'start' as start,
1351 bodyRanges.value -
>> 'length' as length
1352 FROM messages, json_each(messages.json -
>> 'bodyRanges') as bodyRanges
1353 WHERE bodyRanges.value -
>> 'mentionAci' IS NOT NULL
1355 AND messages.id = new.id;
1360 <p>Finally I have the tool needed to inspect and process Signal
1361 messages that I need, without using the vendor provided client. Now
1362 on to transforming it to a more useful format.
</p>
1364 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1365 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1366 <b><a href=
"bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a></b>.
</p>
1372 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance
</a>.
1377 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1381 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_17.html">New chrpath release
0.17</a>
1387 <p>The chrpath package provide a simple command line tool to remove or
1388 modify the rpath or runpath of compiled ELF program. It is almost
10
1389 years since I updated the code base, but I stumbled over the tool
1390 today, and decided it was time to move the code base from Subversion
1391 to git and find a new home for it, as the previous one (Debian Alioth)
1392 has been shut down. I decided to go with
1393 <a href=
"https://codeberg.org/">Codeberg
</a> this time, as it is my git
1394 service of choice these days, did a quick and dirty migration to git
1395 and updated the code with a few patches I found in the Debian bug
1396 tracker. These are the release notes:
</p>
1398 <p>New in
0.17 released
2023-
11-
10:
</p>
1401 <li>Moved project to Codeberg, as Alioth is shut down.
</li>
1402 <li>Add Solaris support (use
<sys/byteorder.h
> instead of
<byteswap.h
>).
1403 Patch from Rainer Orth.
</li>
1404 <li>Added missing newline from printf() line. Patch from Frank Dana.
</li>
1405 <li>Corrected handling of multiple ELF sections. Patch from Frank Dana.
</li>
1406 <li>Updated build rules for .deb. Partly based on patch from djcj.
</li>
1409 <p>The latest edition is tagged and available from
1410 <a href=
"https://codeberg.org/pere/chrpath">https://codeberg.org/pere/chrpath
</a>.
1412 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1413 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1414 <b><a href=
"bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a></b>.
</p>
1420 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
1425 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1429 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Test_framework_for_DocBook_processors___formatters.html">Test framework for DocBook processors / formatters
</a>
1435 <p>All the books I have published so far has been using
1436 <a href=
"https://docbook.org/">DocBook
</a> somewhere in the process.
1437 For the first book, the source format was DocBook, while for every
1438 later book it was an intermediate format used as the stepping stone to
1439 be able to present the same manuscript in several formats, on paper,
1440 as ebook in ePub format, as a HTML page and as a PDF file either for
1441 paper production or for Internet consumption. This is made possible
1442 with a wide variety of free software tools with DocBook support in
1443 Debian. The source format of later books have been docx via rst,
1444 Markdown, Filemaker and Asciidoc, and for all of these I was able to
1445 generate a suitable DocBook file for further processing using
1446 <a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/pandoc">pandoc
</a>,
1447 <a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/asciidoc">a2x
</a> and
1448 <a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/asciidoctor">asciidoctor
</a>,
1449 as well as rendering using
1450 <a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/xmlto">xmlto
</a>,
1451 <a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/dbtoepub">dbtoepub
</a>,
1452 <a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/dblatex">dblatex
</a>,
1453 <a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/docbook-xsl">docbook-xsl
</a> and
1454 <a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/fop">fop
</a>.
</p>
1456 <p>Most of the
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/publisher/">books I
1457 have published
</a> are translated books, with English as the source
1458 language. The use of
1459 <a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/po4a">po4a
</a> to
1460 handle translations using the gettext PO format has been a blessing,
1461 but publishing translated books had triggered the need to ensure the
1462 DocBook tools handle relevant languages correctly. For every new
1463 language I have published, I had to submit patches dblatex, dbtoepub
1464 and docbook-xsl fixing incorrect language and country specific issues
1465 in the framework themselves. Typically this has been missing keywords
1466 like 'figure' or sort ordering of index entries. After a while it
1467 became tiresome to only discover issues like this by accident, and I
1468 decided to write a DocBook "test framework" exercising various
1469 features of DocBook and allowing me to see all features exercised for
1470 a given language. It consist of a set of DocBook files, a version
4
1471 book, a version
5 book, a v4 book set, a v4 selection of problematic
1472 tables, one v4 testing sidefloat and finally one v4 testing a book of
1473 articles. The DocBook files are accompanied with a set of build rules
1474 for building PDF using dblatex and docbook-xsl/fop, HTML using xmlto
1475 or docbook-xsl and epub using dbtoepub. The result is a set of files
1476 visualizing footnotes, indexes, table of content list, figures,
1477 formulas and other DocBook features, allowing for a quick review on
1478 the completeness of the given locale settings. To build with a
1479 different language setting, all one need to do is edit the lang= value
1480 in the .xml file to pick a different ISO
639 code value and run
1483 <p>The
<a href=
"https://codeberg.org/pere/docbook-example/">test framework
1484 source code
</a> is available from Codeberg, and a generated set of
1485 presentations of the various examples is available as Codeberg static
1487 <a href=
"https://pere.codeberg.page/docbook-example/">https://pere.codeberg.page/docbook-example/
</a>.
1488 Using this test framework I have been able to discover and report
1489 several bugs and missing features in various tools, and got a lot of
1490 them fixed. For example I got Northern Sami keywords added to both
1491 docbook-xsl and dblatex, fixed several typos in Norwegian bokmål and
1492 Norwegian Nynorsk, support for non-ascii title IDs added to pandoc,
1493 Norwegian index sorting support fixed in xindy and initial Norwegian
1494 Bokmål support added to dblatex. Some issues still remains, though.
1495 Default index sorting rules are still broken in several tools, so the
1496 Norwegian letters æ, ø and å are more often than not sorted properly
1497 in the book index.
</p>
1499 <p>The test framework recently received some more polish, as part of
1500 publishing my latest book. This book contained a lot of fairly
1501 complex tables, which exposed bugs in some of the tools. This made me
1502 add a new test file with various tables, as well as spend some time to
1503 brush up the build rules. My goal is for the test framework to
1504 exercise all DocBook features to make it easier to see which features
1505 work with different processors, and hopefully get them all to support
1506 the full set of DocBook features. Feel free to send patches to extend
1507 the test set, and test it with your favorite DocBook processor.
1508 Please visit these two URLs to learn more:
</p>
1511 <li><a href=
"https://codeberg.org/pere/docbook-example/">https://codeberg.org/pere/docbook-example/
</a></li>
1512 <li><a href=
"https://pere.codeberg.page/docbook-example/">https://pere.codeberg.page/docbook-example/
</a></li>
1515 <p>If you want to learn more on Docbook and translations, I recommend
1516 having a look at the
<a href=
"https://docbook.org/">the DocBook
1518 <a href=
"https://doccookbook.sourceforge.net/html/en/">the DoCookBook
1519 site
<a/> and my earlier blog post on
1520 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/From_English_wiki_to_translated_PDF_and_epub_via_Docbook.html">how
1521 the Skolelinux project process and translate documentation
</a>, a talk I gave earlier this year on
1522 <a href=
"https://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20230314-oversetting-og-publisering-av-b%c3%b8ker-med-fri-programvare/">how
1523 to translate and publish books using free software
</a> (Norwegian
1528 https://github.com/docbook/xslt10-stylesheets/issues/205 (docbook-xsl: sme support)
1529 https://bugs.debian.org/968437 (xindy: index sorting rules for nb/nn)
1530 https://bugs.debian.org/856123 (pandoc: markdown to docbook with non-english titles)
1531 https://bugs.debian.org/864813 (dblatex: missing nb words)
1532 https://bugs.debian.org/756386 (dblatex: index sorting rules for nb/nn)
1533 https://bugs.debian.org/796871 (dbtoepub: index sorting rules for nb/nn)
1534 https://bugs.debian.org/792616 (dblatex: PDF metadata)
1535 https://bugs.debian.org/686908 (docbook-xsl: index sorting rules for nb/nn)
1536 https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&atid=373747&aid=3556630&group_id=21935 (docbook-xsl: nb/nn support)
1537 https://bugs.debian.org/684391 (dblatex: initial nb support)
1541 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1542 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1543 <b><a href=
"bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a></b>.
</p>
1549 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
1554 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1558 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/What_did_I_learn_from_OpenSnitch_this_summer_.html">What did I learn from OpenSnitch this summer?
</a>
1565 <a href=
"https://www.debian.org/News/2023/20230610">release of Debian
1566 12 Bookworm
</a>, I am happy to know the
1567 <a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/opensnitch">the interactive
1568 application firewall OpenSnitch
</a> is available for a wider audience.
1569 I have been running it for a few weeks now, and have been surprised
1570 about some of the programs connecting to the Internet. Some programs
1571 are obviously calling out from my machine, like the NTP network based
1572 clock adjusting system and Tor to reach other Tor clients, but others
1573 were more dubious. For example, the KDE Window manager try to look up
1574 the host name in DNS, for no apparent reason, but if this lookup is
1575 blocked the KDE desktop get periodically stuck when I use it. Another
1576 surprise was how much Firefox call home directly to mozilla.com,
1577 mozilla.net and googleapis.com, to mention a few, when I visit other
1578 web pages. This direct connection happen even if I told Firefox to
1579 always use a proxy, and the proxy setting is ignored for this traffic.
1580 Other surprising connections come from audacity and dirmngr (I do not
1581 use Gnome). It took some trial and error to get a good default set of
1582 permissions. Without it, I would get popups asking for permissions at
1583 any time, also the most inconvenient ones where I am in the middle of
1584 a time sensitive gaming session.
</p>
1586 <p>I suspect some application developers should rethink when then need
1587 to use network connections or DNS lookups, and recommend testing
1588 OpenSnitch (only
<tt>apt install opensnitch
</tt> away in Debian
1589 Bookworm) to locate and report any surprising Internet connections on
1590 your desktop machine.
</p>
1592 <p>At the moment the upstream developer and Debian package maintainer
1593 is working on making the system more reliable in Debian, by enabling
1594 the eBPF kernel module to track processes and connections instead of
1595 depending in content in /proc/. This should enter unstable fairly
1598 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1599 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1600 <b><a href=
"bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a></b>.
</p>
1602 <p><strong>Update
2023-
06-
12</strong>: I got a tip about
1603 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/PrivacyIssues">a list of privacy
1604 issues in Free Software
</a> and the
1605 <a href=
"irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-privacy">#debian-privacy IRC
1606 channel
</a> discussing these topics.
</p>
1613 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/opensnitch">opensnitch
</a>.
1618 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1622 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/wmbusmeters__parse_data_from_your_utility_meter___nice_free_software.html">wmbusmeters, parse data from your utility meter - nice free software
</a>
1628 <p>There is a European standard for reading utility meters like water,
1629 gas, electricity or heat distribution meters. The
1630 <a href=
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meter-Bus">Meter-Bus standard
1631 (EN
13757-
2, EN
13757-
3 and EN
13757–
4)
</a> provide a cross vendor way
1632 to talk to and collect meter data. I ran into this standard when I
1633 wanted to monitor some heat distribution meters, and managed to find
1634 free software that could do the job. The meters in question broadcast
1635 encrypted messages with meter information via radio, and the hardest
1636 part was to track down the encryption keys from the vendor. With this
1637 in place I could set up a MQTT gateway to submit the meter data for
1640 <p>The free software systems in question,
1641 <a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/rtl-wmbus">rtl-wmbus
</a> to
1642 read the messages from a software defined radio, and
1643 <a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/wmbusmeters">wmbusmeters
</a> to
1644 decrypt and decode the content of the messages, is working very well
1645 and allowe me to get frequent updates from my meters. I got in touch
1646 with upstream last year to see if there was any interest in publishing
1647 the packages via Debian. I was very happy to learn that Fredrik
1648 Öhrström volunteered to maintain the packages, and I have since
1649 assisted him in getting Debian package build rules in place as well as
1650 sponsoring the packages into the Debian archive. Sadly we completed
1651 it too late for them to become part of the next stable Debian release
1652 (Bookworm). The wmbusmeters package just cleared the NEW queue. It
1653 will need some work to fix a built problem, but I expect Fredrik will
1654 find a solution soon.
</p>
1656 <p>If you got a infrastructure meter supporting the Meter Bus
1657 standard, I strongly recommend having a look at these nice
1660 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1661 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1662 <b><a href=
"bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a></b>.
</p>
1668 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software
</a>.
1673 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1677 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/The_2023_LinuxCNC_Norwegian_developer_gathering.html">The
2023 LinuxCNC Norwegian developer gathering
</a>
1683 <p>The LinuxCNC project is making headway these days. A lot of
1684 patches and issues have seen activity on
1685 <a href=
"https://github.com/LinuxCNC/linuxcnc/">the project github
1686 pages
</a> recently. A few weeks ago there was a developer gathering
1687 over at the
<a href=
"https://tormach.com/">Tormach
</a> headquarter in
1688 Wisconsin, and now we are planning a new gathering in Norway. If you
1689 wonder what LinuxCNC is, lets quote Wikipedia:
</p>
1692 "LinuxCNC is a software system for numerical control of
1693 machines such as milling machines, lathes, plasma cutters, routers,
1694 cutting machines, robots and hexapods. It can control up to
9 axes or
1695 joints of a CNC machine using G-code (RS-
274NGC) as input. It has
1696 several GUIs suited to specific kinds of usage (touch screen,
1697 interactive development)."
1700 <p>The Norwegian developer gathering take place the weekend June
16th
1701 to
18th this year, and is open for everyone interested in contributing
1702 to LinuxCNC. Up to date information about the gathering can be found
1704 <a href=
"https://sourceforge.net/p/emc/mailman/emc-developers/thread/sa64jp06nob.fsf%40hjemme.reinholdtsen.name/#msg37837251">the
1705 developer mailing list thread
</a> where the gathering was announced.
1706 Thanks to the good people at
1707 <a href=
"https://www.debian.org/">Debian
</a>,
1708 <a href=
"https://www.redpill-linpro.com/">Redpill-Linpro
</a> and
1709 <a href=
"https://www.nuugfoundation.no/no/">NUUG Foundation
</a>, we
1710 have enough sponsor funds to pay for food, and shelter for the people
1711 traveling from afar to join us. If you would like to join the
1712 gathering, get in touch.
</p>
1714 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1715 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1716 <b><a href=
"bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a></b>.
</p>
1722 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/linuxcnc">linuxcnc
</a>.
1727 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1731 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/OpenSnitch_in_Debian_ready_for_prime_time.html">OpenSnitch in Debian ready for prime time
</a>
1738 <a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/opensnitch">the interactive
1739 application firewall OpenSnitch
</a> package in Debian now got the
1740 latest fixes ready for Debian Bookworm. Because it depend on a
1741 package missing on some architectures, the autopkgtest check of the
1742 testing migration script did not understand that the tests were
1743 actually working, so the migration was delayed. A bug in the package
1744 dependencies is also fixed, so those installing the firewall package
1745 (opensnitch) now also get the GUI admin tool (python3-opensnitch-ui)
1746 installed by default. I am very grateful to Gustavo Iñiguez Goya for
1747 his work on getting the package ready for Debian Bookworm.
</p>
1749 <p>Armed with this package I have discovered some surprising
1750 connections from programs I believed were able to work completly
1751 offline, and it has already proven its worth, at least to me. If you
1752 too want to get more familiar with the kind of programs using
1753 Internett connections on your machine, I recommend testing
<tt>apt
1754 install opensnitch
</tt> in Bookworm and see what you think.
</p>
1756 <p>The package is still not able to build its eBPF module within
1757 Debian. Not sure how much work it would be to get it working, but
1758 suspect some kernel related packages need to be extended with more
1759 header files to get it working.
</p>
1761 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1762 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1763 <b><a href=
"bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a></b>.
</p>
1769 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/opensnitch">opensnitch
</a>.
1774 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1778 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Speech_to_text__she_APTly_whispered__how_hard_can_it_be_.html">Speech to text, she APTly whispered, how hard can it be?
</a>
1784 <p>While visiting a convention during Easter, it occurred to me that
1785 it would be great if I could have a digital Dictaphone with
1786 transcribing capabilities, providing me with texts to cut-n-paste into
1787 stuff I need to write. The background is that long drives often bring
1788 up the urge to write on texts I am working on, which of course is out
1789 of the question while driving. With the release of
1790 <a href=
"https://github.com/openai/whisper/">OpenAI Whisper
</a>, this
1791 seem to be within reach with Free Software, so I decided to give it a
1792 go. OpenAI Whisper is a Linux based neural network system to read in
1793 audio files and provide text representation of the speech in that
1794 audio recording. It handle multiple languages and according to its
1795 creators even can translate into a different language than the spoken
1796 one. I have not tested the latter feature. It can either use the CPU
1797 or a GPU with CUDA support. As far as I can tell, CUDA in practice
1798 limit that feature to NVidia graphics cards. I have few of those, as
1799 they do not work great with free software drivers, and have not tested
1800 the GPU option. While looking into the matter, I did discover some
1801 work to provide CUDA support on non-NVidia GPUs, and some work with
1802 the library used by Whisper to port it to other GPUs, but have not
1803 spent much time looking into GPU support yet. I've so far used an old
1804 X220 laptop as my test machine, and only transcribed using its
1807 <p>As it from a privacy standpoint is unthinkable to use computers
1808 under control of someone else (aka a "cloud" service) to transcribe
1809 ones thoughts and personal notes, I want to run the transcribing
1810 system locally on my own computers. The only sensible approach to me
1811 is to make the effort I put into this available for any Linux user and
1812 to upload the needed packages into Debian. Looking at Debian Bookworm, I
1813 discovered that only three packages were missing,
1814 <a href=
"https://bugs.debian.org/1034307">tiktoken
</a>,
1815 <a href=
"https://bugs.debian.org/1034144">triton
</a>, and
1816 <a href=
"https://bugs.debian.org/1034091">openai-whisper
</a>. For a while
1818 <a href=
"https://bugs.debian.org/1034286">ffmpeg-python
</a> was
1820 <a href=
"https://github.com/kkroening/ffmpeg-python/issues/760">upstream
1821 seem to have vanished
</a> I found it safer
1822 <a href=
"https://github.com/openai/whisper/pull/1242">to rewrite
1823 whisper
</a> to stop depending on in than to introduce ffmpeg-python
1824 into Debian. I decided to place these packages under the umbrella of
1825 <a href=
"https://salsa.debian.org/deeplearning-team">the Debian Deep
1826 Learning Team
</a>, which seem like the best team to look after such
1827 packages. Discussing the topic within the group also made me aware
1828 that the triton package was already a future dependency of newer
1829 versions of the torch package being planned, and would be needed after
1830 Bookworm is released.
</p>
1832 <p>All required code packages have been now waiting in
1833 <a href=
"https://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the Debian NEW
1834 queue
</a> since Wednesday, heading for Debian Experimental until
1835 Bookworm is released. An unsolved issue is how to handle the neural
1836 network models used by Whisper. The default behaviour of Whisper is
1837 to require Internet connectivity and download the model requested to
1838 <tt>~/.cache/whisper/
</tt> on first invocation. This obviously would
1839 fail
<a href=
"https://people.debian.org/~bap/dfsg-faq.html">the
1840 deserted island test of free software
</a> as the Debian packages would
1841 be unusable for someone stranded with only the Debian archive and solar
1842 powered computer on a deserted island.
</p>
1844 <p>Because of this, I would love to include the models in the Debian
1845 mirror system. This is problematic, as the models are very large
1846 files, which would put a heavy strain on the Debian mirror
1847 infrastructure around the globe. The strain would be even higher if
1848 the models change often, which luckily as far as I can tell they do
1849 not. The small model, which according to its creator is most useful
1850 for English and in my experience is not doing a great job there
1851 either, is
462 MiB (deb is
414 MiB). The medium model, which to me
1852 seem to handle English speech fairly well is
1.5 GiB (deb is
1.3 GiB)
1853 and the large model is
2.9 GiB (deb is
2.6 GiB). I would assume
1854 everyone with enough resources would prefer to use the large model for
1855 highest quality. I believe the models themselves would have to go
1856 into the non-free part of the Debian archive, as they are not really
1857 including any useful source code for updating the models. The
1858 "source", aka the model training set, according to the creators
1859 consist of "
680,
000 hours of multilingual and multitask supervised
1860 data collected from the web", which to me reads material with both
1861 unknown copyright terms, unavailable to the general public. In other
1862 words, the source is not available according to the Debian Free
1863 Software Guidelines and the model should be considered non-free.
</p>
1865 <p>I asked the Debian FTP masters for advice regarding uploading a
1866 model package on their IRC channel, and based on the feedback there it
1867 is still unclear to me if such package would be accepted into the
1868 archive. In any case I wrote build rules for a
1869 <a href=
"https://salsa.debian.org/deeplearning-team/openai-whisper-model">OpenAI
1870 Whisper model package
</a> and
1871 <a href=
"https://github.com/openai/whisper/pull/1257">modified the
1872 Whisper code base
</a> to prefer shared files under
<tt>/usr/
</tt> and
1873 <tt>/var/
</tt> over user specific files in
<tt>~/.cache/whisper/
</tt>
1874 to be able to use these model packages, to prepare for such
1875 possibility. One solution might be to include only one of the models
1876 (small or medium, I guess) in the Debian archive, and ask people to
1877 download the others from the Internet. Not quite sure what to do
1878 here, and advice is most welcome (use the debian-ai mailing list).
</p>
1880 <p>To make it easier to test the new packages while I wait for them to
1881 clear the NEW queue, I created an APT source targeting bookworm. I
1882 selected Bookworm instead of Bullseye, even though I know the latter
1883 would reach more users, is that some of the required dependencies are
1884 missing from Bullseye and I during this phase of testing did not want
1885 to backport a lot of packages just to get up and running.
</p>
1887 <p>Here is a recipe to run as user root if you want to test OpenAI
1888 Whisper using Debian packages on your Debian Bookworm installation,
1889 first adding the APT repository GPG key to the list of trusted keys,
1890 then setting up the APT repository and finally installing the packages
1891 and one of the models:
</p>
1894 curl https://geekbay.nuug.no/~pere/openai-whisper/D78F5C4796F353D211B119E28200D9B589641240.asc \
1895 -o /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/pere-whisper.asc
1896 mkdir -p /etc/apt/sources.list.d
1897 cat
> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/pere-whisper.list
<<EOF
1898 deb https://geekbay.nuug.no/~pere/openai-whisper/ bookworm main
1899 deb-src https://geekbay.nuug.no/~pere/openai-whisper/ bookworm main
1902 apt install openai-whisper
1905 <p>The package work for me, but have not yet been tested on any other
1906 computer than my own. With it, I have been able to (badly) transcribe
1907 a
2 minute
40 second Norwegian audio clip to test using the small
1908 model. This took
11 minutes and around
2.2 GiB of RAM. Transcribing
1909 the same file with the medium model gave a accurate text in
77 minutes
1910 using around
5.2 GiB of RAM. My test machine had too little memory to
1911 test the large model, which I believe require
11 GiB of RAM. In
1912 short, this now work for me using Debian packages, and I hope it will
1913 for you and everyone else once the packages enter Debian.
</p>
1915 <p>Now I can start on the audio recording part of this project.
</p>
1917 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1918 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1919 <b><a href=
"bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a></b>.
</p>
1925 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/video">video
</a>.
1930 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1934 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/rtlsdr_scanner__software_defined_radio_frequency_scanner_for_Linux____nice_free_software.html">rtlsdr-scanner, software defined radio frequency scanner for Linux - nice free software
</a>
1940 <p>Today I finally found time to track down a useful radio frequency
1941 scanner for my software defined radio. Just for fun I tried to locate
1942 the radios used in the areas, and a good start would be to scan all
1943 the frequencies to see what is in use. I've tried to find a useful
1944 program earlier, but ran out of time before I managed to find a useful
1945 tool. This time I was more successful, and after a few false leads I
1946 found a description of
1947 <a href=
"https://www.kali.org/tools/rtlsdr-scanner/">rtlsdr-scanner
1948 over at the Kali site
</a>, and was able to track down
1949 <a href=
"https://gitlab.com/kalilinux/packages/rtlsdr-scanner.git">the
1950 Kali package git repository
</a> to build a deb package for the
1951 scanner. Sadly the package is missing from the Debian project itself,
1952 at least in Debian Bullseye. Two runtime dependencies,
1953 <a href=
"https://gitlab.com/kalilinux/packages/python-visvis.git">python-visvis
</a>
1955 <a href=
"https://gitlab.com/kalilinux/packages/python-rtlsdr.git">python-rtlsdr
</a>
1956 had to be built and installed separately. Luckily '
<tt>gbp
1957 buildpackage
</tt>' handled them just fine and no further packages had
1958 to be manually built. The end result worked out of the box after
1961 <p>My initial scans for FM channels worked just fine, so I knew the
1962 scanner was functioning. But when I tried to scan every frequency
1963 from
100 to
1000 MHz, the program stopped unexpectedly near the
1964 completion. After some debugging I discovered USB software radio I
1965 used rejected frequencies above
948 MHz, triggering a unreported
1966 exception breaking the scan. Changing the scan to end at
957 worked
1967 better. I similarly found the lower limit to be around
15, and ended
1968 up with the following full scan:
</p>
1970 <p><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2023-04-07-radio-freq-scanning.png"><img src=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2023-04-07-radio-freq-scanning.png" width=
"100%"></a></p>
1972 <p>Saving the scan did not work, but exporting it as a CSV file worked
1973 just fine. I ended up with around
477k CVS lines with dB level for
1974 the given frequency.
</p>
1976 <p>The save failure seem to be a missing UTF-
8 encoding issue in the
1977 python code. Will see if I can find time to send a patch
1978 <a href=
"https://github.com/CdeMills/RTLSDR-Scanner/">upstream
</a>
1979 later to fix this exception:
</p>
1982 Traceback (most recent call last):
1983 File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/rtlsdr_scanner/main_window.py", line
485, in __on_save
1984 save_plot(fullName, self.scanInfo, self.spectrum, self.locations)
1985 File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/rtlsdr_scanner/file.py", line
408, in save_plot
1986 handle.write(json.dumps(data, indent=
4))
1987 TypeError: a bytes-like object is required, not 'str'
1988 Traceback (most recent call last):
1989 File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/rtlsdr_scanner/main_window.py", line
485, in __on_save
1990 save_plot(fullName, self.scanInfo, self.spectrum, self.locations)
1991 File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/rtlsdr_scanner/file.py", line
408, in save_plot
1992 handle.write(json.dumps(data, indent=
4))
1993 TypeError: a bytes-like object is required, not 'str'
1996 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1997 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1998 <b><a href=
"bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a></b>.
</p>
2004 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software
</a>.
2009 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2013 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/OpenSnitch_available_in_Debian_Sid_and_Bookworm.html">OpenSnitch available in Debian Sid and Bookworm
</a>
2019 <p>Thanks to the efforts of the OpenSnitch lead developer Gustavo
2020 Iñiguez Goya allowing me to sponsor the upload,
2021 <a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/opensnitch">the interactive
2022 application firewall OpenSnitch
</a> is now available in Debian
2023 Testing, soon to become the next stable release of Debian.
</p>
2025 <p>This is a package which set up a network firewall on one or more
2026 machines, which is controlled by a graphical user interface that will
2027 ask the user if a program should be allowed to connect to the local
2028 network or the Internet. If some background daemon is trying to dial
2029 home, it can be blocked from doing so with a simple mouse click, or by
2030 default simply by not doing anything when the GUI question dialog pop
2031 up. A list of all programs discovered using the network is provided
2032 in the GUI, giving the user an overview of how the machine(s) programs
2033 use the network.
</p>
2035 <p>OpenSnitch was uploaded for NEW processing about a month ago, and I
2036 had little hope of it getting accepted and shaping up in time for the
2037 package freeze, but the Debian ftpmasters proved to be amazingly quick
2038 at checking out the package and it was accepted into the archive about
2039 week after the first upload. It is now team maintained under the Go
2040 language team umbrella. A few fixes to the default setup is only in
2041 Sid, and should migrate to Testing/Bookworm in a week.
</p>
2043 <p>During testing I ran into an
2044 <a href=
"https://github.com/evilsocket/opensnitch/issues/813">issue
2045 with Minecraft server broadcasts disappearing
</a>, which was quickly
2046 resolved by the developer with a patch and a proposed configuration
2047 change. I've been told this was caused by the Debian packages default
2048 use if /proc/ information to track down kernel status, instead of the
2049 newer eBPF module that can be used. The reason is simply that
2050 upstream and I have failed to find a way to build the eBPF modules for
2051 OpenSnitch without a complete configured Linux kernel source tree,
2052 which as far as we can tell is unavailable as a build dependency in
2053 Debian. We tried unsuccessfully so far to use the kernel-headers
2054 package. It would be great if someone could provide some clues how to
2055 build eBPF modules on build daemons in Debian, possibly without the full
2058 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2059 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2060 <b><a href=
"bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a></b>.
</p>
2066 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/opensnitch">opensnitch
</a>.
2071 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2075 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Is_the_desktop_recommending_your_program_for_opening_its_files_.html">Is the desktop recommending your program for opening its files?
</a>
2081 <p>Linux desktop systems
2082 <a href=
"https://specifications.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/basedir-spec-latest.html">have
2083 standardized
</a> how programs present themselves to the desktop
2084 system. If a package include a .desktop file in
2085 /usr/share/applications/, Gnome, KDE, LXDE, Xfce and the other desktop
2086 environments will pick up the file and use its content to generate the
2087 menu of available programs in the system. A lesser known fact is that
2088 a package can also explain to the desktop system how to recognize the
2089 files created by the program in question, and use it to open these
2090 files on request, for example via a GUI file browser.
</p>
2092 <p>A while back I ran into a package that did not tell the desktop
2093 system how to recognize its files and was not used to open its files
2094 in the file browser and fixed it. In the process I wrote a simple
2095 debian/tests/ script to ensure the setup keep working. It might be
2096 useful for other packages too, to ensure any future version of the
2097 package keep handling its own files.
</p>
2099 <p>For this to work the file format need a useful MIME type that can
2100 be used to identify the format. If the file format do not yet have a
2101 MIME type, it should define one and preferably also
2102 <a href=
"https://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types/media-types.xhtml">register
2103 it with IANA
</a> to ensure the MIME type string is reserved.
</p>
2105 <p>The script uses the
<tt>xdg-mime
</tt> program from xdg-utils to
2106 query the database of standardized package information and ensure it
2107 return sensible values. It also need the location of an example file
2108 for xdg-mime to guess the format of.
</p>
2113 # Author: Petter Reinholdtsen
2114 # License: GPL v2 or later at your choice.
2116 # Validate the MIME setup, making sure motor types have
2117 # application/vnd.openmotor+yaml associated with them and is connected
2118 # to the openmotor desktop file.
2122 mimetype="application/vnd.openmotor+yaml"
2123 testfile="test/data/real/o3100/motor.ric"
2124 mydesktopfile="openmotor.desktop"
2126 filemime="$(xdg-mime query filetype "$testfile")"
2128 if [ "$mimetype" != "$filemime" ] ; then
2130 echo "error: xdg-mime claim motor file MIME type is $filemine, not $mimetype"
2132 echo "success: xdg-mime report correct mime type $mimetype for motor file"
2135 desktop=$(xdg-mime query default "$mimetype")
2137 if [ "$mydesktopfile" != "$desktop" ]; then
2139 echo "error: xdg-mime claim motor file should be handled by $desktop, not $mydesktopfile"
2141 echo "success: xdg-mime agree motor file should be handled by $mydesktopfile"
2147 <p>It is a simple way to ensure your users are not very surprised when
2148 they try to open one of your file formats in their file browser.
</p>
2150 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2151 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2152 <b><a href=
"bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a></b>.
</p>
2158 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
2163 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2167 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Opensnitch__the_application_level_interactive_firewall__heading_into_the_Debian_archive.html">Opensnitch, the application level interactive firewall, heading into the Debian archive
</a>
2174 <a href=
"https://sneak.berlin/20230115/macos-scans-your-local-files-now/">blog
2175 post claiming MacOS X recently started scanning local files and
2176 reporting information about them to Apple
</a>, even on a machine where
2177 all such callback features had been disabled, I came across a
2178 description of the Little Snitch application for MacOS X. It seemed
2179 like a very nice tool to have in the tool box, and I decided to see if
2180 something similar was available for Linux.
</p>
2182 <p>It did not take long to find
2183 <a href=
"https://github.com/evilsocket/opensnitch">the OpenSnitch
2184 package
</a>, which has been in development since
2017, and now is in
2185 version
1.5.0. It has had a
2186 <a href=
"https://bugs.debian.org/909567">request for Debian
2187 packaging
</a> since
2018, but no-one completed the job so far. Just
2188 for fun, I decided to see if I could help, and I was very happy to
2190 <a href=
"https://github.com/evilsocket/opensnitch/issues/304">upstream
2191 want a Debian package too
</a>.
</p>
2193 <p>After struggling a bit with getting the program to run, figuring
2194 out building Go programs (and a little failed detour to look at eBPF
2195 builds too - help needed), I am very happy to report that I am
2196 sponsoring upstream to maintain the package in Debian, and it has
2197 since this morning been waiting in NEW for the ftpmasters to have a
2198 look. Perhaps it can get into the archive in time for the Bookworm
2201 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2202 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2203 <b><a href=
"bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a></b>.
</p>
2209 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/opensnitch">opensnitch
</a>.
2214 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2218 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/LinuxCNC_MQTT_publisher_component.html">LinuxCNC MQTT publisher component
</a>
2224 <p>I watched
<a href=
"https://yewtu.be/watch?v=jmKUV3aNLjk">a
2015
2225 video from Andreas Schiffler
</a> the other day, where he set up
2226 <a href=
"https://linuxcnc.org/">LinuxCNC
</a> to send status
2227 information to the MQTT broker IBM Bluemix. As I also use MQTT for
2228 graphing, it occured to me that a generic MQTT LinuxCNC component
2229 would be useful and I set out to implement it. Today I got the first
2230 draft limping along and submitted as
2231 <a href=
"https://github.com/LinuxCNC/linuxcnc/pull/2253">a patch to the
2232 LinuxCNC project
</a>.
</p>
2234 <p>The simple part was setting up the MQTT publishing code in Python.
2235 I already have set up other parts submitting data to my Mosquito MQTT
2236 broker, so I could reuse that code. Writing a LinuxCNC component in
2237 Python as new to me, but using existing examples in the code
2238 repository and the extensive documentation, this was fairly straight
2239 forward. The hardest part was creating a automated test for the
2240 component to ensure it was working. Testing it in a simulated
2241 LinuxCNC machine proved very useful, as I discovered features I needed
2242 that I had not thought of yet, and adjusted the code quite a bit to
2243 make it easier to test without a operational MQTT broker
2246 <p>The draft is ready and working, but I am unsure which LinuxCNC HAL
2247 pins I should collect and publish by default (in other words, the
2248 default set of information pieces published), and how to get the
2249 machine name from the LinuxCNC INI file. The latter is a minor
2250 detail, but I expect it would be useful in a setup with several
2251 machines available. I am hoping for feedback from the experienced
2252 LinuxCNC developers and users, to make the component even better
2253 before it can go into the mainland LinuxCNC code base.
</p>
2255 <p>Since I started on the MQTT component, I came across
2256 <a href=
"https://yewtu.be/watch?v=Bqa2grG0XtA">another video from Kent
2257 VanderVelden
</a> where he combine LinuxCNC with a set of screen glasses
2258 controlled by a Raspberry Pi, and it occured to me that it would
2259 be useful for such use cases if LinuxCNC also provided a REST API for
2260 querying its status. I hope to start on such component once the MQTT
2261 component is working well.
</p>
2263 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2264 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2265 <b><a href=
"bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a></b>.
</p>
2271 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/linuxcnc">linuxcnc
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/robot">robot
</a>.
2276 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2280 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/ONVIF_IP_camera_management_tool_finally_in_Debian.html">ONVIF IP camera management tool finally in Debian
</a>
2286 <p>Merry Christmas to you all. Here is a small gift to all those with
2287 IP cameras following the
<a href=
"https://www.onvif.org/">ONVIF
2288 specification
</a>. There is finally a nice command line and GUI tool
2289 in Debian to manage ONVIF IP cameras. After working with upstream for
2290 a few months and sponsoring the upload, I am very happy to report that
2291 the
<a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/libonvif">libonvif package
</a>
2292 entered Debian Sid last night.
</p>
2294 <p>The package provide a C library to communicate with such cameras, a
2295 command line tool to locate and update settings of (like password) the
2296 cameras and a GUI tool to configure and control the units as well as
2297 preview the video from the camera. Libonvif is available on Both
2298 Linux and Windows and the GUI tool uses the Qt library. The main
2299 competitors are non-free software, while libonvif is GNU GPL licensed.
2300 I am very glad Debian users in the future can control their cameras
2301 using a free software system provided by Debian. But the ONVIF world
2302 is full of slightly broken firmware, where the cameras pretend to
2303 follow the ONVIF specification but fail to set some configuration
2304 values or refuse to provide video to more than one recipient at the
2305 time, and the onvif project is quite young and might take a while
2306 before it completely work with your camera. Upstream seem eager to
2307 improve the library, so handling any broken camera might be just
<a
2308 href=
"https://github.com/sr99622/libonvif/">a bug report away
</a>.
</p>
2310 <p>The package just cleared NEW, and need a new source only upload
2311 before it can enter testing. This will happen in the next few
2314 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2315 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2316 <b><a href=
"bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a></b>.
</p>
2322 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/standard">standard
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance
</a>.
2327 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2331 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Managing_and_using_ONVIF_IP_cameras_with_Linux.html">Managing and using ONVIF IP cameras with Linux
</a>
2337 <p>Recently I have been looking at how to control and collect data
2338 from a handful IP cameras using Linux. I both wanted to change their
2339 settings and to make their imagery available via a free software
2340 service under my control. Here is a summary of the tools I found.
</p>
2342 <p>First I had to identify the cameras and their protocols. As far as
2343 I could tell, they were using some SOAP looking protocol and their
2344 internal web server seem to only work with Microsoft Internet Explorer
2345 with some proprietary binary plugin, which in these days of course is
2346 a security disaster and also made it impossible for me to use the
2347 camera web interface. Luckily I discovered that the SOAP looking
2348 protocol is actually following
<a href=
"https://www.onvif.org/">the
2349 ONVIF specification
</a>, which seem to be supported by a lot of IP
2350 cameras these days.
</p>
2352 <p>Once the protocol was identified, I was able to find what appear to
2353 be the most popular way to configure ONVIF cameras, the free software
2355 <a href=
"https://sourceforge.net/projects/onvifdm/">ONVIF Device
2356 Manager
</a>. Lacking any other options at the time, I tried
2357 unsuccessfully to get it running using Wine, but was missing a dotnet
2358 40 library and I found no way around it to run it on Linux.
</p>
2360 <p>The next tool I found to configure the cameras were a non-free Linux Qt
2361 client
<a href=
"https://www.lingodigit.com/onvif_nvcdemo.html">ONVIF
2362 Device Tool
</a>. I did not like its terms of use, so did not spend
2363 much time on it.
</p>
2365 <p>To collect the video and make it available in a web interface, I
2366 found the Zoneminder tool in Debian. A recent version was able to
2367 automatically detect and configure ONVIF devices, so I could use it to
2368 set up motion detection in and collection of the camera output. I had
2369 initial problems getting the ONVIF autodetection to work, as both
2370 Firefox and Chromium
<a href=
"https://bugs.debian.org/1001188">refused
2371 the inter-tab communication
</a> being used by the Zoneminder web
2372 pages, but managed to get konqueror to work. Apparently the "Enhanced
2373 Tracking Protection" in Firefox cause the problem. I ended up
2374 upgrading to the Bookworm edition of Zoneminder in the process to try
2375 to fix the issue, and believe the problem might be solved now.
</p>
2377 <p>In the process I came across the nice Linux GUI tool
2378 <a href=
"https://gitlab.com/caspermeijn/onvifviewer/">ONVIF Viewer
</a>
2379 allowing me to preview the camera output and validate the login
2380 passwords required. Sadly its author has grown tired of maintaining
2381 the software, so it might not see any future updates. Which is sad,
2382 as the viewer is sightly unstable and the picture tend to lock up.
2383 Note, this lockup might be due to limitations in the cameras and not
2384 the viewer implementation. I suspect the camera is only able to
2385 provide pictures to one client at the time, and the Zoneminder feed
2386 might interfere with the GUI viewer. I have
2387 <a href=
"https://bugs.debian.org/1000820">asked for the tool to be
2388 included in Debian
</a>.
</p>
2390 <p>Finally, I found what appear to be very nice Linux free software
2391 replacement for the Windows tool, named
2392 <a href=
"https://github.com/sr99622/libonvif/">libonvif
</a>. It
2393 provide a C library to talk to ONVIF devices as well as a command line
2394 and GUI tool using the library. Using the GUI tool I was able to change
2395 the admin passwords and update other settings of the cameras. I have
2396 <a href=
"https://bugs.debian.org/1021980">asked for the package to be
2397 included in Debian
</a>.
</p>
2399 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2400 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2401 <b><a href=
"bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a></b>.
</p>
2403 <p><strong>Update
2022-
10-
20</strong>: Since my initial publication of
2404 this text, I got several suggestions for more free software Linux
2405 tools. There is
<a href=
"https://github.com/quatanium/python-onvif">a
2406 ONVIF python library
</a> (already
2407 <a href=
"https://bugs.debian.org/824240">requested into Debian
</a>) and
2408 <a href=
"https://github.com/FalkTannhaeuser/python-onvif-zeep">a python
3
2409 fork
</a> using a different SOAP dependency. There is also
2410 <a href=
"https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/onvif/">support for
2411 ONVIF in Home Assistant
</a>, and there is an alternative to Zoneminder
2412 called
<a href=
"https://www.shinobi.video/">Shinobi
</a>. The latter
2413 two are not included in Debian either. I have not tested any of these
2420 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/standard">standard
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance
</a>.
2425 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2429 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Time_to_translate_the_Bullseye_edition_of_the_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook.html">Time to translate the Bullseye edition of the Debian Administrator's Handbook
</a>
2435 <p align=
"center"><img align=
"center" src=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2020-10-20-debian-handbook-nb-testprint.jpeg" width=
"60%"/></p>
2437 <p>(The picture is of the previous edition.)
</p>
2439 <p>Almost two years after the previous Norwegian Bokmål translation of
2440 the "
<a href=
"https://debian-handbook.info/">The Debian Administrator's
2441 Handbook
</a>" was published, a new edition is finally being prepared. The
2442 english text is updated, and it is time to start working on the
2443 translations. Around 37 percent of the strings have been updated, one
2444 way or another, and the translations starting from a complete Debian Buster
2445 edition now need to bring their translation up from 63% to 100%. The
2446 complete book is licensed using a Creative Commons license, and has
2447 been published in several languages over the years. The translations
2448 are done by volunteers to bring Linux in their native tongue. The
2449 last time I checked, it complete text was available in English,
2450 Norwegian Bokmål, German, Indonesian, Brazil Portuguese and Spanish.
2451 In addition, work has been started for Arabic (Morocco), Catalan,
2452 Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Croatian, Czech, Danish,
2453 Dutch, French, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Persian, Polish,
2454 Romanian, Russian, Swedish, Turkish and Vietnamese.</p>
2456 <p>The translation is conducted on
2457 <a href="https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/debian-handbook/
">the
2458 hosted weblate project page</a>. Prospective translators are
2459 recommeded to subscribe to
2460 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/debian-handbook-translators
">the
2461 translators mailing list</a> and should also check out
2462 <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/contribute/
">the instructions for
2463 contributors</a>.</p>
2465 <p>I am one of the Norwegian Bokmål translators of this book, and we
2466 have just started. Your contribution is most welcome.</p>
2468 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2469 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2470 <b><a href="bitcoin:
15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2476 Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian
">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian-handbook
">debian-handbook</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>.
2481 <div class="padding
"></div>
2485 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Automatic_LinuxCNC_servo_PID_tuning_.html
">Automatic LinuxCNC servo PID tuning?</a>
2491 <p>While working on a CNC with servo motors controlled by the
2492 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LinuxCNC
">LinuxCNC</a>
2493 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PID_controller
">PID
2494 controller</a>, I recently had to learn how to tune the collection of values
2495 that control such mathematical machinery that a PID controller is. It
2496 proved to be a lot harder than I hoped, and I still have not succeeded
2497 in getting the Z PID controller to successfully defy gravity, nor X
2498 and Y to move accurately and reliably. But while climbing up this
2499 rather steep learning curve, I discovered that some motor control
2500 systems are able to tune their PID controllers. I got the impression
2501 from the documentation that LinuxCNC were not. This proved to be not
2505 <a href="http://linuxcnc.org/docs/html/man/man9/pid
.9.html
">pid
2506 component</a> is the recommended PID controller to use. It uses eight
2507 constants <tt>Pgain</tt>, <tt>Igain</tt>, <tt>Dgain</tt>,
2508 <tt>bias</tt>, <tt>FF0</tt>, <tt>FF1</tt>, <tt>FF2</tt> and
2509 <tt>FF3</tt> to calculate the output value based on current and wanted
2510 state, and all of these need to have a sensible value for the
2511 controller to behave properly. Note, there are even more values
2512 involved, theser are just the most important ones. In my case I need
2513 the X, Y and Z axes to follow the requested path with little error.
2514 This has proved quite a challenge for someone who have never tuned a
2515 PID controller before, but there is at least some help to be found.
2517 <p>I discovered that included in LinuxCNC was this old PID component
2518 at_pid claiming to have auto tuning capabilities. Sadly it had been
2519 neglected since 2011, and could not be used as a plug in replacement
2520 for the default pid component. One would have to rewriting the
2521 LinuxCNC HAL setup to test at_pid. This was rather sad, when I wanted
2522 to quickly test auto tuning to see if it did a better job than me at
2523 figuring out good P, I and D values to use.</p>
2525 <p>I decided to have a look if the situation could be improved. This
2526 involved trying to understand the code and history of the pid and
2527 at_pid components. Apparently they had a common ancestor, as code
2528 structure, comments and variable names were quite close to each other.
2529 Sadly this was not reflected in the git history, making it hard to
2530 figure out what really happened. My guess is that the author of
2531 <a href="https://github.com/LinuxCNC/linuxcnc/blob/master/src/hal/components/at_pid.c
">at_pid.c</a>
2533 <a href="https://github.com/LinuxCNC/linuxcnc/blob/master/src/hal/components/pid.c
">pid.c</a>,
2534 rewrote it to follow the structure he wished pid.c to have, then added
2535 support for auto tuning and finally got it included into the LinuxCNC
2536 repository. The restructuring and lack of early history made it
2537 harder to figure out which part of the code were relevant to the auto
2538 tuning, and which part of the code needed to be updated to work the
2539 same way as the current pid.c implementation. I started by trying to
2540 isolate relevant changes in pid.c, and applying them to at_pid.c. My
2541 aim was to make sure the at_pid component could replace the pid
2542 component with a simple change in the HAL setup loadrt line, without
2543 having to "rewire" the rest of the HAL configuration. After a few
2544 hours following this approach, I had learned quite a lot about the
2545 code structure of both components, while concluding I was heading down
2546 the wrong rabbit hole, and should get back to the surface and find a
2549 <p>For the second attempt, I decided to throw away all the PID control
2550 related part of the original at_pid.c, and instead isolate and lift
2551 the auto tuning part of the code and inject it into a copy of pid.c.
2552 This ensured compatibility with the current pid component, while
2553 adding auto tuning as a run time option. To make it easier to identify
2554 the relevant parts in the future, I wrapped all the auto tuning code
2555 with '#ifdef AUTO_TUNER'. The end result behave just like the current
2556 pid component by default, as that part of the code is identical. The
2557 <a href=
"https://github.com/LinuxCNC/linuxcnc/pull/1820">end result
2558 entered the LinuxCNC master branch
</a> a few days ago.
</p>
2560 <p>To enable auto tuning, one need to set a few HAL pins in the PID
2561 component. The most important ones are
<tt>tune-effort
</tt>,
2562 <tt>tune-mode
</tt> and
<tt>tune-start
</tt>. But lets take a step
2563 back, and see what the auto tuning code will do. I do not know the
2564 mathematical foundation of the at_pid algorithm, but from observation
2565 I can tell that the algorithm will, when enabled, produce a square
2566 wave pattern centered around the
<tt>bias
</tt> value on the output pin
2567 of the PID controller. This can be seen using the HAL Scope provided
2568 by LinuxCNC. In my case, this is translated into voltage (+-
10V) sent
2569 to the motor controller, which in turn is translated into motor speed.
2570 So at_pid will ask the motor to move the axis back and forth. The
2571 number of cycles in the pattern is controlled by the
2572 <tt>tune-cycles
</tt> pin, and the extremes of the wave pattern is
2573 controlled by the
<tt>tune-effort
</tt> pin. Of course, trying to
2574 change the direction of a physical object instantly (as in going
2575 directly from a positive voltage to the equivalent negative voltage)
2576 do not change velocity instantly, and it take some time for the object
2577 to slow down and move in the opposite direction. This result in a
2578 more smooth movement wave form, as the axis in question were vibrating
2579 back and forth. When the axis reached the target speed in the
2580 opposing direction, the auto tuner change direction again. After
2581 several of these changes, the average time delay between the 'peaks'
2582 and 'valleys' of this movement graph is then used to calculate
2583 proposed values for Pgain, Igain and Dgain, and insert them into the
2584 HAL model to use by the pid controller. The auto tuned settings are
2585 not great, but htye work a lot better than the values I had been able
2586 to cook up on my own, at least for the horizontal X and Y axis. But I
2587 had to use very small
<tt>tune-effort
<tt> values, as my motor
2588 controllers error out if the voltage change too quickly. I've been
2589 less lucky with the Z axis, which is moving a heavy object up and
2590 down, and seem to confuse the algorithm. The Z axis movement became a
2591 lot better when I introduced a
<tt>bias
</tt> value to counter the
2592 gravitational drag, but I will have to work a lot more on the Z axis
2595 <p>Armed with this knowledge, it is time to look at how to do the
2596 tuning. Lets say the HAL configuration in question load the PID
2597 component for X, Y and Z like this:
</p>
2600 loadrt pid names=pid.x,pid.y,pid.z
2603 <p>Armed with the new and improved at_pid component, the new line will
2607 loadrt at_pid names=pid.x,pid.y,pid.z
2610 <p>The rest of the HAL setup can stay the same. This work because the
2611 components are referenced by name. If the component had used count=
3
2612 instead, all use of pid.# had to be changed to at_pid.#.
</p>
2614 <p>To start tuning the X axis, move the axis to the middle of its
2615 range, to make sure it do not hit anything when it start moving back
2616 and forth. Next, set the
<tt>tune-effort
</tt> to a low number in the
2617 output range. I used
0.1 as my initial value. Next, assign
1 to the
2618 <tt>tune-mode
</tt> value. Note, this will disable the pid controlling
2619 part and feed
0 to the output pin, which in my case initially caused a
2620 lot of drift. In my case it proved to be a good idea with X and Y to
2621 tune the motor driver to make sure
0 voltage stopped the motor
2622 rotation. On the other hand, for the Z axis this proved to be a bad
2623 idea, so it will depend on your setup. It might help to set the
2624 <tt>bias
</tt> value to a output value that reduce or eliminate the
2625 axis drift. Finally, after setting
<tt>tune-mode
</tt>, set
2626 <tt>tune-start
</tt> to
1 to activate the auto tuning. If all go well,
2627 your axis will vibrate for a few seconds and when it is done, new
2628 values for Pgain, Igain and Dgain will be active. To test them,
2629 change
<tt>tune-mode
</tt> back to
0. Note that this might cause the
2630 machine to suddenly jerk as it bring the axis back to its commanded
2631 position, which it might have drifted away from during tuning. To
2632 summarize with some halcmd lines:
</p>
2635 setp pid.x.tune-effort
0.1
2636 setp pid.x.tune-mode
1
2637 setp pid.x.tune-start
1
2638 # wait for the tuning to complete
2639 setp pid.x.tune-mode
0
2642 <p>After doing this task quite a few times while trying to figure out
2643 how to properly tune the PID controllers on the machine in, I decided
2644 to figure out if this process could be automated, and wrote a script
2645 to do the entire tuning process from power on. The end result will
2646 ensure the machine is powered on and ready to run, home all axis if it
2647 is not already done, check that the extra tuning pins are available,
2648 move the axis to its mid point, run the auto tuning and re-enable the
2649 pid controller when it is done. It can be run several times. Check
2651 <a href=
"https://github.com/SebKuzminsky/MazakVQC1540/blob/bon-dev/scripts/run-auto-pid-tuner">run-auto-pid-tuner
</a>
2652 script on github if you want to learn how it is done.
</p>
2654 <p>My hope is that this little adventure can inspire someone who know
2655 more about motor PID controller tuning can implement even better
2656 algorithms for automatic PID tuning in LinuxCNC, making life easier
2657 for both me and all the others that want to use LinuxCNC but lack the
2658 in depth knowledge needed to tune PID controllers well.
</p>
2660 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2661 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2662 <b><a href=
"bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a></b>.
</p>
2668 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/linuxcnc">linuxcnc
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/robot">robot
</a>.
2673 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2677 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/LinuxCNC_translators_life_just_got_a_bit_easier.html">LinuxCNC translators life just got a bit easier
</a>
2683 <p>Back in oktober last year, when I started looking at the
2684 <a href=
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LinuxCNC">LinuxCNC
</a> system, I
2685 proposed to change the documentation build system make life easier for
2686 translators. The original system consisted of independently written
2687 documentation files for each language, with no automated way to track
2688 changes done in other translations and no help for the translators to
2689 know how much was left to translated. By using
2690 <a href=
"https://po4a.org/">the po4a system
</a> to generate POT and PO
2691 files from the English documentation, this can be improved. A small
2692 team of LinuxCNC contributors got together and today our labour
2693 finally payed off. Since a few hours ago, it is now possible to
2694 translate
<a href=
"https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/linuxcnc/">the
2695 LinuxCNC documentation on Weblate
</a>, alongside the program itself.
</p>
2697 <p>The effort to migrate the documentation to use po4a has been both
2698 slow and frustrating. I am very happy we finally made it.
</p>
2700 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2701 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2702 <b><a href=
"bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a></b>.
</p>
2708 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/linuxcnc">linuxcnc
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/robot">robot
</a>.
2713 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2717 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/geteltorito_make_CD_firmware_upgrades_a_breeze.html">geteltorito make CD firmware upgrades a breeze
</a>
2723 <p>Recently I wanted to upgrade the firmware of my thinkpad, and
2724 located the firmware download page from Lenovo (which annoyingly do
2725 not allow access via Tor, forcing me to hand them more personal
2726 information that I would like). The
2727 <a href=
"https://support.lenovo.com/no/en/search?query=thinkpad firmware bios upgrade iso&SearchType=Customer search&searchLocation=Masthead">download
2728 from Lenovo
</a> is a bootable ISO image, which is a bit of a problem
2729 when all I got available is a USB memory stick. I tried booting the
2730 ISO as a USB stick, but this did not work. But genisoimage came to
2733 <P>The geteltorito program in
2734 <a href=
"http://tracker.debian.org/cdrkit">the genisoimage binary
2735 package
</a> is able to convert the bootable ISO image to a bootable
2736 USB stick using a simple command line recipe, which I then can write
2737 to the most recently inserted USB stick:
</p>
2740 geteltorito -o usbstick.img lenovo-firmware.iso
2741 sudo dd bs=
10M if=usbstick.img of=$(ls -tr /dev/sd?|tail -
1)
2744 <p>This USB stick booted the firmware upgrader just fine, and in a few
2745 minutes my machine had the latest and greatest BIOS firmware in place.
</p>
2751 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
2756 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2760 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Run_your_industrial_metal_working_machine_using_Debian_.html">Run your industrial metal working machine using Debian?
</a>
2766 <p>After many months of hard work by the good people involved in
2767 <a href=
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LinuxCNC">LinuxCNC
</a>, the
2768 system was accepted Sunday
2769 <a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/linuxcnc">into Debian
</a>.
2770 Once it was available from Debian, I was surprised to discover from
2771 <a href=
"https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=linuxcnc">its
2772 popularity-contest numbers
</a> that people have been reporting its use
2773 since
2012.
<a href=
"http://linuxcnc.org/">Its project site
</a> might
2774 be a good place to check out, but sadly is not working when visiting
2777 <p>But what is LinuxCNC, you are probably wondering? Perhaps a
2778 Wikipedia quote is in place?
</p>
2781 "LinuxCNC is a software system for numerical control of
2782 machines such as milling machines, lathes, plasma cutters, routers,
2783 cutting machines, robots and hexapods. It can control up to
9 axes or
2784 joints of a CNC machine using G-code (RS-
274NGC) as input. It has
2785 several GUIs suited to specific kinds of usage (touch screen,
2786 interactive development)."
2789 <p>It can even control
3D printers. And even though the Wikipedia
2790 page indicate that it can only work with hard real time kernel
2791 features, it can also work with the user space soft real time features
2792 provided by the Debian kernel.
2793 <a href=
"https://github.com/linuxcnc/linuxcnc">The source code
</a> is
2794 available from Github. The last few months I've been involved in the
2795 translation setup for the program and documentation. Translators are
2797 <a href=
"https://hosted.weblate.org/engage/linuxcnc/">join the
2798 effort
</a> using Weblate.
</p>
2800 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2801 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2802 <b><a href=
"bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a></b>.
</p>
2808 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/linuxcnc">linuxcnc
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/robot">robot
</a>.
2813 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2817 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Debian_still_an_excellent_choice_for_Lego_builders.html">Debian still an excellent choice for Lego builders
</a>
2823 <p>The Debian Lego team saw a lot of activity the last few weeks. All
2824 the packages under the team umbrella has been updated to fix
2825 packaging, lintian issues and BTS reports. In addition, a new and
2826 inspiring team member appeared on both the
2827 <a href=
"https://alioth-lists.debian.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/debian-lego-team">debian-lego-team
2828 Team mailing list
</a> and
2829 <a href=
"irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">IRC channel
2830 #debian-lego
</a>. If you are interested in Lego CAD design and LEGO
2831 Mindstorms programming, check out the
2832 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">team wiki page
</a> to
2833 see what Debian can offer the Lego enthusiast.
</p>
2835 <p>Patches has been sent upstream, causing new upstream releases, one
2836 even the first one in more than ten years, and old upstreams was
2837 released with new ones. There are still a lot of work left, and the
2838 team welcome more members to help us make sure Debian is the Linux
2839 distribution of choice for Lego builders. If you want to contribute,
2840 join us in the IRC channel and become part of
2841 <a href=
"https://salsa.debian.org/debian-lego-team/">the team on
2844 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2845 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2846 <b><a href=
"bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a></b>.
</p>
2852 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/lego">lego
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/robot">robot
</a>.
2857 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2861 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Six_complete_translations_of_The_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook_for_Buster.html">Six complete translations of The Debian Administrator's Handbook for Buster
</a>
2867 <p>I am happy observe that the
<a href=
"https://debian-handbook.info/">The
2868 Debian Administrator's Handbook
</a> is available in six languages now.
2869 I am not sure which one of these are completely proof read, but the
2870 complete book is available in these languages:
2875 <li>Norwegian Bokmål
</li>
2878 <li>Brazil Portuguese
</li>
2883 <p>This is the list of languages more than
70% complete, in other
2884 words with not too much left to do:
</p>
2888 <li>Chinese (Simplified) -
90%
</li>
2889 <li>French -
79%
</li>
2890 <li>Italian -
79%
</li>
2891 <li>Japanese -
77%
</li>
2892 <li>Arabic (Morocco) -
75%
</li>
2893 <li>Persian -
71%
</li>
2897 <p>I wonder how long it will take to bring these to
100%.
</p>
2899 <p>Then there is the list of languages about halfway done:
</p>
2903 <li>Russian -
63%
</li>
2904 <li>Swedish -
53%
</li>
2905 <li>Chinese (Traditional) -
46%
</li>
2906 <li>Catalan -
45%
</li>
2910 <p>Several are on to a good start:
</p>
2914 <li>Dutch -
26%
</li>
2915 <li>Vietnamese -
25%
</li>
2916 <li>Polish -
23%
</li>
2917 <li>Czech -
22%
</li>
2918 <li>Turkish -
18%
</li>
2922 <p>Finally, there are the ones just getting started:
</p>
2926 <li>Korean -
4%
</li>
2927 <li>Croatian -
2%
</li>
2929 <li>Danish -
1%
</li>
2930 <li>Romanian -
1%
</li>
2934 <p>If you want to help provide a Debian instruction book in your own
2936 <a href=
"https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/debian-handbook/#languages">Weblate
</a>
2937 to contribute to the translations.
</p>
2939 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2940 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2941 <b><a href=
"bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a></b>.
</p>
2947 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian-handbook">debian-handbook
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
2952 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2956 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Latest_Jami_back_in_Debian_Testing__and_scriptable_using_dbus.html">Latest Jami back in Debian Testing, and scriptable using dbus
</a>
2962 <p>After a lot of hard work by its maintainer Alexandre Viau and
2963 others, the decentralized communication platform
2964 <a href=
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jami_(software)">Jami
</a>
2965 (earlier known as Ring), managed to get
2966 <a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/ring">its latest version
</a>
2967 into Debian Testing. Several of its dependencies has caused build and
2968 propagation problems, which all seem to be solved now.
</p>
2970 <p>In addition to the fact that Jami is decentralized, similar to how
2971 bittorrent is decentralized, I first of all like how it is not
2972 connected to external IDs like phone numbers. This allow me to set up
2973 computers to send me notifications using Jami without having to find
2974 get a phone number for each computer. Automatic notification via Jami
2975 is also made trivial thanks to the provided client side API (as a DBus
2976 service). Here is my bourne shell script demonstrating how to let any
2977 system send a message to any Jami address. It will create a new
2978 identity before sending the message, if no Jami identity exist
2984 # Usage: $
0 <jami-address> <message>
2986 # Send
<message> to
<jami-address>, create local jami account if
2989 # License: GPL v2 or later at your choice
2990 # Author: Petter Reinholdtsen
2993 if [ -z "$HOME" ] ; then
2994 echo "error: missing \$HOME, required for dbus to work"
2998 # First, get dbus running if not already running
2999 DBUSLAUNCH=/usr/bin/dbus-launch
3000 PIDFILE=/run/asterisk/dbus-session.pid
3001 if [ -e $PIDFILE ] ; then
3003 if ! kill -
0 $DBUS_SESSION_BUS_PID
2>/dev/null ; then
3004 unset DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS
3007 if [ -z "$DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS" ] && [ -x "$DBUSLAUNCH" ]; then
3008 DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS="unix:path=$HOME/.dbus"
3009 dbus-daemon --session
--address="$DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS" --nofork --nopidfile --syslog-only < /dev/null
> /dev/null
2>&
1 3>&
1 &
3010 DBUS_SESSION_BUS_PID=$!
3012 echo DBUS_SESSION_BUS_PID=$DBUS_SESSION_BUS_PID
3013 echo DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS=\""$DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS"\"
3014 echo export DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS
3022 dbus-send --session \
3023 --dest="cx.ring.Ring" /cx/ring/Ring/$part cx.ring.Ring.$part.$op $*
3029 dbus-send --session --print-reply \
3030 --dest="cx.ring.Ring" /cx/ring/Ring/$part cx.ring.Ring.$part.$op $*
3034 dringopreply ConfigurationManager getAccountList | \
3035 grep string | awk -F'"' '{print $
2}' | head -n
1
3038 account=$(firstaccount)
3040 if [ -z "$account" ] ; then
3041 echo "Missing local account, trying to create it"
3042 dringop ConfigurationManager addAccount \
3043 dict:string:string:"Account.type","RING","Account.videoEnabled","false"
3044 account=$(firstaccount)
3045 if [ -z "$account" ] ; then
3046 echo "unable to create local account"
3051 # Not using dringopreply to ensure $
2 can contain spaces
3052 dbus-send --print-reply --session \
3053 --dest=cx.ring.Ring \
3054 /cx/ring/Ring/ConfigurationManager \
3055 cx.ring.Ring.ConfigurationManager.sendTextMessage \
3056 string:"$account" string:"$
1" \
3057 dict:string:string:"text/plain","$
2"
3060 <p>If you want to check it out yourself, visit the
3061 <a href=
"https://jami.net/">the Jami system project page
</a> to learn
3062 more, and install the latest Jami client from Debian Unstable or
3065 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3066 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
3067 <b><a href=
"bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a></b>.
</p>
3073 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance
</a>.
3078 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3082 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Buster_based_Bokm_l_edition_of_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook.html">Buster based Bokmål edition of Debian Administrator's Handbook
</a>
3088 <p align=
"center"><img align=
"center" src=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2020-10-20-debian-handbook-nb-testprint.jpeg" width=
"60%"/></p>
3090 <p>I am happy to report that we finally made it! Norwegian Bokmål
3091 became the first translation published on paper of the new Buster
3092 based edition of "
<a href=
"https://debian-handbook.info/">The Debian
3093 Administrator's Handbook
</a>". The print proof reading copy arrived
3094 some days ago, and it looked good, so now the book is approved for
3095 general distribution. This updated paperback edition <a
3096 href="https://debian-handbook.info/get/#norwegian
">is available from
3097 lulu.com</a>. The book is also available for download in electronic
3098 form as PDF, EPUB and Mobipocket, and can also be
3099 <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/browse/nb-NO/stable/
">read online</a>.</p>
3101 <p>I am very happy to wrap up this Creative Common licensed project,
3102 which concludes several months of work by several volunteers. The
3103 number of Linux related books published in Norwegian are few, and I
3104 really hope this one will gain many readers, as it is packed with deep
3105 knowledge on Linux and the Debian ecosystem. The book will be
3106 available for various Internet book stores like Amazon and Barnes &
3107 Noble soon, but I recommend buying
3108 "<a href=
"https://www.lulu.com/en/us/shop/roland-mas-and-rapha%C3%ABl-hertzog/h%C3%A5ndbok-for-debian-administratoren/paperback/product-9j7qwq.html">Håndbok
3109 for Debian-administratoren
</a>" directly from the source at Lulu.
3111 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3112 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
3113 <b><a href="bitcoin:
15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
3119 Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian
">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian-handbook
">debian-handbook</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>.
3124 <div class="padding
"></div>
3128 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Buster_update_of_Norwegian_Bokm_l_edition_of_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook_almost_done.html
">Buster update of Norwegian Bokmål edition of Debian Administrator's Handbook almost done</a>
3134 <p>Thanks to the good work of several volunteers, the updated edition
3135 of the Norwegian translation for
3136 "<a href=
"https://debian-handbook.info/">The Debian Administrator's
3137 Handbook
</a>" is now almost completed. After many months of proof
3138 reading, I consider the proof reading complete enough for us to move
3139 to the next step, and have asked for the print version to be prepared
3140 and sent of to the print on demand service lulu.com. While it is
3141 still not to late if you find any incorrect translations on
3142 <a href="https://hosted.weblate.org/languages/nb_NO/debian-handbook/
">the
3143 hosted Weblate service</a>, but it will be soon. :) You can check out
3144 <a href=" https://debian-handbook.info/browse/nb-NO/stable/
">the Buster
3145 edition on the web</a> until the print edition is ready.</p>
3147 <p>The book will be for sale on lulu.com and various web book stores,
3148 with links available from the web site for the book linked to above.
3149 I hope a lot of readers find it useful.</p>
3151 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3152 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
3153 <b><a href="bitcoin:
15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
3159 Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian
">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian-handbook
">debian-handbook</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>.
3164 <div class="padding
"></div>
3168 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Working_on_updated_Norwegian_Bokm_l_edition_of_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook.html
">Working on updated Norwegian Bokmål edition of Debian Administrator's Handbook</a>
3174 <p>Three years ago, the first Norwegian Bokmål edition of
3175 "<a href=
"https://debian-handbook.info/">The Debian Administrator's
3176 Handbook
</a>" was published. This was based on Debian Jessie. Now a
3177 new and updated version based on Buster is getting ready. Work on the
3178 updated Norwegian Bokmål edition has been going on for a few months
3179 now, and yesterday, we reached the first mile stone, with 100% of the
3180 texts being translated. A lot of proof reading remains, of course,
3181 but a major step towards a new edition has been taken.</p>
3183 <p>The book is translated by volunteers, and we would love to get some
3184 help with the proof reading. The translation uses
3185 <a href="https://hosted.weblate.org/languages/nb_NO/debian-handbook/
">the
3186 hosted Weblate service</a>, and we welcome everyone to have a look and
3187 submit improvements and suggestions. There is also a proof readers
3188 PDF available on request, get in touch if you want to help out that
3191 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3192 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
3193 <b><a href="bitcoin:
15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
3199 Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian
">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian-handbook
">debian-handbook</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>.
3204 <div class="padding
"></div>
3208 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Secure_Socket_API___a_simple_and_powerful_approach_for_TLS_support_in_software.html
">Secure Socket API - a simple and powerful approach for TLS support in software</a>
3214 <p>As a member of the <a href="https://www.nuug.no/
">Norwegian Unix
3215 User Group</a>, I have the pleasure of receiving the
3216 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/
">USENIX</a> magazine
3217 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/
">;login:</a>
3218 several times a year. I rarely have time to read all the articles,
3219 but try to at least skim through them all as there is a lot of nice
3220 knowledge passed on there. I even carry the latest issue with me most
3221 of the time to try to get through all the articles when I have a few
3224 <p>The other day I came across a nice article titled
3225 "<a href=
"https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/winter2018/oneill">The
3226 Secure Socket API: TLS as an Operating System Service
</a>" with a
3227 marvellous idea I hope can make it all the way into the POSIX standard.
3228 The idea is as simple as it is powerful. By introducing a new
3229 socket() option IPPROTO_TLS to use TLS, and a system wide service to
3230 handle setting up TLS connections, one both make it trivial to add TLS
3231 support to any program currently using the POSIX socket API, and gain
3232 system wide control over certificates, TLS versions and encryption
3233 systems used. Instead of doing this:</p>
3235 <p><blockquote><pre>
3236 int socket = socket(PF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, IPPROTO_TCP);
3237 </pre></blockquote></p>
3239 <p>the program code would be doing this:<p>
3241 <p><blockquote><pre>
3242 int socket = socket(PF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, IPPROTO_TLS);
3243 </pre></blockquote></p>
3245 <p>According to the ;login: article, converting a C program to use TLS
3246 would normally modify only 5-10 lines in the code, which is amazing
3247 when compared to using for example the OpenSSL API.</p>
3249 <p>The project has set up the
3250 <a href="https://securesocketapi.org/
">https://securesocketapi.org/</a>
3251 web site to spread the idea, and the code for a kernel module and the
3252 associated system daemon is available from two github repositories:
3253 <a href="https://github.com/markoneill/ssa
">ssa</a> and
3254 <a href="https://github.com/markoneill/ssa-daemon
">ssa-daemon</a>.
3255 Unfortunately there is no explicit license information with the code,
3256 so its copyright status is unclear. A
3257 <a href="https://github.com/markoneill/ssa/issues/
2">request to solve
3258 this</a> about it has been unsolved since 2018-08-17.</p>
3260 <p>I love the idea of extending socket() to gain TLS support, and
3261 understand why it is an advantage to implement this as a kernel module
3262 and system wide service daemon, but can not help to think that it
3263 would be a lot easier to get projects to move to this way of setting
3264 up TLS if it was done with a user space approach where programs
3265 wanting to use this API approach could just link with a wrapper
3268 <p>I recommend you check out this simple and powerful approach to more
3269 secure network connections. :)</p>
3271 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3272 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
3273 <b><a href="bitcoin:
15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
3279 Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian
">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet
">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/sysadmin
">sysadmin</a>.
3284 <div class="padding
"></div>
3288 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Jami_as_a_Zoom_client__a_trick_for_password_protected_rooms___.html
">Jami as a Zoom client, a trick for password protected rooms...</a>
3295 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Jami_Ring__finally_functioning_peer_to_peer_communication_client.html
">I
3296 wrote</a> about <a href="https://jami.net/
">the Jami communication
3297 client</a>, capable of peer-to-peer encrypted communication. It
3298 handle both messages, audio and video. It uses distributed hash
3299 tables instead of central infrastructure to connect its users to each
3300 other, which in my book is a plus. I mentioned briefly that it could
3301 also work as a SIP client, which came in handy when the higher
3302 educational sector in Norway started to promote Zoom as its video
3303 conferencing solution. I am reluctant to use the official Zoom client
3304 software, due to their <a href="https://zoom.us/terms
">copyright
3305 license clauses</a> prohibiting users to reverse engineer (for example
3306 to check the security) and benchmark it, and thus prefer to connect to
3307 Zoom meetings with free software clients.</p>
3309 <p>Jami worked OK as a SIP client to Zoom as long as there was no
3310 password set on the room. The Jami daemon leak memory like crazy
3311 (approximately 1 GiB a minute) when I am connected to the video
3312 conference, so I had to restart the client every 7-10 minutes, which
3313 is not great. I tried to get other SIP Linux clients to work
3314 without success, so I decided I would have to live with this wart
3315 until someone managed to fix the leak in the dring code base. But
3316 another problem showed up once the rooms were password protected. I
3317 could not get my dial tone signaling through from Jami to Zoom, and
3318 dial tone signaling is used to enter the password when connecting to
3319 Zoom. I tried a lot of different permutations with my Jami and
3320 Asterisk setup to try to figure out why the signaling did not get
3321 through, only to finally discover that the fundamental problem seem to
3322 be that Zoom is simply not able to receive dial tone signaling when
3323 connecting via SIP. There seem to be nothing wrong with the Jami and
3324 Asterisk end, it is simply broken in the Zoom end. I got help from a
3325 very skilled VoIP engineer figuring out this last part. And being a
3326 very skilled engineer, he was also able to locate a solution for me.
3327 Or to be exact, a workaround that solve my initial problem of
3328 connecting to password protected Zoom rooms using Jami.</p>
3330 <p>So, how do you do this, I am sure you are wondering by now. The
3332 <a href="https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/
202405539-H-
323-SIP-Room-Connector-Dial-Strings#sip
">documented
3333 from Zoom</a>, and it is to modify the SIP address to include the room
3334 password. What is most surprising about this is that the
3335 automatically generated email from Zoom with instructions on how to
3336 connect via SIP do not mention this. The SIP address to use normally
3337 consist of the room ID (a number), an @ character and the IP address
3338 of the Zoom SIP gateway. But Zoom understand a lot more than just the
3339 room ID in front of the at sign. The format is "<tt>[Meeting
3340 ID].[Password].[Layout].[Host Key]
</tt>", and you can here see how you
3341 can both enter password, control the layout (full screen, active
3342 presence and gallery) and specify the host key to start the meeting.
3343 The full SIP address entered into Jami to provide the password will
3344 then look like this (all using made up numbers):</p>
3347 <tt>sip:657837644.522827@192.168.169.170</tt>
3350 <p>Now if only jami would reduce its memory usage, I could even
3351 recommend this setup to others. :)</p>
3353 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3354 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
3355 <b><a href="bitcoin:
15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
3361 Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian
">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet
">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/surveillance
">surveillance</a>.
3366 <div class="padding
"></div>
3370 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/GnuCOBOL__a_free_platform_to_learn_and_use_COBOL___nice_free_software.html
">GnuCOBOL, a free platform to learn and use COBOL - nice free software</a>
3376 <p>The curiosity got the better of me when
3377 <a href="https://developers.slashdot.org/story/
20/
04/
06/
1424246/new-jersey-desperately-needs-cobol-programmers
">Slashdot
3378 reported</a> that New Jersey was desperately looking for
3379 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COBOL
">COBOL</a> programmers,
3380 and a few days later it was reported that
3381 <a href="https://onezero.medium.com/ibm-rallies-cobol-engineers-to-save-overloaded-unemployment-systems-eeadf13eddce
">IBM
3382 tried to locate COBOL programmers</a>.</p>
3384 <p>I thus decided to have a look at free software alternatives to
3385 learn COBOL, and had the pleasure to find
3386 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/projects/open-cobol/
">GnuCOBOL</a> was
3387 already <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/gnucobol
">in
3388 Debian</a>. It used to be called Open Cobol, and is a "compiler"
3389 transforming COBOL code to C or C++ before giving it to GCC or Visual
3390 Studio to build binaries.
</p>
3392 <p>I managed to get in touch with upstream, and was impressed with the
3393 quick response, and also was happy to see a new Debian maintainer
3394 taking over when the original one recently asked to be replaced. A
3395 new Debian upload was done as recently as yesterday.
</p>
3397 <p>Using the Debian package, I was able to follow a simple COBOL
3398 introduction and make and run simple COBOL programs. It was fun to
3399 learn a new programming language. If you want to test for yourself,
3400 <a href=
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GnuCOBOL">the GnuCOBOL Wikipedia
3401 page
</a> have a few simple examples to get you startet.
</p>
3403 <p>As I do not have much experience with COBOL, I do not know how
3404 standard compliant it is, but it claim to pass most tests from COBOL
3405 test suite, which sound good to me. It is nice to know it is possible
3406 to learn COBOL using software without any usage restrictions, and I am
3407 very happy such nice free software project as this is available. If
3408 you as me is curious about COBOL, check it out.
</p>
3410 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3411 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
3412 <b><a href=
"bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a></b>.
</p>
3418 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software
</a>.
3423 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3427 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Jami_Ring__finally_functioning_peer_to_peer_communication_client.html">Jami/Ring, finally functioning peer to peer communication client
</a>
3433 <p>Some years ago, in
2016, I
3434 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Experience_and_updated_recipe_for_using_the_Signal_app_without_a_mobile_phone.html">wrote
3435 for the first time about
</a> the Ring peer to peer messaging system.
3436 It would provide messaging without any central server coordinating the
3437 system and without requiring all users to register a phone number or
3438 own a mobile phone. Back then, I could not get it to work, and put it
3439 aside until it had seen more development. A few days ago I decided to
3440 give it another try, and am happy to report that this time I am able
3441 to not only send and receive messages, but also place audio and video
3442 calls. But only if UDP is not blocked into your network.
</p>
3444 <p>The Ring system changed name earlier this year to
3445 <a href=
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jami_(software)">Jami
</a>. I
3446 tried doing web search for 'ring' when I discovered it for the first
3447 time, and can only applaud this change as it is impossible to find
3448 something called Ring among the noise of other uses of that word. Now
3449 you can search for 'jami' and this client and
3450 <a href=
"https://jami.net/">the Jami system
</a> is the first hit at
3451 least on duckduckgo.
</p>
3453 <p>Jami will by default encrypt messages as well as audio and video
3454 calls, and try to send them directly between the communicating parties
3455 if possible. If this proves impossible (for example if both ends are
3456 behind NAT), it will use a central SIP TURN server maintained by the
3457 Jami project. Jami can also be a normal SIP client. If the SIP
3458 server is unencrypted, the audio and video calls will also be
3459 unencrypted. This is as far as I know the only case where Jami will
3460 do anything without encryption.
</p>
3462 <p>Jami is available for several platforms: Linux, Windows, MacOSX,
3463 Android, iOS, and Android TV. It is included in Debian already. Jami
3464 also work for those using F-Droid without any Google connections,
3465 while Signal do not.
3466 <a href=
"https://git.jami.net/savoirfairelinux/ring-project/wikis/technical/Protocol">The
3467 protocol
</a> is described in the Ring project wiki. The system uses a
3468 distributed hash table (DHT) system (similar to BitTorrent) running
3469 over UDP. On one of the networks I use, I discovered Jami failed to
3470 work. I tracked this down to the fact that incoming UDP packages
3471 going to ports
1-
49999 were blocked, and the DHT would pick a random
3472 port and end up in the low range most of the time. After talking to
3473 the developers, I solved this by enabling the dhtproxy in the
3474 settings, thus using TCP to talk to a central DHT proxy instead of
3476 peering directly with others. I've been told the developers are
3477 working on allowing DHT to use TCP to avoid this problem. I also ran
3478 into a problem when trying to talk to the version of Ring included in
3479 Debian Stable (Stretch). Apparently the protocol changed between
3480 beta2 and the current version, making these clients incompatible.
3481 Hopefully the protocol will not be made incompatible in the
3484 <p>It is worth noting that while looking at Jami and its features, I
3485 came across another communication platform I have not tested yet. The
3486 <a href=
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tox_(protocol)">Tox protocol
</a>
3487 and
<a href=
"https://tox.chat/">family of Tox clients
</a>. It might
3488 become the topic of a future blog post.
</p>
3490 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3491 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
3492 <b><a href=
"bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a></b>.
</p>
3498 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance
</a>.
3503 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3507 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Strategispillet_Unknown_Horizons_n__tilgjengelig_p__bokm_l.html">Strategispillet Unknown Horizons nå tilgjengelig på bokmål
</a>
3513 <p>I høst ble jeg inspirert til å bidra til oversettelsen av
3514 <a href=
"http://unknown-horizons.org/">strategispillet Unknown
3515 Horizons
</a>, og oversatte de nesten
200 strengene i prosjektet til
3516 bokmål. Deretter har jeg gått å ventet på at det kom en ny utgave som
3517 inneholdt disse oversettelsene. Nå er endelig ventetiden over. Den
3518 nye versjonen kom på nyåret, og ble
3519 <a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/unknown-horizons">lastet opp i
3520 Debian
</a> for noen få dager siden. I går kveld fikk jeg testet det ut, og
3521 må innrømme at oversettelsene fungerer fint. Fant noen få tekster som
3522 måtte justeres, men ikke noe alvorlig. Har oppdatert
3523 <a href=
"https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/uh/">oversettelsen på
3524 Weblate
</a>, slik at neste utgave vil være enda bedre. :)
</p>
3526 <p>Spillet er et ressursstyringsspill ala Civilization, og er morsomt
3527 å spille for oss som liker slikt. :)
</p>
3529 <p>Som vanlig, hvis du bruker Bitcoin og ønsker å vise din støtte til
3530 det jeg driver med, setter jeg pris på om du sender Bitcoin-donasjoner
3532 <b><a href=
"bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a></b>.
3533 Merk, betaling med bitcoin er ikke anonymt. :)
</p>
3539 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk
</a>.
3544 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3548 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Debian_now_got_everything_you_need_to_program_Micro_bit.html">Debian now got everything you need to program Micro:bit
</a>
3554 <p>I am amazed and very pleased to discover that since a few days ago,
3555 everything you need to program the
<a href=
"https://microbit.org/">BBC
3556 micro:bit
</a> is available from the Debian archive. All this is
3557 thanks to the hard work of Nick Morrott and the Debian python
3558 packaging team. The micro:bit project recommend the mu-editor to
3559 program the microcomputer, as this editor will take care of all the
3560 machinery required to injekt/flash micropython alongside the program
3561 into the micro:bit, as long as the pieces are available.
</p>
3563 <p>There are three main pieces involved. The first to enter Debian
3565 <a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/python-uflash">python-uflash
</a>,
3566 which was accepted into the archive
2019-
01-
12. The next one was
3567 <a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/mu-editor">mu-editor
</a>, which
3568 showed up
2019-
01-
13. The final and hardest part to to into the
3570 <a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/firmware-microbit-micropython">firmware-microbit-micropython
</a>,
3571 which needed to get its build system and dependencies into Debian
3572 before it was accepted
2019-
01-
20. The last one is already in Debian
3573 Unstable and should enter Debian Testing / Buster in three days. This
3574 all allow any user of the micro:bit to get going by simply running
3575 'apt install mu-editor' when using Testing or Unstable, and once
3576 Buster is released as stable, all the users of Debian stable will be
3579 <p>As a minor final touch, I added rules to
3580 <a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/isenkram">the isenkram
3581 package
</a> for recognizing micro:bit and recommend the mu-editor
3582 package. This make sure any user of the isenkram desktop daemon will
3583 get a popup suggesting to install mu-editor then the USB cable from
3584 the micro:bit is inserted for the first time.
</p>
3586 <p>This should make it easier to have fun.
</p>
3588 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3589 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
3590 <b><a href=
"bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a></b>.
</p>
3596 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/robot">robot
</a>.
3601 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3605 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Learn_to_program_with_Minetest_on_Debian.html">Learn to program with Minetest on Debian
</a>
3611 <p>A fun way to learn how to program
3612 <a href=
"https://www.python.org/">Python
</a> is to follow the
3613 instructions in the book
3614 "
<a href=
"https://nostarch.com/programwithminecraft">Learn to program
3615 with Minecraft
</a>", which introduces programming in Python to people
3616 who like to play with Minecraft. The book uses a Python library to
3617 talk to a TCP/IP socket with an API accepting build instructions and
3618 providing information about the current players in a Minecraft world.
3619 The TCP/IP API was first created for the Minecraft implementation for
3620 Raspberry Pi, and has since been ported to some server versions of
3621 Minecraft. The book contain recipes for those using Windows, MacOSX
3622 and Raspian. But a little known fact is that you can follow the same
3623 recipes using the free software construction game
3624 <a href="https://minetest.net/
">Minetest</a>.</p>
3626 <p>There is <a href="https://github.com/sprintingkiwi/pycraft_mod
">a
3627 Minetest module implementing the same API</a>, making it possible to
3628 use the Python programs coded to talk to Minecraft with Minetest too.
3630 <a href="https://ftp-master.debian.org/new/minetest-mod-pycraft_0.20%
2Bgit20180331.0376a0a%
2Bdfsg-
1.html
">uploaded
3631 this module</a> to Debian two weeks ago, and as soon as it clears the
3632 FTP masters NEW queue, learning to program Python with Minetest on
3633 Debian will be a simple 'apt install' away. The Debian package is
3634 maintained as part of the Debian Games team, and
3635 <a href="https://salsa.debian.org/games-team/unfinished/minetest-mod-pycraft
">the
3636 packaging rules</a> are currently located under 'unfinished' on
3639 <p>You will most likely need to install several of the Minetest
3640 modules in Debian for the examples included with the library to work
3641 well, as there are several blocks used by the example scripts that are
3642 provided via modules in Minetest. Without the required blocks, a
3643 simple stone block is used instead. My initial testing with a analog
3644 clock did not get gold arms as instructed in the python library, but
3645 instead used stone arms.</p>
3647 <p>I tried to find a way to add the API to the desktop version of
3648 Minecraft, but were unable to find any working recipes. The
3649 <a href="https://www.epiphanydigest.com/tag/minecraft-python-api/
">recipes</a>
3650 I <a href="https://github.com/kbsriram/mcpiapi
">found</a> are only
3651 working with a standalone Minecraft server setup. Are there any
3652 options to use with the normal desktop version?</p>
3654 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3655 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
3656 <b><a href="bitcoin:
15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
3662 Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian
">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>.
3667 <div class="padding
"></div>
3671 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Time_for_an_official_MIME_type_for_patches_.html
">Time for an official MIME type for patches?</a>
3677 <p>As part of my involvement in
3678 <a href="https://gitlab.com/OsloMet-ABI/nikita-noark5-core
">the Nikita
3679 archive API project</a>, I've been importing a fairly large lump of
3680 emails into a test instance of the archive to see how well this would
3681 go. I picked a subset of <a href="https://notmuchmail.org/
">my
3682 notmuch email database</a>, all public emails sent to me via
3683 @lists.debian.org, giving me a set of around 216 000 emails to import.
3684 In the process, I had a look at the various attachments included in
3685 these emails, to figure out what to do with attachments, and noticed
3686 that one of the most common attachment formats do not have
3687 <a href="https://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types/media-types.xhtml
">an
3688 official MIME type</a> registered with IANA/IETF. The output from
3689 diff, ie the input for patch, is on the top 10 list of formats
3690 included in these emails. At the moment people seem to use either
3691 text/x-patch or text/x-diff, but neither is officially registered. It
3692 would be better if one official MIME type were registered and used
3695 <p>To try to get one official MIME type for these files, I've brought
3697 <a href="https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/media-types
">the
3698 media-types mailing list</a>. If you are interested in discussion
3699 which MIME type to use as the official for patch files, or involved in
3700 making software using a MIME type for patches, perhaps you would like
3701 to join the discussion?</p>
3703 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3704 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
3705 <b><a href="bitcoin:
15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
3711 Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian
">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/noark5
">noark5</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/standard
">standard</a>.
3716 <div class="padding
"></div>
3720 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Automatic_Google_Drive_sync_using_grive_in_Debian.html
">Automatic Google Drive sync using grive in Debian</a>
3726 <p>A few days, I rescued a Windows victim over to Debian. To try to
3727 rescue the remains, I helped set up automatic sync with Google Drive.
3728 I did not find any sensible Debian package handling this
3729 automatically, so I rebuild the grive2 source from
3730 <a href="http://www.webupd8.org/
">the Ubuntu UPD8 PPA</a> to do the
3731 task and added a autostart desktop entry and a small shell script to
3732 run in the background while the user is logged in to do the sync.
3733 Here is a sketch of the setup for future reference.</p>
3735 <p>I first created <tt>~/googledrive</tt>, entered the directory and
3736 ran '<tt>grive -a</tt>' to authenticate the machine/user. Next, I
3737 created a autostart hook in <tt>~/.config/autostart/grive.desktop</tt>
3738 to start the sync when the user log in:</p>
3740 <p><blockquote><pre>
3742 Name=Google drive autosync
3744 Exec=/home/user/bin/grive-sync
3745 </pre></blockquote></p>
3747 <p>Finally, I wrote the <tt>~/bin/grive-sync</tt> script to sync
3748 ~/googledrive/ with the files in Google Drive.</p>
3750 <p><blockquote><pre>
3755 if [ "$syncpid" ] ; then
3759 trap cleanup EXIT INT QUIT
3760 /usr/lib/grive/grive-sync.sh listen googledrive
2>&
1 | sed "s%^%$
0:%" &
3763 if ! xhost
>/dev/null
2>&
1 ; then
3764 echo "no DISPLAY, exiting as the user probably logged out"
3767 if [ ! -e /run/user/
1000/grive-sync.sh_googledrive ] ; then
3768 /usr/lib/grive/grive-sync.sh sync googledrive
3771 done
2>&
1 | sed "s%^%$
0:%"
3772 </pre></blockquote></p>
3774 <p>Feel free to use the setup if you want. It can be assumed to be
3775 GNU GPL v2 licensed (or any later version, at your leisure), but I
3776 doubt this code is possible to claim copyright on.
</p>
3778 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3779 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
3780 <b><a href=
"bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a></b>.
</p>
3786 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
3791 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3795 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Using_the_Kodi_API_to_play_Youtube_videos.html">Using the Kodi API to play Youtube videos
</a>
3801 <p>I continue to explore my Kodi installation, and today I wanted to
3802 tell it to play a youtube URL I received in a chat, without having to
3803 insert search terms using the on-screen keyboard. After searching the
3804 web for API access to the Youtube plugin and testing a bit, I managed
3805 to find a recipe that worked. If you got a kodi instance with its API
3806 available from http://kodihost/jsonrpc, you can try the following to
3807 have check out a nice cover band.
</p>
3809 <p><blockquote><pre>curl --silent --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
3810 --data-binary '{ "id":
1, "jsonrpc": "
2.0", "method": "Player.Open",
3811 "params": {"item": { "file":
3812 "plugin://plugin.video.youtube/play/?video_id=LuRGVM9O0qg" } } }' \
3813 http://projector.local/jsonrpc
</pre></blockquote></p>
3815 <p>I've extended kodi-stream program to take a video source as its
3816 first argument. It can now handle direct video links, youtube links
3817 and 'desktop' to stream my desktop to Kodi. It is almost like a
3820 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3821 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
3822 <b><a href=
"bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a></b>.
</p>
3828 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/kodi">kodi
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/video">video
</a>.
3833 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3837 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Sharing_images_with_friends_and_family_using_RSS_and_EXIF_XMP_metadata.html">Sharing images with friends and family using RSS and EXIF/XMP metadata
</a>
3843 <p>For a while now, I have looked for a sensible way to share images
3844 with my family using a self hosted solution, as it is unacceptable to
3845 place images from my personal life under the control of strangers
3846 working for data hoarders like Google or Dropbox. The last few days I
3847 have drafted an approach that might work out, and I would like to
3848 share it with you. I would like to publish images on a server under
3849 my control, and point some Internet connected display units using some
3850 free and open standard to the images I published. As my primary
3851 language is not limited to ASCII, I need to store metadata using
3852 UTF-
8. Many years ago, I hoped to find a digital photo frame capable
3853 of reading a RSS feed with image references (aka using the
3854 <enclosure
> RSS tag), but was unable to find a current supplier
3855 of such frames. In the end I gave up that approach.
</p>
3857 <p>Some months ago, I discovered that
3858 <a href=
"https://www.jwz.org/xscreensaver/">XScreensaver
</a> is able to
3859 read images from a RSS feed, and used it to set up a screen saver on
3860 my home info screen, showing images from the Daily images feed from
3861 NASA. This proved to work well. More recently I discovered that
3862 <a href=
"https://kodi.tv">Kodi
</a> (both using
3863 <a href=
"https://www.openelec.tv/">OpenELEC
</a> and
3864 <a href=
"https://libreelec.tv">LibreELEC
</a>) provide the
3865 <a href=
"https://github.com/grinsted/script.screensaver.feedreader">Feedreader
</a>
3866 screen saver capable of reading a RSS feed with images and news. For
3867 fun, I used it this summer to test Kodi on my parents TV by hooking up
3868 a Raspberry PI unit with LibreELEC, and wanted to provide them with a
3869 screen saver showing selected pictures from my selection.
</p>
3871 <p>Armed with motivation and a test photo frame, I set out to generate
3872 a RSS feed for the Kodi instance. I adjusted my
<a
3873 href=
"https://freedombox.org/">Freedombox
</a> instance, created
3874 /var/www/html/privatepictures/, wrote a small Perl script to extract
3875 title and description metadata from the photo files and generate the
3876 RSS file. I ended up using Perl instead of python, as the
3877 libimage-exiftool-perl Debian package seemed to handle the EXIF/XMP
3878 tags I ended up using, while python3-exif did not. The relevant EXIF
3879 tags only support ASCII, so I had to find better alternatives. XMP
3880 seem to have the support I need.
</p>
3882 <p>I am a bit unsure which EXIF/XMP tags to use, as I would like to
3883 use tags that can be easily added/updated using normal free software
3884 photo managing software. I ended up using the tags set using this
3885 exiftool command, as these tags can also be set using digiKam:
</p>
3888 exiftool -headline='The RSS image title' \
3889 -description='The RSS image description.' \
3890 -subject+=for-family photo.jpeg
3893 <p>I initially tried the "-title" and "keyword" tags, but they were
3894 invisible in digiKam, so I changed to "-headline" and "-subject". I
3895 use the keyword/subject 'for-family' to flag that the photo should be
3896 shared with my family. Images with this keyword set are located and
3897 copied into my Freedombox for the RSS generating script to find.
</p>
3899 <p>Are there better ways to do this? Get in touch if you have better
3902 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3903 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
3904 <b><a href=
"bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a></b>.
</p>
3910 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
3915 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3919 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Simple_streaming_the_Linux_desktop_to_Kodi_using_GStreamer_and_RTP.html">Simple streaming the Linux desktop to Kodi using GStreamer and RTP
</a>
3925 <p>Last night, I wrote
3926 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Streaming_the_Linux_desktop_to_Kodi_using_VLC_and_RTSP.html">a
3927 recipe to stream a Linux desktop using VLC to a instance of Kodi
</a>.
3928 During the day I received valuable feedback, and thanks to the
3929 suggestions I have been able to rewrite the recipe into a much simpler
3930 approach requiring no setup at all. It is a single script that take
3933 <p>This new script uses GStreamer instead of VLC to capture the
3934 desktop and stream it to Kodi. This fixed the video quality issue I
3935 saw initially. It further removes the need to add a m3u file on the
3936 Kodi machine, as it instead connects to
3937 <a href=
"https://kodi.wiki/view/JSON-RPC_API/v8">the JSON-RPC API in
3938 Kodi
</a> and simply ask Kodi to play from the stream created using
3939 GStreamer. Streaming the desktop to Kodi now become trivial. Copy
3940 the script below, run it with the DNS name or IP address of the kodi
3941 server to stream to as the only argument, and watch your screen show
3942 up on the Kodi screen. Note, it depend on multicast on the local
3943 network, so if you need to stream outside the local network, the
3944 script must be modified. Also note, I have no idea if audio work, as
3945 I only care about the picture part.
</p>
3950 # Stream the Linux desktop view to Kodi. See
3951 # http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Streaming_the_Linux_desktop_to_Kodi_using_VLC_and_RTSP.html
3952 # for backgorund information.
3954 # Make sure the stream is stopped in Kodi and the gstreamer process is
3955 # killed if something go wrong (for example if curl is unable to find the
3956 # kodi server). Do the same when interrupting this script.
3961 curl --silent --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
3962 --data-binary "{ \"id\":
1, \"jsonrpc\": \"
2.0\", \"method\": \"$cmd\", \"params\": $params }" \
3963 "http://$host/jsonrpc"
3966 if [ -n "$kodihost" ] ; then
3967 # Stop the playing when we end
3968 playerid=$(kodicmd "$kodihost" Player.GetActivePlayers "{}" |
3969 jq .result[].playerid)
3970 kodicmd "$kodihost" Player.Stop "{ \"playerid\" : $playerid }"
> /dev/null
3972 if [ "$gstpid" ] && kill -
0 "$gstpid"
>/dev/null
2>&1; then
3976 trap cleanup EXIT INT
3978 if [ -n "$
1" ]; then
3989 pasrc=$(pactl list | grep -A2 'Source #' | grep 'Name: .*\.monitor$' | \
3990 cut -d" " -f2|head -
1)
3991 gst-launch-
1.0 ximagesrc use-damage=
0 ! video/x-raw,framerate=
30/
1 ! \
3992 videoconvert ! queue2 ! \
3993 x264enc bitrate=
8000 speed-preset=superfast tune=zerolatency qp-min=
30 \
3994 key-int-max=
15 bframes=
2 ! video/x-h264,profile=high ! queue2 ! \
3995 mpegtsmux alignment=
7 name=mux ! rndbuffersize max=
1316 min=
1316 ! \
3996 udpsink host=$mcast port=$mcastport ttl-mc=$mcastttl auto-multicast=
1 sync=
0 \
3997 pulsesrc device=$pasrc ! audioconvert ! queue2 ! avenc_aac ! queue2 ! mux. \
4001 # Give stream a second to get going
4004 # Ask kodi to start streaming using its JSON-RPC API
4005 kodicmd "$kodihost" Player.Open \
4006 "{\"item\": { \"file\": \"udp://@$mcast:$mcastport\" } }"
> /dev/null
4008 # wait for gst to end
4012 <p>I hope you find the approach useful. I know I do.
</p>
4014 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
4015 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
4016 <b><a href=
"bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a></b>.
</p>
4022 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/kodi">kodi
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/video">video
</a>.
4027 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4031 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Streaming_the_Linux_desktop_to_Kodi_using_VLC_and_RTSP.html">Streaming the Linux desktop to Kodi using VLC and RTSP
</a>
4038 <ahref=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Simple_streaming_the_Linux_desktop_to_Kodi_using_GStreamer_and_RTP.html">the
4039 followup post
</a> for a even better approach.
</p>
4041 <p>A while back, I was asked by a friend how to stream the desktop to
4042 my projector connected to Kodi. I sadly had to admit that I had no
4043 idea, as it was a task I never had tried. Since then, I have been
4044 looking for a way to do so, preferable without much extra software to
4045 install on either side. Today I found a way that seem to kind of
4046 work. Not great, but it is a start.
</p>
4048 <p>I had a look at several approaches, for example
4049 <a href=
"https://github.com/mfoetsch/dlna_live_streaming">using uPnP
4050 DLNA as described in
2011</a>, but it required a uPnP server, fuse and
4051 local storage enough to store the stream locally. This is not going
4052 to work well for me, lacking enough free space, and it would
4053 impossible for my friend to get working.
</p>
4055 <p>Next, it occurred to me that perhaps I could use VLC to create a
4056 video stream that Kodi could play. Preferably using
4057 broadcast/multicast, to avoid having to change any setup on the Kodi
4058 side when starting such stream. Unfortunately, the only recipe I
4059 could find using multicast used the rtp protocol, and this protocol
4060 seem to not be supported by Kodi.
</p>
4062 <p>On the other hand, the rtsp protocol is working! Unfortunately I
4063 have to specify the IP address of the streaming machine in both the
4064 sending command and the file on the Kodi server. But it is showing my
4065 desktop, and thus allow us to have a shared look on the big screen at
4066 the programs I work on.
</p>
4068 <p>I did not spend much time investigating codeces. I combined the
4069 rtp and rtsp recipes from
4070 <a href=
"https://wiki.videolan.org/Documentation:Streaming_HowTo/Command_Line_Examples/">the
4071 VLC Streaming HowTo/Command Line Examples
</a>, and was able to get
4072 this working on the desktop/streaming end.
</p>
4075 vlc screen:// --sout \
4076 '#transcode{vcodec=mp4v,acodec=mpga,vb=
800,ab=
128}:rtp{dst=projector.local,port=
1234,sdp=rtsp://
192.168.11.4:
8080/test.sdp}'
4079 <p>I ssh-ed into my Kodi box and created a file like this with the
4080 same IP address:
</p>
4083 echo rtsp://
192.168.11.4:
8080/test.sdp \
4084 > /storage/videos/screenstream.m3u
4087 <p>Note the
192.168.11.4 IP address is my desktops IP address. As far
4088 as I can tell the IP must be hardcoded for this to work. In other
4089 words, if someone elses machine is going to do the steaming, you have
4090 to update screenstream.m3u on the Kodi machine and adjust the vlc
4091 recipe. To get started, locate the file in Kodi and select the m3u
4092 file while the VLC stream is running. The desktop then show up in my
4095 <p>When using the same technique to stream a video file with audio,
4096 the audio quality is really bad. No idea if the problem is package
4097 loss or bad parameters for the transcode. I do not know VLC nor Kodi
4100 <p><strong>Update
2018-
07-
12</strong>: Johannes Schauer send me a few
4101 succestions and reminded me about an important step. The "screen:"
4102 input source is only available once the vlc-plugin-access-extra
4103 package is installed on Debian. Without it, you will see this error
4104 message: "VLC is unable to open the MRL 'screen://'. Check the log
4105 for details." He further found that it is possible to drop some parts
4106 of the VLC command line to reduce the amount of hardcoded information.
4107 It is also useful to consider using cvlc to avoid having the VLC
4108 window in the desktop view. In sum, this give us this command line on
4112 cvlc screen:// --sout \
4113 '#transcode{vcodec=mp4v,acodec=mpga,vb=
800,ab=
128}:rtp{sdp=rtsp://:
8080/}'
4116 <p>and this on the Kodi end
<p>
4119 echo rtsp://
192.168.11.4:
8080/ \
4120 > /storage/videos/screenstream.m3u
4123 <p>Still bad image quality, though. But I did discover that streaming
4124 a DVD using dvdsimple:///dev/dvd as the source had excellent video and
4125 audio quality, so I guess the issue is in the input or transcoding
4126 parts, not the rtsp part. I've tried to change the vb and ab
4127 parameters to use more bandwidth, but it did not make a
4130 <p>I further received a suggestion from Einar Haraldseid to try using
4131 gstreamer instead of VLC, and this proved to work great! He also
4132 provided me with the trick to get Kodi to use a multicast stream as
4133 its source. By using this monstrous oneliner, I can stream my desktop
4134 with good video quality in reasonable framerate to the
239.255.0.1
4135 multicast address on port
1234:
4138 gst-launch-
1.0 ximagesrc use-damage=
0 ! video/x-raw,framerate=
30/
1 ! \
4139 videoconvert ! queue2 ! \
4140 x264enc bitrate=
8000 speed-preset=superfast tune=zerolatency qp-min=
30 \
4141 key-int-max=
15 bframes=
2 ! video/x-h264,profile=high ! queue2 ! \
4142 mpegtsmux alignment=
7 name=mux ! rndbuffersize max=
1316 min=
1316 ! \
4143 udpsink host=
239.255.0.1 port=
1234 ttl-mc=
1 auto-multicast=
1 sync=
0 \
4144 pulsesrc device=$(pactl list | grep -A2 'Source #' | \
4145 grep 'Name: .*\.monitor$' | cut -d" " -f2|head -
1) ! \
4146 audioconvert ! queue2 ! avenc_aac ! queue2 ! mux.
4149 <p>and this on the Kodi end
<p>
4152 echo udp://@
239.255.0.1:
1234 \
4153 > /storage/videos/screenstream.m3u
4156 <p>Note the trick to pick a valid pulseaudio source. It might not
4157 pick the one you need. This approach will of course lead to trouble
4158 if more than one source uses the same multicast port and address.
4159 Note the ttl-mc=
1 setting, which limit the multicast packages to the
4160 local network. If the value is increased, your screen will be
4161 broadcasted further, one network "hop" for each increase (read up on
4162 multicast to learn more. :)!
</p>
4164 <p>Having cracked how to get Kodi to receive multicast streams, I
4165 could use this VLC command to stream to the same multicast address.
4166 The image quality is way better than the rtsp approach, but gstreamer
4167 seem to be doing a better job.
</p>
4170 cvlc screen:// --sout '#transcode{vcodec=mp4v,acodec=mpga,vb=
800,ab=
128}:rtp{mux=ts,dst=
239.255.0.1,port=
1234,sdp=sap}'
4173 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
4174 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
4175 <b><a href=
"bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a></b>.
</p>
4181 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/kodi">kodi
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/video">video
</a>.
4186 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4190 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/What_is_the_most_supported_MIME_type_in_Debian_in_2018_.html">What is the most supported MIME type in Debian in
2018?
</a>
4197 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/What_is_the_most_supported_MIME_type_in_Debian_.html">I
4198 measured what the most supported MIME type in Debian was
</a>, by
4199 analysing the desktop files in all packages in the archive. Since
4200 then, the DEP-
11 AppStream system has been put into production, making
4201 the task a lot easier. This made me want to repeat the measurement,
4202 to see how much things changed. Here are the new numbers, for
4203 unstable only this time:
4205 <p><strong>Debian Unstable:
</strong></p>
4209 ----- -----------------------
4221 30 audio/x-vorbis+ogg
4222 29 image/x-portable-pixmap
4224 27 image/x-portable-bitmap
4226 26 application/x-ogg
4232 <p>The list was created like this using a sid chroot: "cat
4233 /var/lib/apt/lists/*sid*_dep11_Components-amd64.yml.gz| zcat | awk '/^
4234 - \S+\/\S+$/ {print $
2 }' | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | head -
20"
</p>
4236 <p>It is interesting to see how image formats have passed text/plain
4237 as the most announced supported MIME type. These days, thanks to the
4238 AppStream system, if you run into a file format you do not know, and
4239 want to figure out which packages support the format, you can find the
4240 MIME type of the file using "file --mime
<filename
>", and then
4241 look up all packages announcing support for this format in their
4242 AppStream metadata (XML or .desktop file) using "appstreamcli
4243 what-provides mimetype
<mime-type
>. For example if you, like
4244 me, want to know which packages support inode/directory, you can get a
4247 <p><blockquote><pre>
4248 % appstreamcli what-provides mimetype inode/directory | grep Package: | sort
4255 Package: doublecmd-common
4257 Package: enlightenment
4277 </pre></blockquote></p>
4279 <p>Using the same method, I can quickly discover that the Sketchup file
4280 format is not yet supported by any package in Debian:
</p>
4282 <p><blockquote><pre>
4283 % appstreamcli what-provides mimetype application/vnd.sketchup.skp
4284 Could not find component providing 'mimetype::application/vnd.sketchup.skp'.
4286 </pre></blockquote></p>
4288 <p>Yesterday I used it to figure out which packages support the STL
3D
4291 <p><blockquote><pre>
4292 % appstreamcli what-provides mimetype application/sla|grep Package
4297 </pre></blockquote></p>
4299 <p>PS: A new version of Cura was uploaded to Debian yesterday.
</p>
4301 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
4302 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
4303 <b><a href=
"bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a></b>.
</p>
4309 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram
</a>.
4314 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4318 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Debian_APT_upgrade_without_enough_free_space_on_the_disk___.html">Debian APT upgrade without enough free space on the disk...
</a>
4324 <p>Quite regularly, I let my Debian Sid/Unstable chroot stay untouch
4325 for a while, and when I need to update it there is not enough free
4326 space on the disk for apt to do a normal 'apt upgrade'. I normally
4327 would resolve the issue by doing 'apt install
<somepackages
>' to
4328 upgrade only some of the packages in one batch, until the amount of
4329 packages to download fall below the amount of free space available.
4330 Today, I had about
500 packages to upgrade, and after a while I got
4331 tired of trying to install chunks of packages manually. I concluded
4332 that I did not have the spare hours required to complete the task, and
4333 decided to see if I could automate it. I came up with this small
4334 script which I call 'apt-in-chunks':
</p>
4336 <p><blockquote><pre>
4339 # Upgrade packages when the disk is too full to upgrade every
4340 # upgradable package in one lump. Fetching packages to upgrade using
4341 # apt, and then installing using dpkg, to avoid changing the package
4342 # flag for manual/automatic.
4354 for p in $(apt list --upgradable | ignore "$@" |cut -d/ -f1 | grep -v '^Listing...'); do
4357 apt install --download-only -y $p
4358 for f in /var/cache/apt/archives/*.deb; do
4359 if [ -e "$f" ]; then
4360 dpkg -i /var/cache/apt/archives/*.deb
4365 </pre></blockquote></p>
4367 <p>The script will extract the list of packages to upgrade, try to
4368 download the packages needed to upgrade one package, install the
4369 downloaded packages using dpkg. The idea is to upgrade packages
4370 without changing the APT mark for the package (ie the one recording of
4371 the package was manually requested or pulled in as a dependency). To
4372 use it, simply run it as root from the command line. If it fail, try
4373 'apt install -f' to clean up the mess and run the script again. This
4374 might happen if the new packages conflict with one of the old
4375 packages. dpkg is unable to remove, while apt can do this.
</p>
4377 <p>It take one option, a package to ignore in the list of packages to
4378 upgrade. The option to ignore a package is there to be able to skip
4379 the packages that are simply too large to unpack. Today this was
4380 'ghc', but I have run into other large packages causing similar
4381 problems earlier (like TeX).
</p>
4383 <p>Update
2018-
07-
08: Thanks to Paul Wise, I am aware of two
4384 alternative ways to handle this. The "unattended-upgrades
4385 --minimal-upgrade-steps" option will try to calculate upgrade sets for
4386 each package to upgrade, and then upgrade them in order, smallest set
4387 first. It might be a better option than my above mentioned script.
4388 Also, "aptutude upgrade" can upgrade single packages, thus avoiding
4389 the need for using "dpkg -i" in the script above.
</p>
4391 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
4392 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
4393 <b><a href=
"bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a></b>.
</p>
4399 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
4404 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4408 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Version_3_1_of_Cura__the_3D_print_slicer__is_now_in_Debian.html">Version
3.1 of Cura, the
3D print slicer, is now in Debian
</a>
4414 <p>A new version of the
4415 <a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/cura">3D printer slicer
4416 software Cura
</a>, version
3.1.0, is now available in Debian Testing
4417 (aka Buster) and Debian Unstable (aka Sid). I hope you find it
4418 useful. It was uploaded the last few days, and the last update will
4419 enter testing tomorrow. See the
4420 <a href=
"https://ultimaker.com/en/products/cura-software/release-notes">release
4421 notes
</a> for the list of bug fixes and new features. Version
3.2
4422 was announced
6 days ago. We will try to get it into Debian as
4425 <p>More information related to
3D printing is available on the
4426 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/3DPrinting">3D printing
</a> and
4427 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/3D-printer">3D printer
</a> wiki pages
4430 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
4431 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
4432 <b><a href=
"bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a></b>.
</p>
4438 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
4443 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4447 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Cura__the_nice_3D_print_slicer__is_now_in_Debian_Unstable.html">Cura, the nice
3D print slicer, is now in Debian Unstable
</a>
4453 <p>After several months of working and waiting, I am happy to report
4454 that the nice and user friendly
3D printer slicer software Cura just
4455 entered Debian Unstable. It consist of five packages,
4456 <a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/cura">cura
</a>,
4457 <a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/cura-engine">cura-engine
</a>,
4458 <a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/libarcus">libarcus
</a>,
4459 <a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/fdm-materials">fdm-materials
</a>,
4460 <a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/libsavitar">libsavitar
</a> and
4461 <a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/uranium">uranium
</a>. The last
4462 two, uranium and cura, entered Unstable yesterday. This should make
4463 it easier for Debian users to print on at least the Ultimaker class of
4464 3D printers. My nearest
3D printer is an Ultimaker
2+, so it will
4465 make life easier for at least me. :)
</p>
4467 <p>The work to make this happen was done by Gregor Riepl, and I was
4468 happy to assist him in sponsoring the packages. With the introduction
4469 of Cura, Debian is up to three
3D printer slicers at your service,
4470 Cura, Slic3r and Slic3r Prusa. If you own or have access to a
3D
4471 printer, give it a go. :)
</p>
4473 <p>The
3D printer software is maintained by the
3D printer Debian
4474 team, flocking together on the
4475 <a href=
"http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/3dprinter-general">3dprinter-general
</a>
4476 mailing list and the
4477 <a href=
"irc://irc.debian.org/#debian-3dprinting">#debian-
3dprinting
</a>
4480 <p>The next step for Cura in Debian is to update the cura package to
4481 version
3.0.3 and then update the entire set of packages to version
4482 3.1.0 which showed up the last few days.
</p>
4488 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
4493 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4497 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Generating_3D_prints_in_Debian_using_Cura_and_Slic3r__prusa_.html">Generating
3D prints in Debian using Cura and Slic3r(-prusa)
</a>
4503 <p>At my nearby maker space,
4504 <a href=
"http://sonen.ifi.uio.no/">Sonen
</a>, I heard the story that it
4505 was easier to generate gcode files for theyr
3D printers (Ultimake
2+)
4506 on Windows and MacOS X than Linux, because the software involved had
4507 to be manually compiled and set up on Linux while premade packages
4508 worked out of the box on Windows and MacOS X. I found this annoying,
4509 as the software involved,
4510 <a href=
"https://github.com/Ultimaker/Cura">Cura
</a>, is free software
4511 and should be trivial to get up and running on Linux if someone took
4512 the time to package it for the relevant distributions. I even found
4513 <a href=
"https://bugs.debian.org/706656">a request for adding into
4514 Debian
</a> from
2013, which had seem some activity over the years but
4515 never resulted in the software showing up in Debian. So a few days
4516 ago I offered my help to try to improve the situation.
</p>
4518 <p>Now I am very happy to see that all the packages required by a
4519 working Cura in Debian are uploaded into Debian and waiting in the NEW
4520 queue for the ftpmasters to have a look. You can track the progress
4522 <a href=
"https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?email=3dprinter-general%40lists.alioth.debian.org">the
4523 status page for the
3D printer team
</a>.
</p>
4525 <p>The uploaded packages are a bit behind upstream, and was uploaded
4526 now to get slots in
<a href=
"https://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the NEW
4527 queue
</a> while we work up updating the packages to the latest
4528 upstream version.
</p>
4530 <p>On a related note, two competitors for Cura, which I found harder
4531 to use and was unable to configure correctly for Ultimaker
2+ in the
4532 short time I spent on it, are already in Debian. If you are looking
4533 for
3D printer "slicers" and want something already available in
4535 <a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/slic3r">slic3r
</a> and
4536 <a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/slic3r-prusa">slic3r-prusa
</a>.
4537 The latter is a fork of the former.
</p>
4539 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
4540 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
4541 <b><a href=
"bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a></b>.
</p>
4547 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
4552 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4556 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Visualizing_GSM_radio_chatter_using_gr_gsm_and_Hopglass.html">Visualizing GSM radio chatter using gr-gsm and Hopglass
</a>
4562 <p>Every mobile phone announce its existence over radio to the nearby
4563 mobile cell towers. And this radio chatter is available for anyone
4564 with a radio receiver capable of receiving them. Details about the
4565 mobile phones with very good accuracy is of course collected by the
4566 phone companies, but this is not the topic of this blog post. The
4567 mobile phone radio chatter make it possible to figure out when a cell
4568 phone is nearby, as it include the SIM card ID (IMSI). By paying
4569 attention over time, one can see when a phone arrive and when it leave
4570 an area. I believe it would be nice to make this information more
4571 available to the general public, to make more people aware of how
4572 their phones are announcing their whereabouts to anyone that care to
4575 <p>I am very happy to report that we managed to get something
4576 visualizing this information up and running for
4577 <a href=
"http://norwaymakers.org/osf17">Oslo Skaperfestival
2017</a>
4578 (Oslo Makers Festival) taking place today and tomorrow at Deichmanske
4579 library. The solution is based on the
4580 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Easier_recipe_to_observe_the_cell_phones_around_you.html">simple
4581 recipe for listening to GSM chatter
</a> I posted a few days ago, and
4582 will show up at the stand of
<a href=
"http://sonen.ifi.uio.no/">Åpen
4583 Sone from the Computer Science department of the University of
4584 Oslo
</a>. The presentation will show the nearby mobile phones (aka
4585 IMSIs) as dots in a web browser graph, with lines to the dot
4586 representing mobile base station it is talking to. It was working in
4587 the lab yesterday, and was moved into place this morning.
</p>
4589 <p>We set up a fairly powerful desktop machine using Debian
4590 Buster/Testing with several (five, I believe) RTL2838 DVB-T receivers
4591 connected and visualize the visible cell phone towers using an
4592 <a href=
"https://github.com/marlow925/hopglass">English version of
4593 Hopglass
</a>. A fairly powerfull machine is needed as the
4594 grgsm_livemon_headless processes from
4595 <a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/gr-gsm">gr-gsm
</a> converting
4596 the radio signal to data packages is quite CPU intensive.
</p>
4598 <p>The frequencies to listen to, are identified using a slightly
4599 patched scan-and-livemon (to set the --args values for each receiver),
4600 and the Hopglass data is generated using the
4601 <a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/IMSI-catcher/tree/meshviewer-output">patches
4602 in my meshviewer-output branch
</a>. For some reason we could not get
4603 more than four SDRs working. There is also a geographical map trying
4604 to show the location of the base stations, but I believe their
4605 coordinates are hardcoded to some random location in Germany, I
4606 believe. The code should be replaced with code to look up location in
4607 a text file, a sqlite database or one of the online databases
4609 <a href=
"https://github.com/Oros42/IMSI-catcher/issues/14">the github
4610 issue for the topic
</a>.
4612 <p>If this sound interesting, visit the stand at the festival!
</p>
4618 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance
</a>.
4623 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4627 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Easier_recipe_to_observe_the_cell_phones_around_you.html">Easier recipe to observe the cell phones around you
</a>
4633 <p>A little more than a month ago I wrote
4634 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Simpler_recipe_on_how_to_make_a_simple__7_IMSI_Catcher_using_Debian.html">how
4635 to observe the SIM card ID (aka IMSI number) of mobile phones talking
4636 to nearby mobile phone base stations using Debian GNU/Linux and a
4637 cheap USB software defined radio
</a>, and thus being able to pinpoint
4638 the location of people and equipment (like cars and trains) with an
4639 accuracy of a few kilometer. Since then we have worked to make the
4640 procedure even simpler, and it is now possible to do this without any
4641 manual frequency tuning and without building your own packages.
</p>
4643 <p>The
<a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/gr-gsm">gr-gsm
</a>
4644 package is now included in Debian testing and unstable, and the
4645 IMSI-catcher code no longer require root access to fetch and decode
4646 the GSM data collected using gr-gsm.
</p>
4648 <p>Here is an updated recipe, using packages built by Debian and a git
4649 clone of two python scripts:
</p>
4653 <li>Start with a Debian machine running the Buster version (aka
4656 <li>Run '
<tt>apt install gr-gsm python-numpy python-scipy
4657 python-scapy
</tt>' as root to install required packages.
</li>
4659 <li>Fetch the code decoding GSM packages using '
<tt>git clone
4660 github.com/Oros42/IMSI-catcher.git
</tt>'.
</li>
4662 <li>Insert USB software defined radio supported by GNU Radio.
</li>
4664 <li>Enter the IMSI-catcher directory and run '
<tt>python
4665 scan-and-livemon
</tt>' to locate the frequency of nearby base
4666 stations and start listening for GSM packages on one of them.
</li>
4668 <li>Enter the IMSI-catcher directory and run '
<tt>python
4669 simple_IMSI-catcher.py
</tt>' to display the collected information.
</li>
4673 <p>Note, due to a bug somewhere the scan-and-livemon program (actually
4674 <a href=
"https://github.com/ptrkrysik/gr-gsm/issues/336">its underlying
4675 program grgsm_scanner
</a>) do not work with the HackRF radio. It does
4676 work with RTL
8232 and other similar USB radio receivers you can get
4678 (
<a href=
"https://www.ebay.com/sch/items/?_nkw=rtl+2832">for example
4679 from ebay
</a>), so for now the solution is to scan using the RTL radio
4680 and only use HackRF for fetching GSM data.
</p>
4682 <p>As far as I can tell, a cell phone only show up on one of the
4683 frequencies at the time, so if you are going to track and count every
4684 cell phone around you, you need to listen to all the frequencies used.
4685 To listen to several frequencies, use the --numrecv argument to
4686 scan-and-livemon to use several receivers. Further, I am not sure if
4687 phones using
3G or
4G will show as talking GSM to base stations, so
4688 this approach might not see all phones around you. I typically see
4689 0-
400 IMSI numbers an hour when looking around where I live.
</p>
4691 <p>I've tried to run the scanner on a
4692 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi">Raspberry Pi
2 and
3
4693 running Debian Buster
</a>, but the grgsm_livemon_headless process seem
4694 to be too CPU intensive to keep up. When GNU Radio print 'O' to
4695 stdout, I am told there it is caused by a buffer overflow between the
4696 radio and GNU Radio, caused by the program being unable to read the
4697 GSM data fast enough. If you see a stream of 'O's from the terminal
4698 where you started scan-and-livemon, you need a give the process more
4699 CPU power. Perhaps someone are able to optimize the code to a point
4700 where it become possible to set up RPi3 based GSM sniffers? I tried
4701 using Raspbian instead of Debian, but there seem to be something wrong
4702 with GNU Radio on raspbian, causing glibc to abort().
</p>
4708 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance
</a>.
4713 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4717 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Simpler_recipe_on_how_to_make_a_simple__7_IMSI_Catcher_using_Debian.html">Simpler recipe on how to make a simple $
7 IMSI Catcher using Debian
</a>
4723 <p>On friday, I came across an interesting article in the Norwegian
4724 web based ICT news magazine digi.no on
4725 <a href=
"https://www.digi.no/artikler/sikkerhetsforsker-lagde-enkel-imsi-catcher-for-60-kroner-na-kan-mobiler-kartlegges-av-alle/398588">how
4726 to collect the IMSI numbers of nearby cell phones
</a> using the cheap
4727 DVB-T software defined radios. The article refered to instructions
4728 and
<a href=
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjwgNd_as30">a recipe by
4729 Keld Norman on Youtube on how to make a simple $
7 IMSI Catcher
</a>, and I decided to test them out.
</p>
4731 <p>The instructions said to use Ubuntu, install pip using apt (to
4732 bypass apt), use pip to install pybombs (to bypass both apt and pip),
4733 and the ask pybombs to fetch and build everything you need from
4734 scratch. I wanted to see if I could do the same on the most recent
4735 Debian packages, but this did not work because pybombs tried to build
4736 stuff that no longer build with the most recent openssl library or
4737 some other version skew problem. While trying to get this recipe
4738 working, I learned that the apt-
>pip-
>pybombs route was a long detour,
4739 and the only piece of software dependency missing in Debian was the
4740 gr-gsm package. I also found out that the lead upstream developer of
4741 gr-gsm (the name stand for GNU Radio GSM) project already had a set of
4742 Debian packages provided in an Ubuntu PPA repository. All I needed to
4743 do was to dget the Debian source package and built it.
</p>
4745 <p>The IMSI collector is a python script listening for packages on the
4746 loopback network device and printing to the terminal some specific GSM
4747 packages with IMSI numbers in them. The code is fairly short and easy
4748 to understand. The reason this work is because gr-gsm include a tool
4749 to read GSM data from a software defined radio like a DVB-T USB stick
4750 and other software defined radios, decode them and inject them into a
4751 network device on your Linux machine (using the loopback device by
4752 default). This proved to work just fine, and I've been testing the
4753 collector for a few days now.
</p>
4755 <p>The updated and simpler recipe is thus to
</p>
4759 <li>start with a Debian machine running Stretch or newer,
</li>
4761 <li>build and install the gr-gsm package available from
4762 <a href=
"http://ppa.launchpad.net/ptrkrysik/gr-gsm/ubuntu/pool/main/g/gr-gsm/">http://ppa.launchpad.net/ptrkrysik/gr-gsm/ubuntu/pool/main/g/gr-gsm/
</a>,
</li>
4764 <li>clone the git repostory from
<a href=
"https://github.com/Oros42/IMSI-catcher">https://github.com/Oros42/IMSI-catcher
</a>,
</li>
4766 <li>run grgsm_livemon and adjust the frequency until the terminal
4767 where it was started is filled with a stream of text (meaning you
4768 found a GSM station).
</li>
4770 <li>go into the IMSI-catcher directory and run 'sudo python simple_IMSI-catcher.py' to extract the IMSI numbers.
</li>
4774 <p>To make it even easier in the future to get this sniffer up and
4775 running, I decided to package
4776 <a href=
"https://github.com/ptrkrysik/gr-gsm/">the gr-gsm project
</a>
4777 for Debian (
<a href=
"https://bugs.debian.org/871055">WNPP
4778 #
871055</a>), and the package was uploaded into the NEW queue today.
4779 Luckily the gnuradio maintainer has promised to help me, as I do not
4780 know much about gnuradio stuff yet.
</p>
4782 <p>I doubt this "IMSI cacher" is anywhere near as powerfull as
4783 commercial tools like
4784 <a href=
"https://www.thespyphone.com/portable-imsi-imei-catcher/">The
4785 Spy Phone Portable IMSI / IMEI Catcher
</a> or the
4786 <a href=
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stingray_phone_tracker">Harris
4787 Stingray
</a>, but I hope the existance of cheap alternatives can make
4788 more people realise how their whereabouts when carrying a cell phone
4789 is easily tracked. Seeing the data flow on the screen, realizing that
4790 I live close to a police station and knowing that the police is also
4791 wearing cell phones, I wonder how hard it would be for criminals to
4792 track the position of the police officers to discover when there are
4793 police near by, or for foreign military forces to track the location
4794 of the Norwegian military forces, or for anyone to track the location
4795 of government officials...
</p>
4797 <p>It is worth noting that the data reported by the IMSI-catcher
4798 script mentioned above is only a fraction of the data broadcasted on
4799 the GSM network. It will only collect one frequency at the time,
4800 while a typical phone will be using several frequencies, and not all
4801 phones will be using the frequencies tracked by the grgsm_livemod
4802 program. Also, there is a lot of radio chatter being ignored by the
4803 simple_IMSI-catcher script, which would be collected by extending the
4804 parser code. I wonder if gr-gsm can be set up to listen to more than
4811 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance
</a>.
4816 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4820 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Norwegian_Bokm_l_edition_of_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook_is_now_available.html">Norwegian Bokmål edition of Debian Administrator's Handbook is now available
</a>
4826 <p align=
"center"><img align=
"center" src=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2017-07-25-debian-handbook-nb-testprint.png"/></p>
4828 <p>I finally received a copy of the Norwegian Bokmål edition of
4829 "
<a href=
"https://debian-handbook.info/">The Debian Administrator's
4830 Handbook
</a>". This test copy arrived in the mail a few days ago, and
4831 I am very happy to hold the result in my hand. We spent around one and a half year translating it. This paperbook edition
4832 <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/get/#norwegian
">is available
4833 from lulu.com</a>. If you buy it quickly, you save 25% on the list
4834 price. The book is also available for download in electronic form as
4835 PDF, EPUB and Mobipocket, as can be
4836 <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/browse/nb-NO/stable/
">read online
4837 as a web page</a>.</p>
4839 <p>This is the second book I publish (the first was the book
4840 "<a href=
"http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture
</a>" by Lawrence Lessig
4842 <a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/free-culture/paperback/product-
22440520.html
">English</a>,
4843 <a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/culture-libre/paperback/product-
22645082.html
">French</a>
4845 <a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/fri-kultur/paperback/product-
22441576.html
">Norwegian
4846 Bokmål</a>), and I am very excited to finally wrap up this
4848 "<a href=
"http://www.lulu.com/shop/rapha%C3%ABl-hertzog-and-roland-mas/h%C3%A5ndbok-for-debian-administratoren/paperback/product-23262290.html">Håndbok
4849 for Debian-administratoren
</a>" will be well received.</p>
4855 Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian
">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian-handbook
">debian-handbook</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>.
4860 <div class="padding
"></div>
4864 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/N_r_nynorskoversettelsen_svikter_til_eksamen___.html
">Når nynorskoversettelsen svikter til eksamen...</a>
4870 <p><a href="http://www.aftenposten.no/norge/Krever-at-elever-ma-fa-annullert-eksamen-etter-rot-med-oppgavetekster-
622459b.html
">Aftenposten
4871 melder i dag</a> om feil i eksamensoppgavene for eksamen i politikk og
4872 menneskerettigheter, der teksten i bokmåls og nynorskutgaven ikke var
4873 like. Oppgaveteksten er gjengitt i artikkelen, og jeg ble nysgjerring
4874 på om den fri oversetterløsningen
4875 <a href="https://www.apertium.org/
">Apertium</a> ville gjort en bedre
4876 jobb enn Utdanningsdirektoratet. Det kan se slik ut.</p>
4878 <p>Her er bokmålsoppgaven fra eksamenen:</p>
4881 <p>Drøft utfordringene knyttet til nasjonalstatenes og andre aktørers
4882 rolle og muligheter til å håndtere internasjonale utfordringer, som
4883 for eksempel flykningekrisen.</p>
4885 <p>Vedlegge er eksempler på tekster som kan gi relevante perspektiver
4888 <li>Flykningeregnskapet 2016, UNHCR og IDMC
4889 <li>«Grenseløst Europa for fall» A-Magasinet, 26. november 2015
4894 <p>Dette oversetter Apertium slik:</p>
4897 <p>Drøft utfordringane knytte til nasjonalstatane sine og rolla til
4898 andre aktørar og høve til å handtera internasjonale utfordringar, som
4899 til dømes *flykningekrisen.</p>
4901 <p>Vedleggja er døme på tekster som kan gje relevante perspektiv på
4905 <li>*Flykningeregnskapet 2016, *UNHCR og *IDMC</li>
4906 <li>«*Grenseløst Europa for fall» A-Magasinet, 26. november 2015</li>
4911 <p>Ord som ikke ble forstått er markert med stjerne (*), og trenger
4912 ekstra språksjekk. Men ingen ord er forsvunnet, slik det var i
4913 oppgaven elevene fikk presentert på eksamen. Jeg mistenker dog at
4914 "andre aktørers rolle og muligheter til ..." burde vært oversatt til
4915 "rolla til andre aktørar og deira høve til ..." eller noe slikt, men
4916 det er kanskje flisespikking. Det understreker vel bare at det alltid
4917 trengs korrekturlesning etter automatisk oversettelse.
</p>
4923 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll
</a>.
4928 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4932 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Detecting_NFS_hangs_on_Linux_without_hanging_yourself___.html">Detecting NFS hangs on Linux without hanging yourself...
</a>
4938 <p>Over the years, administrating thousand of NFS mounting linux
4939 computers at the time, I often needed a way to detect if the machine
4940 was experiencing NFS hang. If you try to use
<tt>df
</tt> or look at a
4941 file or directory affected by the hang, the process (and possibly the
4942 shell) will hang too. So you want to be able to detect this without
4943 risking the detection process getting stuck too. It has not been
4944 obvious how to do this. When the hang has lasted a while, it is
4945 possible to find messages like these in dmesg:
</p>
4948 nfs: server nfsserver not responding, still trying
4949 <br>nfs: server nfsserver OK
4952 <p>It is hard to know if the hang is still going on, and it is hard to
4953 be sure looking in dmesg is going to work. If there are lots of other
4954 messages in dmesg the lines might have rotated out of site before they
4957 <p>While reading through the nfs client implementation in linux kernel
4958 code, I came across some statistics that seem to give a way to detect
4959 it. The om_timeouts sunrpc value in the kernel will increase every
4960 time the above log entry is inserted into dmesg. And after digging a
4961 bit further, I discovered that this value show up in
4962 /proc/self/mountstats on Linux.
</p>
4964 <p>The mountstats content seem to be shared between files using the
4965 same file system context, so it is enough to check one of the
4966 mountstats files to get the state of the mount point for the machine.
4967 I assume this will not show lazy umounted NFS points, nor NFS mount
4968 points in a different process context (ie with a different filesystem
4969 view), but that does not worry me.
</p>
4971 <p>The content for a NFS mount point look similar to this:
</p>
4973 <p><blockquote><pre>
4975 device /dev/mapper/Debian-var mounted on /var with fstype ext3
4976 device nfsserver:/mnt/nfsserver/home0 mounted on /mnt/nfsserver/home0 with fstype nfs statvers=
1.1
4977 opts: rw,vers=
3,rsize=
65536,wsize=
65536,namlen=
255,acregmin=
3,acregmax=
60,acdirmin=
30,acdirmax=
60,soft,nolock,proto=tcp,timeo=
600,retrans=
2,sec=sys,mountaddr=
129.240.3.145,mountvers=
3,mountport=
4048,mountproto=udp,local_lock=all
4979 caps: caps=
0x3fe7,wtmult=
4096,dtsize=
8192,bsize=
0,namlen=
255
4980 sec: flavor=
1,pseudoflavor=
1
4981 events:
61063112 732346265 1028140 35486205 16220064 8162542 761447191 71714012 37189 3891185 45561809 110486139 4850138 420353 15449177 296502 52736725 13523379 0 52182 9016896 1231 0 0 0 0 0
4982 bytes:
166253035039 219519120027 0 0 40783504807 185466229638 11677877 45561809
4983 RPC iostats version:
1.0 p/v:
100003/
3 (nfs)
4984 xprt: tcp
925 1 6810 0 0 111505412 111480497 109 2672418560317 0 248 53869103 22481820
4986 NULL:
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
4987 GETATTR:
61063106 61063108 0 9621383060 6839064400 453650 77291321 78926132
4988 SETATTR:
463469 463470 0 92005440 66739536 63787 603235 687943
4989 LOOKUP:
17021657 17021657 0 3354097764 4013442928 57216 35125459 35566511
4990 ACCESS:
14281703 14290009 5 2318400592 1713803640 1709282 4865144 7130140
4991 READLINK:
125 125 0 20472 18620 0 1112 1118
4992 READ:
4214236 4214237 0 715608524 41328653212 89884 22622768 22806693
4993 WRITE:
8479010 8494376 22 187695798568 1356087148 178264904 51506907 231671771
4994 CREATE:
171708 171708 0 38084748 46702272 873 1041833 1050398
4995 MKDIR:
3680 3680 0 773980 993920 26 23990 24245
4996 SYMLINK:
903 903 0 233428 245488 6 5865 5917
4997 MKNOD:
80 80 0 20148 21760 0 299 304
4998 REMOVE:
429921 429921 0 79796004 61908192 3313 2710416 2741636
4999 RMDIR:
3367 3367 0 645112 484848 22 5782 6002
5000 RENAME:
466201 466201 0 130026184 121212260 7075 5935207 5961288
5001 LINK:
289155 289155 0 72775556 67083960 2199 2565060 2585579
5002 READDIR:
2933237 2933237 0 516506204 13973833412 10385 3190199 3297917
5003 READDIRPLUS:
1652839 1652839 0 298640972 6895997744 84735 14307895 14448937
5004 FSSTAT:
6144 6144 0 1010516 1032192 51 9654 10022
5005 FSINFO:
2 2 0 232 328 0 1 1
5006 PATHCONF:
1 1 0 116 140 0 0 0
5007 COMMIT:
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
5009 device binfmt_misc mounted on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc with fstype binfmt_misc
5011 </pre></blockquote></p>
5013 <p>The key number to look at is the third number in the per-op list.
5014 It is the number of NFS timeouts experiences per file system
5015 operation. Here
22 write timeouts and
5 access timeouts. If these
5016 numbers are increasing, I believe the machine is experiencing NFS
5017 hang. Unfortunately the timeout value do not start to increase right
5018 away. The NFS operations need to time out first, and this can take a
5019 while. The exact timeout value depend on the setup. For example the
5020 defaults for TCP and UDP mount points are quite different, and the
5021 timeout value is affected by the soft, hard, timeo and retrans NFS
5024 <p>The only way I have been able to get working on Debian and RedHat
5025 Enterprise Linux for getting the timeout count is to peek in /proc/.
5027 <ahref=
"http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19253-01/816-4555/netmonitor-12/index.html">Solaris
5028 10 System Administration Guide: Network Services
</a>, the 'nfsstat -c'
5029 command can be used to get these timeout values. But this do not work
5030 on Linux, as far as I can tell. I
5031 <ahref=
"http://bugs.debian.org/857043">asked Debian about this
</a>,
5032 but have not seen any replies yet.
</p>
5034 <p>Is there a better way to figure out if a Linux NFS client is
5035 experiencing NFS hangs? Is there a way to detect which processes are
5036 affected? Is there a way to get the NFS mount going quickly once the
5037 network problem causing the NFS hang has been cleared? I would very
5038 much welcome some clues, as we regularly run into NFS hangs.
</p>
5044 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin
</a>.
5049 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5053 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Norwegian_Bokm_l_translation_of_The_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook_complete__proofreading_in_progress.html">Norwegian Bokmål translation of The Debian Administrator's Handbook complete, proofreading in progress
</a>
5059 <p>For almost a year now, we have been working on making a Norwegian
5060 Bokmål edition of
<a href=
"https://debian-handbook.info/">The Debian
5061 Administrator's Handbook
</a>. Now, thanks to the tireless effort of
5062 Ole-Erik, Ingrid and Andreas, the initial translation is complete, and
5063 we are working on the proof reading to ensure consistent language and
5064 use of correct computer science terms. The plan is to make the book
5065 available on paper, as well as in electronic form. For that to
5066 happen, the proof reading must be completed and all the figures need
5067 to be translated. If you want to help out, get in touch.
</p>
5069 <p><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/debian-handbook/debian-handbook-nb-NO.pdf">A
5071 fresh PDF edition
</a> in A4 format (the final book will have smaller
5072 pages) of the book created every morning is available for
5073 proofreading. If you find any errors, please
5074 <a href=
"https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/debian-handbook/">visit
5075 Weblate and correct the error
</a>. The
5076 <a href=
"http://l.github.io/debian-handbook/stat/nb-NO/index.html">state
5077 of the translation including figures
</a> is a useful source for those
5078 provide Norwegian bokmål screen shots and figures.
</p>
5084 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian-handbook">debian-handbook
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
5089 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5093 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Unlimited_randomness_with_the_ChaosKey_.html">Unlimited randomness with the ChaosKey?
</a>
5099 <p>A few days ago I ordered a small batch of
5100 <a href=
"http://altusmetrum.org/ChaosKey/">the ChaosKey
</a>, a small
5101 USB dongle for generating entropy created by Bdale Garbee and Keith
5102 Packard. Yesterday it arrived, and I am very happy to report that it
5103 work great! According to its designers, to get it to work out of the
5104 box, you need the Linux kernel version
4.1 or later. I tested on a
5105 Debian Stretch machine (kernel version
4.9), and there it worked just
5106 fine, increasing the available entropy very quickly. I wrote a small
5107 test oneliner to test. It first print the current entropy level,
5108 drain /dev/random, and then print the entropy level for five seconds.
5109 Here is the situation without the ChaosKey inserted:
</p>
5112 % cat /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail; \
5113 dd bs=
1M if=/dev/random of=/dev/null count=
1; \
5114 for n in $(seq
1 5); do \
5115 cat /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail; \
5121 28 byte kopiert,
0,
000264565 s,
106 kB/s
5130 <p>The entropy level increases by
3-
4 every second. In such case any
5131 application requiring random bits (like a HTTPS enabled web server)
5132 will halt and wait for more entrpy. And here is the situation with
5133 the ChaosKey inserted:
</p>
5136 % cat /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail; \
5137 dd bs=
1M if=/dev/random of=/dev/null count=
1; \
5138 for n in $(seq
1 5); do \
5139 cat /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail; \
5145 104 byte kopiert,
0,
000487647 s,
213 kB/s
5154 <p>Quite the difference. :) I bought a few more than I need, in case
5155 someone want to buy one here in Norway. :)
</p>
5157 <p>Update: The dongle was presented at Debconf last year. You might
5158 find
<a href=
"https://debconf16.debconf.org/talks/94/">the talk
5159 recording illuminating
</a>. It explains exactly what the source of
5160 randomness is, if you are unable to spot it from the schema drawing
5161 available from the ChaosKey web site linked at the start of this blog
5168 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
5173 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5177 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Where_did_that_package_go___mdash__geolocated_IP_traceroute.html">Where did that package go?
— geolocated IP traceroute
</a>
5183 <p>Did you ever wonder where the web trafic really flow to reach the
5184 web servers, and who own the network equipment it is flowing through?
5185 It is possible to get a glimpse of this from using traceroute, but it
5186 is hard to find all the details. Many years ago, I wrote a system to
5187 map the Norwegian Internet (trying to figure out if our plans for a
5188 network game service would get low enough latency, and who we needed
5189 to talk to about setting up game servers close to the users. Back
5190 then I used traceroute output from many locations (I asked my friends
5191 to run a script and send me their traceroute output) to create the
5192 graph and the map. The output from traceroute typically look like
5196 traceroute to www.stortinget.no (
85.88.67.10),
30 hops max,
60 byte packets
5197 1 uio-gw10.uio.no (
129.240.202.1)
0.447 ms
0.486 ms
0.621 ms
5198 2 uio-gw8.uio.no (
129.240.24.229)
0.467 ms
0.578 ms
0.675 ms
5199 3 oslo-gw1.uninett.no (
128.39.65.17)
0.385 ms
0.373 ms
0.358 ms
5200 4 te3-
1-
2.br1.fn3.as2116.net (
193.156.90.3)
1.174 ms
1.172 ms
1.153 ms
5201 5 he16-
1-
1.cr1.san110.as2116.net (
195.0.244.234)
2.627 ms he16-
1-
1.cr2.oslosda310.as2116.net (
195.0.244.48)
3.172 ms he16-
1-
1.cr1.san110.as2116.net (
195.0.244.234)
2.857 ms
5202 6 ae1.ar8.oslosda310.as2116.net (
195.0.242.39)
0.662 ms
0.637 ms ae0.ar8.oslosda310.as2116.net (
195.0.242.23)
0.622 ms
5203 7 89.191.10.146 (
89.191.10.146)
0.931 ms
0.917 ms
0.955 ms
5209 <p>This show the DNS names and IP addresses of (at least some of the)
5210 network equipment involved in getting the data traffic from me to the
5211 www.stortinget.no server, and how long it took in milliseconds for a
5212 package to reach the equipment and return to me. Three packages are
5213 sent, and some times the packages do not follow the same path. This
5214 is shown for hop
5, where three different IP addresses replied to the
5215 traceroute request.
</p>
5217 <p>There are many ways to measure trace routes. Other good traceroute
5218 implementations I use are traceroute (using ICMP packages) mtr (can do
5219 both ICMP, UDP and TCP) and scapy (python library with ICMP, UDP, TCP
5220 traceroute and a lot of other capabilities). All of them are easily
5221 available in
<a href=
"https://www.debian.org/">Debian
</a>.
</p>
5223 <p>This time around, I wanted to know the geographic location of
5224 different route points, to visualize how visiting a web page spread
5225 information about the visit to a lot of servers around the globe. The
5226 background is that a web site today often will ask the browser to get
5227 from many servers the parts (for example HTML, JSON, fonts,
5228 JavaScript, CSS, video) required to display the content. This will
5229 leak information about the visit to those controlling these servers
5230 and anyone able to peek at the data traffic passing by (like your ISP,
5231 the ISPs backbone provider, FRA, GCHQ, NSA and others).
</p>
5233 <p>Lets pick an example, the Norwegian parliament web site
5234 www.stortinget.no. It is read daily by all members of parliament and
5235 their staff, as well as political journalists, activits and many other
5236 citizens of Norway. A visit to the www.stortinget.no web site will
5237 ask your browser to contact
8 other servers: ajax.googleapis.com,
5238 insights.hotjar.com, script.hotjar.com, static.hotjar.com,
5239 stats.g.doubleclick.net, www.google-analytics.com,
5240 www.googletagmanager.com and www.netigate.se. I extracted this by
5241 asking
<a href=
"http://phantomjs.org/">PhantomJS
</a> to visit the
5242 Stortinget web page and tell me all the URLs PhantomJS downloaded to
5243 render the page (in HAR format using
5244 <a href=
"https://github.com/ariya/phantomjs/blob/master/examples/netsniff.js">their
5245 netsniff example
</a>. I am very grateful to Gorm for showing me how
5246 to do this). My goal is to visualize network traces to all IP
5247 addresses behind these DNS names, do show where visitors personal
5248 information is spread when visiting the page.
</p>
5250 <p align=
"center"><a href=
"www.stortinget.no-geoip.kml"><img
5251 src=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-geoip-small.png" alt=
"map of combined traces for URLs used by www.stortinget.no using GeoIP"/></a></p>
5253 <p>When I had a look around for options, I could not find any good
5254 free software tools to do this, and decided I needed my own traceroute
5255 wrapper outputting KML based on locations looked up using GeoIP. KML
5256 is easy to work with and easy to generate, and understood by several
5257 of the GIS tools I have available. I got good help from by NUUG
5258 colleague Anders Einar with this, and the result can be seen in
5259 <a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/kmltraceroute">my
5260 kmltraceroute git repository
</a>. Unfortunately, the quality of the
5261 free GeoIP databases I could find (and the for-pay databases my
5262 friends had access to) is not up to the task. The IP addresses of
5263 central Internet infrastructure would typically be placed near the
5264 controlling companies main office, and not where the router is really
5265 located, as you can see from
<a href=
"www.stortinget.no-geoip.kml">the
5266 KML file I created
</a> using the GeoLite City dataset from MaxMind.
5268 <p align=
"center"><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-scapy.svg"><img
5269 src=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-scapy-small.png" alt=
"scapy traceroute graph for URLs used by www.stortinget.no"/></a></p>
5271 <p>I also had a look at the visual traceroute graph created by
5272 <a href=
"http://www.secdev.org/projects/scapy/">the scrapy project
</a>,
5273 showing IP network ownership (aka AS owner) for the IP address in
5275 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-scapy.svg">The
5276 graph display a lot of useful information about the traceroute in SVG
5277 format
</a>, and give a good indication on who control the network
5278 equipment involved, but it do not include geolocation. This graph
5279 make it possible to see the information is made available at least for
5280 UNINETT, Catchcom, Stortinget, Nordunet, Google, Amazon, Telia, Level
5281 3 Communications and NetDNA.
</p>
5283 <p align=
"center"><a href=
"https://geotraceroute.com/index.php?node=4&host=www.stortinget.no"><img
5284 src=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-geotraceroute-small.png" alt=
"example geotraceroute view for www.stortinget.no"/></a></p>
5286 <p>In the process, I came across the
5287 <a href=
"https://geotraceroute.com/">web service GeoTraceroute
</a> by
5288 Salim Gasmi. Its methology of combining guesses based on DNS names,
5289 various location databases and finally use latecy times to rule out
5290 candidate locations seemed to do a very good job of guessing correct
5291 geolocation. But it could only do one trace at the time, did not have
5292 a sensor in Norway and did not make the geolocations easily available
5293 for postprocessing. So I contacted the developer and asked if he
5294 would be willing to share the code (he refused until he had time to
5295 clean it up), but he was interested in providing the geolocations in a
5296 machine readable format, and willing to set up a sensor in Norway. So
5297 since yesterday, it is possible to run traces from Norway in this
5298 service thanks to a sensor node set up by
5299 <a href=
"https://www.nuug.no/">the NUUG assosiation
</a>, and get the
5300 trace in KML format for further processing.
</p>
5302 <p align=
"center"><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-geotraceroute-kml-join.kml"><img
5303 src=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-geotraceroute-kml-join.png" alt=
"map of combined traces for URLs used by www.stortinget.no using geotraceroute"/></a></p>
5305 <p>Here we can see a lot of trafic passes Sweden on its way to
5306 Denmark, Germany, Holland and Ireland. Plenty of places where the
5307 Snowden confirmations verified the traffic is read by various actors
5308 without your best interest as their top priority.
</p>
5310 <p>Combining KML files is trivial using a text editor, so I could loop
5311 over all the hosts behind the urls imported by www.stortinget.no and
5312 ask for the KML file from GeoTraceroute, and create a combined KML
5313 file with all the traces (unfortunately only one of the IP addresses
5314 behind the DNS name is traced this time. To get them all, one would
5315 have to request traces using IP number instead of DNS names from
5316 GeoTraceroute). That might be the next step in this project.
</p>
5318 <p>Armed with these tools, I find it a lot easier to figure out where
5319 the IP traffic moves and who control the boxes involved in moving it.
5320 And every time the link crosses for example the Swedish border, we can
5321 be sure Swedish Signal Intelligence (FRA) is listening, as GCHQ do in
5322 Britain and NSA in USA and cables around the globe. (Hm, what should
5323 we tell them? :) Keep that in mind if you ever send anything
5324 unencrypted over the Internet.
</p>
5326 <p>PS: KML files are drawn using
5327 <a href=
"http://ivanrublev.me/kml/">the KML viewer from Ivan
5328 Rublev
<a/>, as it was less cluttered than the local Linux application
5329 Marble. There are heaps of other options too.
</p>
5331 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
5332 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
5333 <b><a href=
"bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a></b>.
</p>
5339 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/kart">kart
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/web">web
</a>.
5344 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5348 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Appstream_just_learned_how_to_map_hardware_to_packages_too_.html">Appstream just learned how to map hardware to packages too!
</a>
5354 <p>I received a very nice Christmas present today. As my regular
5355 readers probably know, I have been working on the
5356 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">the Isenkram
5357 system
</a> for many years. The goal of the Isenkram system is to make
5358 it easier for users to figure out what to install to get a given piece
5359 of hardware to work in Debian, and a key part of this system is a way
5360 to map hardware to packages. Isenkram have its own mapping database,
5361 and also uses data provided by each package using the AppStream
5362 metadata format. And today,
5363 <a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/appstream">AppStream
</a> in
5364 Debian learned to look up hardware the same way Isenkram is doing it,
5365 ie using fnmatch():
</p>
5368 % appstreamcli what-provides modalias \
5369 usb:v1130p0202d0100dc00dsc00dp00ic03isc00ip00in00
5370 Identifier: pymissile [generic]
5372 Summary: Control original Striker USB Missile Launcher
5374 % appstreamcli what-provides modalias usb:v0694p0002d0000
5375 Identifier: libnxt [generic]
5377 Summary: utility library for talking to the LEGO Mindstorms NXT brick
5380 Identifier: t2n [generic]
5382 Summary: Simple command-line tool for Lego NXT
5385 Identifier: python-nxt [generic]
5387 Summary: Python driver/interface/wrapper for the Lego Mindstorms NXT robot
5390 Identifier: nbc [generic]
5392 Summary: C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks
5397 <p>A similar query can be done using the combined AppStream and
5398 Isenkram databases using the isenkram-lookup tool:
</p>
5401 % isenkram-lookup usb:v1130p0202d0100dc00dsc00dp00ic03isc00ip00in00
5403 % isenkram-lookup usb:v0694p0002d0000
5411 <p>You can find modalias values relevant for your machine using
5412 <tt>cat $(find /sys/devices/ -name modalias)
</tt>.
5414 <p>If you want to make this system a success and help Debian users
5415 make the most of the hardware they have, please help
5416 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/AppStream/Guidelines">add AppStream
5417 metadata for your package following the guidelines
</a> documented in
5418 the wiki. So far only
11 packages provide such information, among the
5419 several hundred hardware specific packages in Debian. The Isenkram
5420 database on the other hand contain
101 packages, mostly related to USB
5421 dongles. Most of the packages with hardware mapping in AppStream are
5422 LEGO Mindstorms related, because I have, as part of my involvement in
5423 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">the Debian LEGO
5424 team
</a> given priority to making sure LEGO users get proposed the
5425 complete set of packages in Debian for that particular hardware. The
5426 team also got a nice Christmas present today. The
5427 <a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/nxt-firmware">nxt-firmware
5428 package
</a> made it into Debian. With this package in place, it is
5429 now possible to use the LEGO Mindstorms NXT unit with only free
5430 software, as the nxt-firmware package contain the source and firmware
5431 binaries for the NXT brick.
</p>
5433 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
5434 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
5435 <b><a href=
"bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a></b>.
</p>
5441 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram
</a>.
5446 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5450 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Isenkram_updated_with_a_lot_more_hardware_package_mappings.html">Isenkram updated with a lot more hardware-package mappings
</a>
5456 <p><a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">The Isenkram
5457 system
</a> I wrote two years ago to make it easier in Debian to find
5458 and install packages to get your hardware dongles to work, is still
5459 going strong. It is a system to look up the hardware present on or
5460 connected to the current system, and map the hardware to Debian
5461 packages. It can either be done using the tools in isenkram-cli or
5462 using the user space daemon in the isenkram package. The latter will
5463 notify you, when inserting new hardware, about what packages to
5464 install to get the dongle working. It will even provide a button to
5465 click on to ask packagekit to install the packages.
</p>
5467 <p>Here is an command line example from my Thinkpad laptop:
</p>
5488 <p>It can also list the firware package providing firmware requested
5489 by the load kernel modules, which in my case is an empty list because
5490 I have all the firmware my machine need:
5493 % /usr/sbin/isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
5494 info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules. exiting
5498 <p>The last few days I had a look at several of the around
250
5499 packages in Debian with udev rules. These seem like good candidates
5500 to install when a given hardware dongle is inserted, and I found
5501 several that should be proposed by isenkram. I have not had time to
5502 check all of them, but am happy to report that now there are
97
5503 packages packages mapped to hardware by Isenkram.
11 of these
5504 packages provide hardware mapping using AppStream, while the rest are
5505 listed in the modaliases file provided in isenkram.
</p>
5507 <p>These are the packages with hardware mappings at the moment. The
5508 <strong>marked packages
</strong> are also announcing their hardware
5509 support using AppStream, for everyone to use:
</p>
5511 <p>air-quality-sensor, alsa-firmware-loaders, argyll,
5512 <strong>array-info
</strong>, avarice, avrdude, b43-fwcutter,
5513 bit-babbler, bluez, bluez-firmware,
<strong>brltty
</strong>,
5514 <strong>broadcom-sta-dkms
</strong>, calibre, cgminer, cheese, colord,
5515 <strong>colorhug-client
</strong>, dahdi-firmware-nonfree, dahdi-linux,
5516 dfu-util, dolphin-emu, ekeyd, ethtool, firmware-ipw2x00, fprintd,
5517 fprintd-demo,
<strong>galileo
</strong>, gkrellm-thinkbat, gphoto2,
5518 gpsbabel, gpsbabel-gui, gpsman, gpstrans, gqrx-sdr, gr-fcdproplus,
5519 gr-osmosdr, gtkpod, hackrf, hdapsd, hdmi2usb-udev, hpijs-ppds, hplip,
5520 ipw3945-source, ipw3945d, kde-config-tablet, kinect-audio-setup,
5521 <strong>libnxt
</strong>, libpam-fprintd,
<strong>lomoco
</strong>,
5522 madwimax, minidisc-utils, mkgmap, msi-keyboard, mtkbabel,
5523 <strong>nbc
</strong>,
<strong>nqc
</strong>, nut-hal-drivers, ola,
5524 open-vm-toolbox, open-vm-tools, openambit, pcgminer, pcmciautils,
5525 pcscd, pidgin-blinklight, printer-driver-splix,
5526 <strong>pymissile
</strong>, python-nxt, qlandkartegt,
5527 qlandkartegt-garmin, rosegarden, rt2x00-source, sispmctl,
5528 soapysdr-module-hackrf, solaar, squeak-plugins-scratch, sunxi-tools,
5529 <strong>t2n
</strong>, thinkfan, thinkfinger-tools, tlp, tp-smapi-dkms,
5530 tp-smapi-source, tpb, tucnak, uhd-host, usbmuxd, viking,
5531 virtualbox-ose-guest-x11, w1retap, xawtv, xserver-xorg-input-vmmouse,
5532 xserver-xorg-input-wacom, xserver-xorg-video-qxl,
5533 xserver-xorg-video-vmware, yubikey-personalization and
5536 <p>If you know of other packages, please let me know with a wishlist
5537 bug report against the isenkram-cli package, and ask the package
5539 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/AppStream/Guidelines">add AppStream
5540 metadata according to the guidelines
</a> to provide the information
5541 for everyone. In time, I hope to get rid of the isenkram specific
5542 hardware mapping and depend exclusively on AppStream.
</p>
5544 <p>Note, the AppStream metadata for broadcom-sta-dkms is matching too
5545 much hardware, and suggest that the package with with any ethernet
5546 card. See
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/838735">bug #
838735</a> for
5547 the details. I hope the maintainer find time to address it soon. In
5548 the mean time I provide an override in isenkram.
</p>
5554 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram
</a>.
5559 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5563 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Oolite__a_life_in_space_as_vagabond_and_mercenary___nice_free_software.html">Oolite, a life in space as vagabond and mercenary - nice free software
</a>
5569 <p align=
"center"><img width=
"70%" src=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2016-12-11-nice-oolite.png"/></p>
5571 <p>In my early years, I played
5572 <a href=
"http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Classic_Elite">the epic game
5573 Elite
</a> on my PC. I spent many months trading and fighting in
5574 space, and reached the 'elite' fighting status before I moved on. The
5575 original Elite game was available on Commodore
64 and the IBM PC
5576 edition I played had a
64 KB executable. I am still impressed today
5577 that the authors managed to squeeze both a
3D engine and details about
5578 more than
2000 planet systems across
7 galaxies into a binary so
5581 <p>I have known about
<a href=
"http://www.oolite.org/">the free
5582 software game Oolite inspired by Elite
</a> for a while, but did not
5583 really have time to test it properly until a few days ago. It was
5584 great to discover that my old knowledge about trading routes were
5585 still valid. But my fighting and flying abilities were gone, so I had
5586 to retrain to be able to dock on a space station. And I am still not
5587 able to make much resistance when I am attacked by pirates, so I
5588 bougth and mounted the most powerful laser in the rear to be able to
5589 put up at least some resistance while fleeing for my life. :)
</p>
5591 <p>When playing Elite in the late eighties, I had to discover
5592 everything on my own, and I had long lists of prices seen on different
5593 planets to be able to decide where to trade what. This time I had the
5595 <a href=
"http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Main_Page">Elite wiki
</a>,
5596 where information about each planet is easily available with common
5597 price ranges and suggested trading routes. This improved my ability
5598 to earn money and I have been able to earn enough to buy a lot of
5599 useful equipent in a few days. I believe I originally played for
5600 months before I could get a docking computer, while now I could get it
5601 after less then a week.
</p>
5603 <p>If you like science fiction and dreamed of a life as a vagabond in
5604 space, you should try out Oolite. It is available for Linux, MacOSX
5605 and Windows, and is included in Debian and derivatives since
2011.
</p>
5607 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
5608 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
5609 <b><a href=
"bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a></b>.
</p>
5615 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software
</a>.
5620 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5624 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Quicker_Debian_installations_using_eatmydata.html">Quicker Debian installations using eatmydata
</a>
5630 <p>Two years ago, I did some experiments with eatmydata and the Debian
5631 installation system, observing how using
5632 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Speeding_up_the_Debian_installer_using_eatmydata_and_dpkg_divert.html">eatmydata
5633 could speed up the installation
</a> quite a bit. My testing measured
5634 speedup around
20-
40 percent for Debian Edu, where we install around
5635 1000 packages from within the installer. The eatmydata package
5636 provide a way to disable/delay file system flushing. This is a bit
5637 risky in the general case, as files that should be stored on disk will
5638 stay only in memory a bit longer than expected, causing problems if a
5639 machine crashes at an inconvenient time. But for an installation, if
5640 the machine crashes during installation the process is normally
5641 restarted, and avoiding disk operations as much as possible to speed
5642 up the process make perfect sense.
5644 <p>I added code in the Debian Edu specific installation code to enable
5645 <a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/libeatmydata">eatmydata
</a>,
5646 but did not have time to push it any further. But a few months ago I
5647 picked it up again and worked with the libeatmydata package maintainer
5648 Mattia Rizzolo to make it easier for everyone to get this installation
5649 speedup in Debian. Thanks to our cooperation There is now an
5650 eatmydata-udeb package in Debian testing and unstable, and simply
5651 enabling/installing it in debian-installer (d-i) is enough to get the
5652 quicker installations. It can be enabled using preseeding. The
5653 following untested kernel argument should do the trick:
</p>
5656 preseed/
early_command="anna-install eatmydata-udeb"
5659 <p>This should ask d-i to install the package inside the d-i
5660 environment early in the installation sequence. Having it installed
5661 in d-i in turn will make sure the relevant scripts are called just
5662 after debootstrap filled /target/ with the freshly installed Debian
5663 system to configure apt to run dpkg with eatmydata. This is enough to
5664 speed up the installation process. There is a proposal to
5665 <a href=
"https://bugs.debian.org/841153">extend the idea a bit further
5666 by using /etc/ld.so.preload instead of apt.conf
</a>, but I have not
5667 tested its impact.
</p>
5674 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
5679 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5683 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Oversette_bokm_l_til_nynorsk__enklere_enn_du_tror_takket_v_re_Apertium.html">Oversette bokmål til nynorsk, enklere enn du tror takket være Apertium
</a>
5689 <p>I Norge er det mange som trenger å skrive både bokmål og nynorsk.
5690 Eksamensoppgaver, offentlige brev og nyheter er eksempler på tekster
5691 der det er krav om skriftspråk. I tillegg til alle skoleoppgavene som
5692 elever over det ganske land skal levere inn hvert år. Det mange ikke
5693 vet er at selv om de kommersielle alternativene
5694 <a href=
"https://translate.google.com/">Google Translate
</a> og
5695 <a href=
"https://www.bing.com/translator/">Bing Translator
</a> ikke kan
5696 bidra med å oversette mellom bokmål og nynorsk, så finnes det et
5697 utmerket fri programvarealternativ som kan. Oversetterverktøyet
5698 Apertium har støtte for en rekke språkkombinasjoner, og takket være
5699 den utrettelige innsatsen til blant annet Kevin Brubeck Unhammer, kan
5700 en bruke webtjenesten til å fylle inn en tekst på bokmål eller
5701 nynorsk, og få den automatoversatt til det andre skriftspråket.
5702 Resultatet er ikke perfekt, men et svært godt utgangspunkt. Av og til
5703 er resultatet så bra at det kan benyttes uten endringer. Jeg vet
5704 f.eks. at store deler av Joomla ble oversatt til nynorsk ved hjelp
5705 Apertium. Høres det ut som noe du kan ha bruk for? Besøk i så fall
5706 <a href=
"https://www.apertium.org/">Apertium.org
</a> og fyll inn
5707 teksten din i webskjemaet der.
5709 <p>Hvis du trenger maskinell tilgang til den bakenforliggende
5710 teknologien kan du enten installere pakken
5711 <a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/apertium-nno-nob">apertium-nno-nob
</a>
5712 på en Debian-maskin eller bruke web-API-et tilgjengelig fra
5713 api.apertium.org. Se
5714 <a href=
"http://wiki.apertium.org/wiki/Apertium-apy">API-dokumentasjonen
</a>
5715 for detaljer om web-API-et. Her kan du se hvordan resultatet blir for
5716 denne teksten som ble skrevet på bokmål over maskinoversatt til
5721 <p>I Noreg er det mange som treng å skriva både bokmål og nynorsk.
5722 Eksamensoppgåver, offentlege brev og nyhende er døme på tekster der
5723 det er krav om skriftspråk. I tillegg til alle skuleoppgåvene som
5724 elevar over det ganske land skal levera inn kvart år. Det mange ikkje
5725 veit er at sjølv om dei kommersielle alternativa
5726 <a href=
"https://translate.google.com/">Google *Translate
</a> og
5727 <a href=
"https://www.bing.com/translator/">Bing *Translator
</a> ikkje
5728 kan bidra med å omsetja mellom bokmål og nynorsk, så finst det eit
5729 utmerka fri programvarealternativ som kan. Omsetjarverktøyet
5730 *Apertium har støtte for ei rekkje språkkombinasjonar, og takka vera
5731 den utrøyttelege innsatsen til blant anna Kevin Brubeck Unhammer, kan
5732 ein bruka *webtjenesten til å fylla inn ei tekst på bokmål eller
5733 nynorsk, og få den *automatoversatt til det andre skriftspråket.
5734 Resultatet er ikkje perfekt, men eit svært godt utgangspunkt. Av og
5735 til er resultatet så bra at det kan nyttast utan endringar. Eg veit
5736 t.d. at store delar av *Joomla vart omsett til nynorsk ved hjelp
5737 *Apertium. Høyrast det ut som noko du kan ha bruk for? Besøk i så
5738 fall
<a href=
"https://www.apertium.org/">*Apertium.org
</a> og fyll inn
5739 teksta di i *webskjemaet der.
5741 <p>Viss du treng *maskinell tilgjenge til den *bakenforliggende
5742 teknologien kan du anten installera pakken
5743 <a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/apertium-nno-nob">*apertium-*nno-*nob
</a>
5744 på ein *Debian-maskin eller bruka *web-*API-eit tilgjengeleg frå
5745 *api.*apertium.org. Sjå
5746 <a href=
"http://wiki.apertium.org/wiki/Apertium-apy">*API-dokumentasjonen
</a>
5747 for detaljar om *web-*API-eit. Her kan du sjå korleis resultatet vert
5748 for denne teksta som vart skreva på bokmål over *maskinoversatt til
5755 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll
</a>.
5760 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5764 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Coz_profiler_for_multi_threaded_software_is_now_in_Debian.html">Coz profiler for multi-threaded software is now in Debian
</a>
5770 <p><a href=
"http://coz-profiler.org/">The Coz profiler
</a>, a nice
5771 profiler able to run benchmarking experiments on the instrumented
5772 multi-threaded program, finally
5773 <a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/coz-profiler">made it into
5774 Debian unstable yesterday
</A>. Lluís Vilanova and I have spent many
5776 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Coz_can_help_you_find_bottlenecks_in_multi_threaded_software___nice_free_software.html">I
5777 blogged about the coz tool
</a> in August working with upstream to make
5778 it suitable for Debian. There are still issues with clang
5779 compatibility, inline assembly only working x86 and minimized
5780 JavaScript libraries.
</p>
5782 <p>To test it, install 'coz-profiler' using apt and run it like this:
</p>
5785 <tt>coz run --- /path/to/binary-with-debug-info
</tt>
5788 <p>This will produce a profile.coz file in the current working
5789 directory with the profiling information. This is then given to a
5790 JavaScript application provided in the package and available from
5791 <a href=
"http://plasma-umass.github.io/coz/">a project web page
</a>.
5792 To start the local copy, invoke it in a browser like this:
</p>
5795 <tt>sensible-browser /usr/share/coz-profiler/viewer/index.htm
</tt>
5798 <p>See the project home page and the
5799 <a href=
"https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/summer2016/curtsinger">USENIX
5800 ;login: article on Coz
</a> for more information on how it is
5807 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
5812 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5816 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/My_own_self_balancing_Lego_Segway.html">My own self balancing Lego Segway
</a>
5822 <p>A while back I received a Gyro sensor for the NXT
5823 <a href=
"mindstorms.lego.com">Mindstorms
</a> controller as a birthday
5824 present. It had been on my wishlist for a while, because I wanted to
5825 build a Segway like balancing lego robot. I had already built
5826 <a href=
"http://www.nxtprograms.com/NXT2/segway/">a simple balancing
5827 robot
</a> with the kids, using the light/color sensor included in the
5828 NXT kit as the balance sensor, but it was not working very well. It
5829 could balance for a while, but was very sensitive to the light
5830 condition in the room and the reflective properties of the surface and
5831 would fall over after a short while. I wanted something more robust,
5833 <a href=
"https://www.hitechnic.com/cgi-bin/commerce.cgi?preadd=action&key=NGY1044">the
5834 gyro sensor from HiTechnic
</a> I believed would solve it on my
5835 wishlist for some years before it suddenly showed up as a gift from my
5838 <p>Unfortunately I have not had time to sit down and play with it
5839 since then. But that changed some days ago, when I was searching for
5840 lego segway information and came across a recipe from HiTechnic for
5842 <a href=
"http://www.hitechnic.com/blog/gyro-sensor/htway/">the
5843 HTWay
</a>, a segway like balancing robot. Build instructions and
5844 <a href=
"https://www.hitechnic.com/upload/786-HTWayC.nxc">source
5845 code
</a> was included, so it was just a question of putting it all
5846 together. And thanks to the great work of many Debian developers, the
5847 compiler needed to build the source for the NXT is already included in
5848 Debian, so I was read to go in less than an hour. The resulting robot
5849 do not look very impressive in its simplicity:
</p>
5851 <p align=
"center"><img width=
"70%" src=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2016-11-04-lego-htway-robot.jpeg"></p>
5853 <p>Because I lack the infrared sensor used to control the robot in the
5854 design from HiTechnic, I had to comment out the last task
5855 (taskControl). I simply placed /* and */ around it get the program
5856 working without that sensor present. Now it balances just fine until
5857 the battery status run low:
</p>
5859 <p align=
"center"><video width=
"70%" controls=
"true">
5860 <source src=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2016-11-04-lego-htway-balancing.ogv" type=
"video/ogg">
5863 <p>Now we would like to teach it how to follow a line and take remote
5864 control instructions using the included Bluetooth receiver in the NXT.
</p>
5866 <p>If you, like me, love LEGO and want to make sure we find the tools
5867 they need to work with LEGO in Debian and all our derivative
5868 distributions like Ubuntu, check out
5869 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">the LEGO designers
5870 project page
</a> and join the Debian LEGO team. Personally I own a
5871 RCX and NXT controller (no EV3), and would like to make sure the
5872 Debian tools needed to program the systems I own work as they
5879 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/lego">lego
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/robot">robot
</a>.
5884 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5888 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Experience_and_updated_recipe_for_using_the_Signal_app_without_a_mobile_phone.html">Experience and updated recipe for using the Signal app without a mobile phone
</a>
5895 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/How_to_use_the_Signal_app_if_you_only_have_a_land_line__ie_no_mobile_phone_.html">I
5896 wrote how to get the Signal Chrome/Chromium app working
</a> without
5897 the ability to receive SMS messages (aka without a cell phone). It is
5898 time to share some experiences and provide an updated setup.
</p>
5900 <p>The Signal app have worked fine for several months now, and I use
5901 it regularly to chat with my loved ones. I had a major snag at the
5902 end of my summer vacation, when the the app completely forgot my
5903 setup, identity and keys. The reason behind this major mess was
5904 running out of disk space. To avoid that ever happening again I have
5905 started storing everything in
<tt>userdata/
</tt> in git, to be able to
5906 roll back to an earlier version if the files are wiped by mistake. I
5907 had to use it once after introducing the git backup. When rolling
5908 back to an earlier version, one need to use the 'reset session' option
5909 in Signal to get going, and notify the people you talk with about the
5910 problem. I assume there is some sequence number tracking in the
5911 protocol to detect rollback attacks. The git repository is rather big
5912 (
674 MiB so far), but I have not tried to figure out if some of the
5913 content can be added to a .gitignore file due to lack of spare
5916 <p>I've also hit the
90 days timeout blocking, and noticed that this
5917 make it impossible to send messages using Signal. I could still
5918 receive them, but had to patch the code with a new timestamp to send.
5919 I believe the timeout is added by the developers to force people to
5920 upgrade to the latest version of the app, even when there is no
5921 protocol changes, to reduce the version skew among the user base and
5922 thus try to keep the number of support requests down.
</p>
5924 <p>Since my original recipe, the Signal source code changed slightly,
5925 making the old patch fail to apply cleanly. Below is an updated
5926 patch, including the shell wrapper I use to start Signal. The
5927 original version required a new user to locate the JavaScript console
5928 and call a function from there. I got help from a friend with more
5929 JavaScript knowledge than me to modify the code to provide a GUI
5930 button instead. This mean that to get started you just need to run
5931 the wrapper and click the 'Register without mobile phone' to get going
5932 now. I've also modified the timeout code to always set it to
90 days
5933 in the future, to avoid having to patch the code regularly.
</p>
5935 <p>So, the updated recipe for Debian Jessie:
</p>
5939 <li>First, install required packages to get the source code and the
5940 browser you need. Signal only work with Chrome/Chromium, as far as I
5941 know, so you need to install it.
5944 apt install git tor chromium
5945 git clone https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Desktop.git
5948 <li>Modify the source code using command listed in the the patch
5951 <li>Start Signal using the run-signal-app wrapper (for example using
5952 <tt>`pwd`/run-signal-app
</tt>).
5954 <li>Click on the 'Register without mobile phone', will in a phone
5955 number you can receive calls to the next minute, receive the
5956 verification code and enter it into the form field and press
5957 'Register'. Note, the phone number you use will be user Signal
5958 username, ie the way others can find you on Signal.
</li>
5960 <li>You can now use Signal to contact others. Note, new contacts do
5961 not show up in the contact list until you restart Signal, and there is
5962 no way to assign names to Contacts. There is also no way to create or
5963 update chat groups. I suspect this is because the web app do not have
5964 a associated contact database.
</li>
5968 <p>I am still a bit uneasy about using Signal, because of the way its
5969 main author moxie0 reject federation and accept dependencies to major
5970 corporations like Google (part of the code is fetched from Google) and
5971 Amazon (the central coordination point is owned by Amazon). See for
5973 <a href=
"https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37">the
5974 LibreSignal issue tracker
</a> for a thread documenting the authors
5975 view on these issues. But the network effect is strong in this case,
5976 and several of the people I want to communicate with already use
5977 Signal. Perhaps we can all move to
<a href=
"https://ring.cx/">Ring
</a>
5978 once it
<a href=
"https://bugs.debian.org/830265">work on my
5979 laptop
</a>? It already work on Windows and Android, and is included
5980 in
<a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/ring">Debian
</a> and
5981 <a href=
"https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ring">Ubuntu
</a>, but not
5982 working on Debian Stable.
</p>
5984 <p>Anyway, this is the patch I apply to the Signal code to get it
5985 working. It switch to the production servers, disable to timeout,
5986 make registration easier and add the shell wrapper:
</p>
5989 cd Signal-Desktop; cat
<<EOF | patch -p1
5990 diff --git a/js/background.js b/js/background.js
5991 index
24b4c1d.
.579345f
100644
5992 --- a/js/background.js
5993 +++ b/js/background.js
5998 - var SERVER_URL = 'https://textsecure-service-staging.whispersystems.org';
5999 + var SERVER_URL = 'https://textsecure-service-ca.whispersystems.org';
6000 var SERVER_PORTS = [
80,
4433,
8443];
6001 - var ATTACHMENT_SERVER_URL = 'https://whispersystems-textsecure-attachments-staging.s3.amazonaws.com';
6002 + var ATTACHMENT_SERVER_URL = 'https://whispersystems-textsecure-attachments.s3.amazonaws.com';
6003 var messageReceiver;
6004 window.getSocketStatus = function() {
6005 if (messageReceiver) {
6006 diff --git a/js/expire.js b/js/expire.js
6007 index
639aeae..beb91c3
100644
6013 - var BUILD_EXPIRATION =
0;
6014 + var BUILD_EXPIRATION = Date.now() + (
90 *
24 *
60 *
60 *
1000);
6016 window.extension = window.extension || {};
6018 diff --git a/js/views/install_view.js b/js/views/install_view.js
6019 index
7816f4f.
.1d6233b
100644
6020 --- a/js/views/install_view.js
6021 +++ b/js/views/install_view.js
6024 'click .step1': this.selectStep.bind(this,
1),
6025 'click .step2': this.selectStep.bind(this,
2),
6026 - 'click .step3': this.selectStep.bind(this,
3)
6027 + 'click .step3': this.selectStep.bind(this,
3),
6028 + 'click .callreg': function() { extension.install('standalone') },
6031 clearQR: function() {
6032 diff --git a/options.html b/options.html
6033 index dc0f28e.
.8d709f6
100644
6037 <div class='nav'
>
6038 <h1
>{{ installWelcome }}
</h1
>
6039 <p
>{{ installTagline }}
</p
>
6040 -
<div
> <a class='button step2'
>{{ installGetStartedButton }}
</a
> </div
>
6041 +
<div
> <a class='button step2'
>{{ installGetStartedButton }}
</a
>
6042 +
<br
> <a
class="button callreg"
>Register without mobile phone
</a
>
6045 <span class='dot step1 selected'
></span
>
6046 <span class='dot step2'
></span
>
6047 <span class='dot step3'
></span
>
6048 --- /dev/null
2016-
10-
07 09:
55:
13.730181472 +
0200
6049 +++ b/run-signal-app
2016-
10-
10 08:
54:
09.434172391 +
0200
6055 +
userdata="`pwd`/userdata"
6056 +if [ -d "$userdata" ] && [ ! -d "$userdata/.git" ] ; then
6057 + (cd $userdata && git init)
6059 +(cd $userdata && git add . && git commit -m "Current status." || true)
6061 +
--proxy-server="socks://localhost:
9050" \
6062 + --user-data-dir=$userdata --load-and-launch-app=`pwd`
6064 chmod a+rx run-signal-app
6067 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
6068 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
6069 <b><a href=
"bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a></b>.
</p>
6075 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance
</a>.
6080 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6084 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Isenkram__Appstream_and_udev_make_life_as_a_LEGO_builder_easier.html">Isenkram, Appstream and udev make life as a LEGO builder easier
</a>
6090 <p><a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">The Isenkram
6091 system
</a> provide a practical and easy way to figure out which
6092 packages support the hardware in a given machine. The command line
6093 tool
<tt>isenkram-lookup
</tt> and the tasksel options provide a
6094 convenient way to list and install packages relevant for the current
6095 hardware during system installation, both user space packages and
6096 firmware packages. The GUI background daemon on the other hand provide
6097 a pop-up proposing to install packages when a new dongle is inserted
6098 while using the computer. For example, if you plug in a smart card
6099 reader, the system will ask if you want to install
<tt>pcscd
</tt> if
6100 that package isn't already installed, and if you plug in a USB video
6101 camera the system will ask if you want to install
<tt>cheese
</tt> if
6102 cheese is currently missing. This already work just fine.
</p>
6104 <p>But Isenkram depend on a database mapping from hardware IDs to
6105 package names. When I started no such database existed in Debian, so
6106 I made my own data set and included it with the isenkram package and
6107 made isenkram fetch the latest version of this database from git using
6108 http. This way the isenkram users would get updated package proposals
6109 as soon as I learned more about hardware related packages.
</p>
6111 <p>The hardware is identified using modalias strings. The modalias
6112 design is from the Linux kernel where most hardware descriptors are
6113 made available as a strings that can be matched using filename style
6114 globbing. It handle USB, PCI, DMI and a lot of other hardware related
6117 <p>The downside to the Isenkram specific database is that there is no
6118 information about relevant distribution / Debian version, making
6119 isenkram propose obsolete packages too. But along came AppStream, a
6120 cross distribution mechanism to store and collect metadata about
6121 software packages. When I heard about the proposal, I contacted the
6122 people involved and suggested to add a hardware matching rule using
6123 modalias strings in the specification, to be able to use AppStream for
6124 mapping hardware to packages. This idea was accepted and AppStream is
6125 now a great way for a package to announce the hardware it support in a
6126 distribution neutral way. I wrote
6127 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Using_appstream_with_isenkram_to_install_hardware_related_packages_in_Debian.html">a
6128 recipe on how to add such meta-information
</a> in a blog post last
6129 December. If you have a hardware related package in Debian, please
6130 announce the relevant hardware IDs using AppStream.
</p>
6132 <p>In Debian, almost all packages that can talk to a LEGO Mindestorms
6133 RCX or NXT unit, announce this support using AppStream. The effect is
6134 that when you insert such LEGO robot controller into your Debian
6135 machine, Isenkram will propose to install the packages needed to get
6136 it working. The intention is that this should allow the local user to
6137 start programming his robot controller right away without having to
6138 guess what packages to use or which permissions to fix.
</p>
6140 <p>But when I sat down with my son the other day to program our NXT
6141 unit using his Debian Stretch computer, I discovered something
6142 annoying. The local console user (ie my son) did not get access to
6143 the USB device for programming the unit. This used to work, but no
6144 longer in Jessie and Stretch. After some investigation and asking
6145 around on #debian-devel, I discovered that this was because udev had
6146 changed the mechanism used to grant access to local devices. The
6147 ConsoleKit mechanism from
<tt>/lib/udev/rules.d/
70-udev-acl.rules
</tt>
6148 no longer applied, because LDAP users no longer was added to the
6149 plugdev group during login. Michael Biebl told me that this method
6150 was obsolete and the new method used ACLs instead. This was good
6151 news, as the plugdev mechanism is a mess when using a remote user
6152 directory like LDAP. Using ACLs would make sure a user lost device
6153 access when she logged out, even if the user left behind a background
6154 process which would retain the plugdev membership with the ConsoleKit
6155 setup. Armed with this knowledge I moved on to fix the access problem
6156 for the LEGO Mindstorms related packages.
</p>
6158 <p>The new system uses a udev tag, 'uaccess'. It can either be
6159 applied directly for a device, or is applied in
6160 /lib/udev/rules.d/
70-uaccess.rules for classes of devices. As the
6161 LEGO Mindstorms udev rules did not have a class, I decided to add the
6162 tag directly in the udev rules files included in the packages. Here
6163 is one example. For the nqc C compiler for the RCX, the
6164 <tt>/lib/udev/rules.d/
60-nqc.rules
</tt> file now look like this:
6167 SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ACTION=="add", ATTR{idVendor}=="
0694", ATTR{idProduct}=="
0001", \
6168 SYMLINK+="rcx-%k", TAG+="uaccess"
6171 <p>The key part is the 'TAG+="uaccess"' at the end. I suspect all
6172 packages using plugdev in their /lib/udev/rules.d/ files should be
6173 changed to use this tag (either directly or indirectly via
6174 <tt>70-uaccess.rules
</tt>). Perhaps a lintian check should be created
6177 <p>I've been unable to find good documentation on the uaccess feature.
6178 It is unclear to me if the uaccess tag is an internal implementation
6179 detail like the udev-acl tag used by
6180 <tt>/lib/udev/rules.d/
70-udev-acl.rules
</tt>. If it is, I guess the
6181 indirect method is the preferred way. Michael
6182 <a href=
"https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/4288">asked for more
6183 documentation from the systemd project
</a> and I hope it will make
6184 this clearer. For now I use the generic classes when they exist and
6185 is already handled by
<tt>70-uaccess.rules
</tt>, and add the tag
6186 directly if no such class exist.
</p>
6188 <p>To learn more about the isenkram system, please check out
6189 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">my
6190 blog posts tagged isenkram
</a>.
</p>
6192 <p>To help out making life for LEGO constructors in Debian easier,
6193 please join us on our IRC channel
6194 <a href=
"irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego
</a> and join
6195 the
<a href=
"https://alioth.debian.org/projects/debian-lego/">Debian
6196 LEGO team
</a> in the Alioth project we created yesterday. A mailing
6197 list is not yet created, but we are working on it. :)
</p>
6199 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
6200 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
6201 <b><a href=
"bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a></b>.
</p>
6207 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/lego">lego
</a>.
6212 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6216 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/First_draft_Norwegian_Bokm_l_edition_of_The_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook_now_public.html">First draft Norwegian Bokmål edition of The Debian Administrator's Handbook now public
</a>
6223 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Lets_make_a_Norwegian_Bokm_l_edition_of_The_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook.html">started
6224 to work
</a> on a Norwegian Bokmål edition of the "open access" book on
6225 how to set up and administrate a Debian system. Today I am happy to
6226 report that the first draft is now publicly available. You can find
6227 it on
<a href=
"https://debian-handbook.info/get/">get the Debian
6228 Administrator's Handbook page
</a> (under Other languages). The first
6229 eight chapters have a first draft translation, and we are working on
6230 proofreading the content. If you want to help out, please start
6232 <a href=
"https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/debian-handbook/">the
6233 hosted weblate project page
</a>, and get in touch using
6234 <a href=
"http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/debian-handbook-translators">the
6235 translators mailing list
</a>. Please also check out
6236 <a href=
"https://debian-handbook.info/contribute/">the instructions for
6237 contributors
</a>. A good way to contribute is to proofread the text
6238 and update weblate if you find errors.
</p>
6240 <p>Our goal is still to make the Norwegian book available on paper as well as
6241 electronic form.
</p>
6247 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian-handbook">debian-handbook
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
6252 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6256 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Coz_can_help_you_find_bottlenecks_in_multi_threaded_software___nice_free_software.html">Coz can help you find bottlenecks in multi-threaded software - nice free software
</a>
6262 <p>This summer, I read a great article
6263 "
<a href=
"https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/summer2016/curtsinger">coz:
6264 This Is the Profiler You're Looking For
</a>" in USENIX ;login: about
6265 how to profile multi-threaded programs. It presented a system for
6266 profiling software by running experiences in the running program,
6267 testing how run time performance is affected by "speeding up
" parts of
6268 the code to various degrees compared to a normal run. It does this by
6269 slowing down parallel threads while the "faster up
" code is running
6270 and measure how this affect processing time. The processing time is
6271 measured using probes inserted into the code, either using progress
6272 counters (COZ_PROGRESS) or as latency meters (COZ_BEGIN/COZ_END). It
6273 can also measure unmodified code by measuring complete the program
6274 runtime and running the program several times instead.</p>
6276 <p>The project and presentation was so inspiring that I would like to
6277 get the system into Debian. I
6278 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=
830708">created
6279 a WNPP request for it</a> and contacted upstream to try to make the
6280 system ready for Debian by sending patches. The build process need to
6281 be changed a bit to avoid running 'git clone' to get dependencies, and
6282 to include the JavaScript web page used to visualize the collected
6283 profiling information included in the source package.
6284 But I expect that should work out fairly soon.</p>
6286 <p>The way the system work is fairly simple. To run an coz experiment
6287 on a binary with debug symbols available, start the program like this:
6289 <p><blockquote><pre>
6290 coz run --- program-to-run
6291 </pre></blockquote></p>
6293 <p>This will create a text file profile.coz with the instrumentation
6294 information. To show what part of the code affect the performance
6295 most, use a web browser and either point it to
6296 <a href="http://plasma-umass.github.io/coz/
">http://plasma-umass.github.io/coz/</a>
6297 or use the copy from git (in the gh-pages branch). Check out this web
6298 site to have a look at several example profiling runs and get an idea what the end result from the profile runs look like. To make the
6299 profiling more useful you include <coz.h> and insert the
6300 COZ_PROGRESS or COZ_BEGIN and COZ_END at appropriate places in the
6301 code, rebuild and run the profiler. This allow coz to do more
6302 targeted experiments.</p>
6304 <p>A video published by ACM
6305 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jE0V-p1odPg
">presenting the
6306 Coz profiler</a> is available from Youtube. There is also a paper
6307 from the 25th Symposium on Operating Systems Principles available
6309 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/conference/atc16/technical-sessions/presentation/curtsinger
">Coz:
6310 finding code that counts with causal profiling</a>.</p>
6312 <p><a href="https://github.com/plasma-umass/coz
">The source code</a>
6313 for Coz is available from github. It will only build with clang
6315 <a href="https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=
55606">C++
6316 feature missing in GCC</a>, but I've submitted
6317 <a href="https://github.com/plasma-umass/coz/pull/
67">a patch to solve
6318 it</a> and hope it will be included in the upstream source soon.</p>
6320 <p>Please get in touch if you, like me, would like to see this piece
6321 of software in Debian. I would very much like some help with the
6322 packaging effort, as I lack the in depth knowledge on how to package
6329 Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian
">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/nice free software
">nice free software</a>.
6334 <div class="padding
"></div>
6338 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Unlocking_HTC_Desire_HD_on_Linux_using_unruu_and_fastboot.html
">Unlocking HTC Desire HD on Linux using unruu and fastboot</a>
6344 <p>Yesterday, I tried to unlock a HTC Desire HD phone, and it proved
6345 to be a slight challenge. Here is the recipe if I ever need to do it
6346 again. It all started by me wanting to try the recipe to set up
6347 <a href="https://blog.torproject.org/blog/mission-impossible-hardening-android-security-and-privacy
">an
6348 hardened Android installation</a> from the Tor project blog on a
6349 device I had access to. It is a old mobile phone with a broken
6350 microphone The initial idea had been to just
6351 <a href="http://wiki.cyanogenmod.org/w/Install_CM_for_ace
">install
6352 CyanogenMod on it</a>, but did not quite find time to start on it
6353 until a few days ago.</p>
6355 <p>The unlock process is supposed to be simple: (1) Boot into the boot
6356 loader (press volume down and power at the same time), (2) select
6357 'fastboot' before (3) connecting the device via USB to a Linux
6358 machine, (4) request the device identifier token by running 'fastboot
6359 oem get_identifier_token', (5) request the device unlocking key using
6360 the <a href="http://www.htcdev.com/bootloader/
">HTC developer web
6361 site</a> and unlock the phone using the key file emailed to you.</p>
6363 <p>Unfortunately, this only work fi you have hboot version 2.00.0029
6364 or newer, and the device I was working on had 2.00.0027. This
6365 apparently can be easily fixed by downloading a Windows program and
6366 running it on your Windows machine, if you accept the terms Microsoft
6367 require you to accept to use Windows - which I do not. So I had to
6368 come up with a different approach. I got a lot of help from AndyCap
6369 on #nuug, and would not have been able to get this working without
6372 <p>First I needed to extract the hboot firmware from
6373 <a href="http://www.htcdev.com/ruu/PD9810000_Ace_Sense30_S_hboot_2.00
.0029.exe
">the
6374 windows binary for HTC Desire HD</a> downloaded as 'the RUU' from HTC.
6375 For this there is is <a href="https://github.com/kmdm/unruu/
">a github
6376 project named unruu</a> using libunshield. The unshield tool did not
6377 recognise the file format, but unruu worked and extracted rom.zip,
6378 containing the new hboot firmware and a text file describing which
6379 devices it would work for.</p>
6381 <p>Next, I needed to get the new firmware into the device. For this I
6382 followed some instructions
6383 <a href="http://www.htc1guru.com/
2013/
09/new-ruu-zips-posted/
">available
6384 from HTC1Guru.com</a>, and ran these commands as root on a Linux
6385 machine with Debian testing:</p>
6388 adb reboot-bootloader
6389 fastboot oem rebootRUU
6390 fastboot flash zip rom.zip
6391 fastboot flash zip rom.zip
6395 <p>The flash command apparently need to be done twice to take effect,
6396 as the first is just preparations and the second one do the flashing.
6397 The adb command is just to get to the boot loader menu, so turning the
6398 device on while holding volume down and the power button should work
6401 <p>With the new hboot version in place I could start following the
6402 instructions on the HTC developer web site. I got the device token
6406 fastboot oem get_identifier_token 2>&1 | sed 's/(bootloader) //'
6409 <p>And once I got the unlock code via email, I could use it like
6413 fastboot flash unlocktoken Unlock_code.bin
6416 <p>And with that final step in place, the phone was unlocked and I
6417 could start stuffing the software of my own choosing into the device.
6418 So far I only inserted a replacement recovery image to wipe the phone
6419 before I start. We will see what happen next. Perhaps I should
6420 install <a href="https://www.debian.org/
">Debian</a> on it. :)</p>
6426 Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/bootsystem
">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian
">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett
">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet
">sikkerhet</a>.
6431 <div class="padding
"></div>
6435 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/How_to_use_the_Signal_app_if_you_only_have_a_land_line__ie_no_mobile_phone_.html
">How to use the Signal app if you only have a land line (ie no mobile phone)</a>
6441 <p>For a while now, I have wanted to test
6442 <a href="https://whispersystems.org/
">the Signal app</a>, as it is
6443 said to provide end to end encrypted communication and several of my
6444 friends and family are already using it. As I by choice do not own a
6445 mobile phone, this proved to be harder than expected. And I wanted to
6446 have the source of the client and know that it was the code used on my
6447 machine. But yesterday I managed to get it working. I used the
6448 Github source, compared it to the source in
6449 <a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/signal-private-messenger/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk?hl=en-US
">the
6450 Signal Chrome app</a> available from the Chrome web store, applied
6451 patches to use the production Signal servers, started the app and
6452 asked for the hidden "register without a smart phone" form. Here is
6453 the recipe how I did it.
</p>
6455 <p>First, I fetched the Signal desktop source from Github, using
6458 git clone https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Desktop.git
6461 <p>Next, I patched the source to use the production servers, to be
6462 able to talk to other Signal users:
</p>
6465 cat
<<EOF | patch -p0
6466 diff -ur ./js/background.js userdata/Default/Extensions/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk/
0.15.0_0/js/background.js
6467 --- ./js/background.js
2016-
06-
29 13:
43:
15.630344628 +
0200
6468 +++ userdata/Default/Extensions/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk/
0.15.0_0/js/background.js
2016-
06-
29 14:
06:
29.530300934 +
0200
6473 - var SERVER_URL = 'https://textsecure-service-staging.whispersystems.org';
6474 - var ATTACHMENT_SERVER_URL = 'https://whispersystems-textsecure-attachments-staging.s3.amazonaws.com';
6475 + var SERVER_URL = 'https://textsecure-service-ca.whispersystems.org:
4433';
6476 + var ATTACHMENT_SERVER_URL = 'https://whispersystems-textsecure-attachments.s3.amazonaws.com';
6477 var messageReceiver;
6478 window.getSocketStatus = function() {
6479 if (messageReceiver) {
6480 diff -ur ./js/expire.js userdata/Default/Extensions/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk/
0.15.0_0/js/expire.js
6481 --- ./js/expire.js
2016-
06-
29 13:
43:
15.630344628 +
0200
6482 +++ userdata/Default/Extensions/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk/
0.15.0_0/js/expire.js2016-
06-
29 14:
06:
29.530300934 +
0200
6486 - var BUILD_EXPIRATION =
0;
6487 + var BUILD_EXPIRATION =
1474492690000;
6489 window.extension = window.extension || {};
6494 <p>The first part is changing the servers, and the second is updating
6495 an expiration timestamp. This timestamp need to be updated regularly.
6496 It is set
90 days in the future by the build process (Gruntfile.js).
6497 The value is seconds since
1970 times
1000, as far as I can tell.
</p>
6499 <p>Based on a tip and good help from the #nuug IRC channel, I wrote a
6500 script to launch Signal in Chromium.
</p>
6507 --proxy-server="socks://localhost:
9050" \
6508 --user-data-dir=`pwd`/userdata --load-and-launch-app=`pwd`
6511 <p> The script start the app and configure Chromium to use the Tor
6512 SOCKS5 proxy to make sure those controlling the Signal servers (today
6513 Amazon and Whisper Systems) as well as those listening on the lines
6514 will have a harder time location my laptop based on the Signal
6515 connections if they use source IP address.
</p>
6517 <p>When the script starts, one need to follow the instructions under
6518 "Standalone Registration" in the CONTRIBUTING.md file in the git
6519 repository. I right clicked on the Signal window to get up the
6520 Chromium debugging tool, visited the 'Console' tab and wrote
6521 'extension.install("standalone")' on the console prompt to get the
6522 registration form. Then I entered by land line phone number and
6523 pressed 'Call'.
5 seconds later the phone rang and a robot voice
6524 repeated the verification code three times. After entering the number
6525 into the verification code field in the form, I could start using
6526 Signal from my laptop.
6528 <p>As far as I can tell, The Signal app will leak who is talking to
6529 whom and thus who know who to those controlling the central server,
6530 but such leakage is hard to avoid with a centrally controlled server
6531 setup. It is something to keep in mind when using Signal - the
6532 content of your chats are harder to intercept, but the meta data
6533 exposing your contact network is available to people you do not know.
6534 So better than many options, but not great. And sadly the usage is
6535 connected to my land line, thus allowing those controlling the server
6536 to associate it to my home and person. I would prefer it if only
6537 those I knew could tell who I was on Signal. There are options
6538 avoiding such information leakage, but most of my friends are not
6539 using them, so I am stuck with Signal for now.
</p>
6541 <p><strong>Update
2017-
01-
10</strong>: There is an updated blog post
6543 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Experience_and_updated_recipe_for_using_the_Signal_app_without_a_mobile_phone.html">Experience
6544 and updated recipe for using the Signal app without a mobile
6551 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance
</a>.
6556 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6560 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/The_new__best__multimedia_player_in_Debian_.html">The new "best" multimedia player in Debian?
</a>
6566 <p>When I set out a few weeks ago to figure out
6567 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/What_is_the_best_multimedia_player_in_Debian_.html">which
6568 multimedia player in Debian claimed to support most file formats /
6569 MIME types
</a>, I was a bit surprised how varied the sets of MIME types
6570 the various players claimed support for. The range was from
55 to
130
6571 MIME types. I suspect most media formats are supported by all
6572 players, but this is not really reflected in the MimeTypes values in
6573 their desktop files. There are probably also some bogus MIME types
6574 listed, but it is hard to identify which one this is.
</p>
6576 <p>Anyway, in the mean time I got in touch with upstream for some of
6577 the players suggesting to add more MIME types to their desktop files,
6578 and decided to spend some time myself improving the situation for my
6579 favorite media player VLC. The fixes for VLC entered Debian unstable
6580 yesterday. The complete list of MIME types can be seen on the
6581 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/DebianMultimedia/PlayerSupport">Multimedia
6582 player MIME type support status
</a> Debian wiki page.
</p>
6584 <p>The new "best" multimedia player in Debian? It is VLC, followed by
6585 totem, parole, kplayer, gnome-mpv, mpv, smplayer, mplayer-gui and
6586 kmplayer. I am sure some of the other players desktop files support
6587 several of the formats currently listed as working only with vlc,
6588 toten and parole.
</p>
6590 <p>A sad observation is that only
14 MIME types are listed as
6591 supported by all the tested multimedia players in Debian in their
6592 desktop files: audio/mpeg, audio/vnd.rn-realaudio, audio/x-mpegurl,
6593 audio/x-ms-wma, audio/x-scpls, audio/x-wav, video/mp4, video/mpeg,
6594 video/quicktime, video/vnd.rn-realvideo, video/x-matroska,
6595 video/x-ms-asf, video/x-ms-wmv and video/x-msvideo. Personally I find
6596 it sad that video/ogg and video/webm is not supported by all the media
6597 players in Debian. As far as I can tell, all of them can handle both
6604 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/video">video
</a>.
6609 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6613 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/A_program_should_be_able_to_open_its_own_files_on_Linux.html">A program should be able to open its own files on Linux
</a>
6619 <p>Many years ago, when koffice was fresh and with few users, I
6620 decided to test its presentation tool when making the slides for a
6621 talk I was giving for NUUG on Japhar, a free Java virtual machine. I
6622 wrote the first draft of the slides, saved the result and went to bed
6623 the day before I would give the talk. The next day I took a plane to
6624 the location where the meeting should take place, and on the plane I
6625 started up koffice again to polish the talk a bit, only to discover
6626 that kpresenter refused to load its own data file. I cursed a bit and
6627 started making the slides again from memory, to have something to
6628 present when I arrived. I tested that the saved files could be
6629 loaded, and the day seemed to be rescued. I continued to polish the
6630 slides until I suddenly discovered that the saved file could no longer
6631 be loaded into kpresenter. In the end I had to rewrite the slides
6632 three times, condensing the content until the talk became shorter and
6633 shorter. After the talk I was able to pinpoint the problem
–
6634 kpresenter wrote inline images in a way itself could not understand.
6635 Eventually that bug was fixed and kpresenter ended up being a great
6636 program to make slides. The point I'm trying to make is that we
6637 expect a program to be able to load its own data files, and it is
6638 embarrassing to its developers if it can't.
</p>
6640 <p>Did you ever experience a program failing to load its own data
6641 files from the desktop file browser? It is not a uncommon problem. A
6642 while back I discovered that the screencast recorder
6643 gtk-recordmydesktop would save an Ogg Theora video file the KDE file
6644 browser would refuse to open. No video player claimed to understand
6645 such file. I tracked down the cause being
<tt>file --mime-type
</tt>
6646 returning the application/ogg MIME type, which no video player I had
6647 installed listed as a MIME type they would understand. I asked for
6648 <a href=
"http://bugs.gw.com/view.php?id=382">file to change its
6649 behavour
</a> and use the MIME type video/ogg instead. I also asked
6650 several video players to add video/ogg to their desktop files, to give
6651 the file browser an idea what to do about Ogg Theora files. After a
6652 while, the desktop file browsers in Debian started to handle the
6653 output from gtk-recordmydesktop properly.
</p>
6655 <p>But history repeats itself. A few days ago I tested the music
6656 system Rosegarden again, and I discovered that the KDE and xfce file
6657 browsers did not know what to do with the Rosegarden project files
6658 (*.rg). I've reported
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/825993">the
6659 rosegarden problem to BTS
</a> and a fix is commited to git and will be
6660 included in the next upload. To increase the chance of me remembering
6661 how to fix the problem next time some program fail to load its files
6662 from the file browser, here are some notes on how to fix it.
</p>
6664 <p>The file browsers in Debian in general operates on MIME types.
6665 There are two sources for the MIME type of a given file. The output from
6666 <tt>file --mime-type
</tt> mentioned above, and the content of the
6667 shared MIME type registry (under /usr/share/mime/). The file MIME
6668 type is mapped to programs supporting the MIME type, and this
6669 information is collected from
6670 <a href=
"https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/desktop-entry-spec/">the
6671 desktop files
</a> available in /usr/share/applications/. If there is
6672 one desktop file claiming support for the MIME type of the file, it is
6673 activated when asking to open a given file. If there are more, one
6674 can normally select which one to use by right-clicking on the file and
6675 selecting the wanted one using 'Open with' or similar. In general
6676 this work well. But it depend on each program picking a good MIME
6678 <a href=
"http://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types/media-types.xhtml">a
6679 MIME type registered with IANA
</a>), file and/or the shared MIME
6680 registry recognizing the file and the desktop file to list the MIME
6681 type in its list of supported MIME types.
</p>
6683 <p>The
<tt>/usr/share/mime/packages/rosegarden.xml
</tt> entry for
6684 <a href=
"http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/shared-mime-info-spec">the
6685 Shared MIME database
</a> look like this:
</p>
6687 <p><blockquote><pre>
6688 <?xml
version="
1.0"
encoding="UTF-
8"?
>
6689 <mime-info
xmlns="http://www.freedesktop.org/standards/shared-mime-info"
>
6690 <mime-type
type="audio/x-rosegarden"
>
6691 <sub-class-of
type="application/x-gzip"/
>
6692 <comment
>Rosegarden project file
</comment
>
6693 <glob
pattern="*.rg"/
>
6696 </pre></blockquote></p>
6698 <p>This states that audio/x-rosegarden is a kind of application/x-gzip
6699 (it is a gzipped XML file). Note, it is much better to use an
6700 official MIME type registered with IANA than it is to make up ones own
6701 unofficial ones like the x-rosegarden type used by rosegarden.
</p>
6703 <p>The desktop file of the rosegarden program failed to list
6704 audio/x-rosegarden in its list of supported MIME types, causing the
6705 file browsers to have no idea what to do with *.rg files:
</p>
6707 <p><blockquote><pre>
6708 % grep Mime /usr/share/applications/rosegarden.desktop
6709 MimeType=audio/x-rosegarden-composition;audio/x-rosegarden-device;audio/x-rosegarden-project;audio/x-rosegarden-template;audio/midi;
6710 X-KDE-NativeMimeType=audio/x-rosegarden-composition
6712 </pre></blockquote></p>
6714 <p>The fix was to add "audio/x-rosegarden;" at the end of the
6717 <p>If you run into a file which fail to open the correct program when
6718 selected from the file browser, please check out the output from
6719 <tt>file --mime-type
</tt> for the file, ensure the file ending and
6720 MIME type is registered somewhere under /usr/share/mime/ and check
6721 that some desktop file under /usr/share/applications/ is claiming
6722 support for this MIME type. If not, please report a bug to have it
6729 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
6734 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6738 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Isenkram_with_PackageKit_support___new_version_0_23_available_in_Debian_unstable.html">Isenkram with PackageKit support - new version
0.23 available in Debian unstable
</a>
6744 <p><a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/isenkram">The isenkram
6745 system
</a> is a user-focused solution in Debian for handling hardware
6746 related packages. The idea is to have a database of mappings between
6747 hardware and packages, and pop up a dialog suggesting for the user to
6748 install the packages to use a given hardware dongle. Some use cases
6749 are when you insert a Yubikey, it proposes to install the software
6750 needed to control it; when you insert a braille reader list it
6751 proposes to install the packages needed to send text to the reader;
6752 and when you insert a ColorHug screen calibrator it suggests to
6753 install the driver for it. The system work well, and even have a few
6754 command line tools to install firmware packages and packages for the
6755 hardware already in the machine (as opposed to hotpluggable hardware).
</p>
6757 <p>The system was initially written using aptdaemon, because I found
6758 good documentation and example code on how to use it. But aptdaemon
6759 is going away and is generally being replaced by
6760 <a href=
"http://www.freedesktop.org/software/PackageKit/">PackageKit
</a>,
6761 so Isenkram needed a rewrite. And today, thanks to the great patch
6762 from my college Sunil Mohan Adapa in the FreedomBox project, the
6763 rewrite finally took place. I've just uploaded a new version of
6764 Isenkram into Debian Unstable with the patch included, and the default
6765 for the background daemon is now to use PackageKit. To check it out,
6766 install the
<tt>isenkram
</tt> package and insert some hardware dongle
6767 and see if it is recognised.
</p>
6769 <p>If you want to know what kind of packages isenkram would propose for
6770 the machine it is running on, you can check out the isenkram-lookup
6771 program. This is what it look like on a Thinkpad X230:
</p>
6773 <p><blockquote><pre>
6789 </pre></blockquote></p>
6791 <p>The hardware mappings come from several places. The preferred way
6792 is for packages to announce their hardware support using
6793 <a href=
"https://www.freedesktop.org/software/appstream/docs/">the
6794 cross distribution appstream system
</a>.
6796 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">previous
6797 blog posts about isenkram
</a> to learn how to do that.
</p>
6803 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram
</a>.
6808 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6812 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Discharge_rate_estimate_in_new_battery_statistics_collector_for_Debian.html">Discharge rate estimate in new battery statistics collector for Debian
</a>
6818 <p>Yesterday I updated the
6819 <a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">battery-stats
6820 package in Debian
</a> with a few patches sent to me by skilled and
6821 enterprising users. There were some nice user and visible changes.
6822 First of all, both desktop menu entries now work. A design flaw in
6823 one of the script made the history graph fail to show up (its PNG was
6824 dumped in ~/.xsession-errors) if no controlling TTY was available.
6825 The script worked when called from the command line, but not when
6826 called from the desktop menu. I changed this to look for a DISPLAY
6827 variable or a TTY before deciding where to draw the graph, and now the
6828 graph window pop up as expected.
</p>
6830 <p>The next new feature is a discharge rate estimator in one of the
6831 graphs (the one showing the last few hours). New is also the user of
6832 colours showing charging in blue and discharge in red. The percentages
6833 of this graph is relative to last full charge, not battery design
6836 <p align=
"center"><img src=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2016-05-23-battery-stats-rate.png"/></p>
6838 <p>The other graph show the entire history of the collected battery
6839 statistics, comparing it to the design capacity of the battery to
6840 visualise how the battery life time get shorter over time. The red
6841 line in this graph is what the previous graph considers
100 percent:
6843 <p align=
"center"><img src=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2016-05-23-battery-stats-history.png"/></p>
6845 <p>In this graph you can see that I only charge the battery to
80
6846 percent of last full capacity, and how the capacity of the battery is
6849 <p>The last new feature is in the collector, which now will handle
6850 more hardware models. On some hardware, Linux power supply
6851 information is stored in /sys/class/power_supply/ACAD/, while the
6852 collector previously only looked in /sys/class/power_supply/AC/. Now
6853 both are checked to figure if there is power connected to the
6856 <p>If you are interested in how your laptop battery is doing, please
6858 <a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">battery-stats
</a>
6859 in Debian unstable, or rebuild it on Jessie to get it working on
6860 Debian stable. :) The upstream source is available from
<a
6861 href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats">github
</a>.
6862 Patches are very welcome.
</p>
6864 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
6865 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
6866 <b><a href=
"bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a></b>.
</p>
6872 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
6877 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6881 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Debian_now_with_ZFS_on_Linux_included.html">Debian now with ZFS on Linux included
</a>
6887 <p>Today, after many years of hard work from many people,
6888 <a href=
"http://zfsonlinux.org/">ZFS for Linux
</a> finally entered
6889 Debian. The package status can be seen on
6890 <a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/zfs-linux">the package tracker
6891 for zfs-linux
</a>. and
6892 <a href=
"https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=pkg-zfsonlinux-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
6893 team status page
</a>. If you want to help out, please join us.
6894 <a href=
"http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=pkg-zfsonlinux/zfs.git">The
6895 source code
</a> is available via git on Alioth. It would also be
6896 great if you could help out with
6897 <a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/dkms">the dkms package
</a>, as
6898 it is an important piece of the puzzle to get ZFS working.
</p>
6904 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
6909 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6913 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/What_is_the_best_multimedia_player_in_Debian_.html">What is the best multimedia player in Debian?
</a>
6919 <p><strong>Where I set out to figure out which multimedia player in
6920 Debian claim support for most file formats.
</strong></p>
6922 <p>A few years ago, I had a look at the media support for Browser
6923 plugins in Debian, to get an idea which plugins to include in Debian
6924 Edu. I created a script to extract the set of supported MIME types
6925 for each plugin, and used this to find out which multimedia browser
6926 plugin supported most file formats / media types.
6927 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">The
6928 result
</a> can still be seen on the Debian wiki, even though it have
6929 not been updated for a while. But browser plugins are less relevant
6930 these days, so I thought it was time to look at standalone
6933 <p>A few days ago I was tired of VLC not being listed as a viable
6934 player when I wanted to play videos from the Norwegian National
6935 Broadcasting Company, and decided to investigate why. The cause is a
6936 <a href=
"https://bugs.debian.org/822245">missing MIME type in the VLC
6937 desktop file
</a>. In the process I wrote a script to compare the set
6938 of MIME types announced in the desktop file and the browser plugin,
6939 only to discover that there is quite a large difference between the
6940 two for VLC. This discovery made me dig up the script I used to
6941 compare browser plugins, and adjust it to compare desktop files
6942 instead, to try to figure out which multimedia player in Debian
6943 support most file formats.
</p>
6945 <p>The result can be seen on the Debian Wiki, as
6946 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/DebianMultimedia/PlayerSupport">a
6947 table listing all MIME types supported by one of the packages included
6948 in the table
</a>, with the package supporting most MIME types being
6949 listed first in the table.
</p>
6951 </p>The best multimedia player in Debian? It is totem, followed by
6952 parole, kplayer, mpv, vlc, smplayer mplayer-gui gnome-mpv and
6953 kmplayer. Time for the other players to update their announced MIME
6960 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/video">video
</a>.
6965 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6969 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/The_Pyra___handheld_computer_with_Debian_preinstalled.html">The Pyra - handheld computer with Debian preinstalled
</a>
6975 A friend of mine made me aware of
6976 <a href=
"https://pyra-handheld.com/boards/pages/pyra/">The Pyra
</a>, a
6977 handheld computer which will be delivered with Debian preinstalled. I
6978 would love to get one of those for my birthday. :)
</p>
6980 <p>The machine is a complete ARM-based PC with micro HDMI, SATA, USB
6981 plugs and many others connectors, and include a full keyboard and a
5"
6982 LCD touch screen. The
6000mAh battery is claimed to provide a whole
6983 day of battery life time, but I have not seen any independent tests
6984 confirming this. The vendor is still collecting preorders, and the
6985 last I heard last night was that
22 more orders were needed before
6986 production started.
</p>
6988 <p>As far as I know, this is the first handheld preinstalled with
6989 Debian. Please let me know if you know of any others. Is it the
6990 first computer being sold with Debian preinstalled?
</p>
6996 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
7001 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7005 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Lets_make_a_Norwegian_Bokm_l_edition_of_The_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook.html">Lets make a Norwegian Bokmål edition of The Debian Administrator's Handbook
</a>
7011 <p>During this weekends
7012 <a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/news/Oslo__Takk_for_feilfiksingsfesten.shtml">bug
7013 squashing party and developer gathering
</a>, we decided to do our part
7014 to make sure there are good books about Debian available in Norwegian
7015 Bokmål, and got in touch with the people behind the
7016 <a href=
"http://debian-handbook.info/">Debian Administrator's Handbook
7017 project
</a> to get started. If you want to help out, please start
7019 <a href=
"https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/debian-handbook/">the
7020 hosted weblate project page
</a>, and get in touch using
7021 <a href=
"http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/debian-handbook-translators">the
7022 translators mailing list
</a>. Please also check out
7023 <a href=
"https://debian-handbook.info/contribute/">the instructions for
7024 contributors
</a>.
</p>
7026 <p>The book is already available on paper in English, French and
7027 Japanese, and our goal is to get it available on paper in Norwegian
7028 Bokmål too. In addition to the paper edition, there are also EPUB and
7029 Mobi versions available. And there are incomplete translations
7030 available for many more languages.
</p>
7036 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian-handbook">debian-handbook
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
7041 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7045 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/One_in_two_hundred_Debian_users_using_ZFS_on_Linux_.html">One in two hundred Debian users using ZFS on Linux?
</a>
7051 <p>Just for fun I had a look at the popcon number of ZFS related
7052 packages in Debian, and was quite surprised with what I found. I use
7053 ZFS myself at home, but did not really expect many others to do so.
7054 But I might be wrong.
</p>
7057 <a href=
"https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=spl-linux">the popcon
7058 results for spl-linux
</a>, there are
1019 Debian installations, or
7059 0.53% of the population, with the package installed. As far as I know
7060 the only use of the spl-linux package is as a support library for ZFS
7061 on Linux, so I use it here as proxy for measuring the number of ZFS
7062 installation on Linux in Debian. In the kFreeBSD variant of Debian
7063 the ZFS feature is already available, and there
7064 <a href=
"https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=zfsutils">the popcon
7065 results for zfsutils
</a> show
1625 Debian installations or
0.84% of
7066 the population. So I guess I am not alone in using ZFS on Debian.
</p>
7068 <p>But even though the Debian project leader Lucas Nussbaum
7069 <a href=
"https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2015/04/msg00006.html">announced
7070 in April
2015</a> that the legal obstacles blocking ZFS on Debian were
7071 cleared, the package is still not in Debian. The package is again in
7072 the NEW queue. Several uploads have been rejected so far because the
7073 debian/copyright file was incomplete or wrong, but there is no reason
7074 to give up. The current status can be seen on
7075 <a href=
"https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=pkg-zfsonlinux-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
7076 team status page
</a>, and
7077 <a href=
"http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=pkg-zfsonlinux/zfs.git">the
7078 source code
</a> is available on Alioth.
</p>
7080 <p>As I want ZFS to be included in next version of Debian to make sure
7081 my home server can function in the future using only official Debian
7082 packages, and the current blocker is to get the debian/copyright file
7083 accepted by the FTP masters in Debian, I decided a while back to try
7084 to help out the team. This was the background for my blog post about
7085 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Creating__updating_and_checking_debian_copyright_semi_automatically.html">creating,
7086 updating and checking debian/copyright semi-automatically
</a>, and I
7087 used the techniques I explored there to try to find any errors in the
7088 copyright file. It is not very easy to check every one of the around
7089 2000 files in the source package, but I hope we this time got it
7090 right. If you want to help out, check out the git source and try to
7091 find missing entries in the debian/copyright file.
</p>
7097 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
7102 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7106 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Full_battery_stats_collector_is_now_available_in_Debian.html">Full battery stats collector is now available in Debian
</a>
7112 <p>Since this morning, the battery-stats package in Debian include an
7113 extended collector that will collect the complete battery history for
7114 later processing and graphing. The original collector store the
7115 battery level as percentage of last full level, while the new
7116 collector also record battery vendor, model, serial number, design
7117 full level, last full level and current battery level. This make it
7118 possible to predict the lifetime of the battery as well as visualise
7119 the energy flow when the battery is charging or discharging.
</p>
7121 <p>The new tools are available in
<tt>/usr/share/battery-stats/
</tt>
7122 in the version
0.5.1 package in unstable. Get the new battery level graph
7123 and lifetime prediction by running:
7126 /usr/share/battery-stats/battery-stats-graph /var/log/battery-stats.csv
7129 <p>Or select the 'Battery Level Graph' from your application menu.
</p>
7131 <p>The flow in/out of the battery can be seen by running (no menu
7135 /usr/share/battery-stats/battery-stats-graph-flow
7138 <p>I'm not quite happy with the way the data is visualised, at least
7139 when there are few data points. The graphs look a bit better with a
7140 few years of data.
</p>
7142 <p>A while back one important feature I use in the battery stats
7143 collector broke in Debian. The scripts in
7144 <tt>/usr/lib/pm-utils/power.d/
</tt> were no longer executed. I
7145 suspect it happened when Jessie started using systemd, but I do not
7146 know. The issue is reported as
7147 <a href=
"https://bugs.debian.org/818649">bug #
818649</a> against
7148 pm-utils. I managed to work around it by adding an udev rule to call
7149 the collector script every time the power connector is connected and
7150 disconnected. With this fix in place it was finally time to make a
7151 new release of the package, and get it into Debian.
</p>
7153 <p>If you are interested in how your laptop battery is doing, please
7155 <a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">battery-stats
</a>
7156 in Debian unstable, or rebuild it on Jessie to get it working on
7157 Debian stable. :) The upstream source is available from
7158 <a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats">github
</a>.
7159 As always, patches are very welcome.
</p>
7165 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
7170 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7174 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Making_battery_measurements_a_little_easier_in_Debian.html">Making battery measurements a little easier in Debian
</a>
7180 <p>Back in September, I blogged about
7181 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/The_life_and_death_of_a_laptop_battery.html">the
7182 system I wrote to collect statistics about my laptop battery
</a>, and
7183 how it showed the decay and death of this battery (now replaced). I
7184 created a simple deb package to handle the collection and graphing,
7185 but did not want to upload it to Debian as there were already
7186 <a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">a battery-stats
7187 package in Debian
</a> that should do the same thing, and I did not see
7188 a point of uploading a competing package when battery-stats could be
7189 fixed instead. I reported a few bugs about its non-function, and
7190 hoped someone would step in and fix it. But no-one did.
</p>
7192 <p>I got tired of waiting a few days ago, and took matters in my own
7193 hands. The end result is that I am now the new upstream developer of
7194 battery stats (
<a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats">available from github
</a>) and part of the team maintaining
7195 battery-stats in Debian, and the package in Debian unstable is finally
7196 able to collect battery status using the
<tt>/sys/class/power_supply/
</tt>
7197 information provided by the Linux kernel. If you install the
7198 battery-stats package from unstable now, you will be able to get a
7199 graph of the current battery fill level, to get some idea about the
7200 status of the battery. The source package build and work just fine in
7201 Debian testing and stable (and probably oldstable too, but I have not
7202 tested). The default graph you get for that system look like this:
</p>
7204 <p align=
"center"><img src=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2016-03-15-battery-stats-graph-example.png" width=
"70%" align=
"center"></p>
7206 <p>My plans for the future is to merge my old scripts into the
7207 battery-stats package, as my old scripts collected a lot more details
7208 about the battery. The scripts are merged into the upstream
7209 battery-stats git repository already, but I am not convinced they work
7210 yet, as I changed a lot of paths along the way. Will have to test a
7211 bit more before I make a new release.
</p>
7213 <p>I will also consider changing the file format slightly, as I
7214 suspect the way I combine several values into one field might make it
7215 impossible to know the type of the value when using it for processing
7218 <p>If you would like I would like to keep an close eye on your laptop
7219 battery, check out the battery-stats package in
7220 <a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">Debian
</a> and
7222 <a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats">github
</a>.
7223 I would love some help to improve the system further.
</p>
7229 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
7234 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7238 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Creating__updating_and_checking_debian_copyright_semi_automatically.html">Creating, updating and checking debian/copyright semi-automatically
</a>
7244 <p>Making packages for Debian requires quite a lot of attention to
7245 details. And one of the details is the content of the
7246 debian/copyright file, which should list all relevant licenses used by
7247 the code in the package in question, preferably in
7248 <a href=
"https://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/copyright-format/1.0/">machine
7249 readable DEP5 format
</a>.
</p>
7251 <p>For large packages with lots of contributors it is hard to write
7252 and update this file manually, and if you get some detail wrong, the
7253 package is normally rejected by the ftpmasters. So getting it right
7254 the first time around get the package into Debian faster, and save
7255 both you and the ftpmasters some work.. Today, while trying to figure
7256 out what was wrong with
7257 <a href=
"https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=686447">the
7258 zfsonlinux copyright file
</a>, I decided to spend some time on
7259 figuring out the options for doing this job automatically, or at least
7260 semi-automatically.
</p>
7262 <p>Lucikly, there are at least two tools available for generating the
7263 file based on the code in the source package,
7264 <tt><a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/debmake">debmake
</a></tt>
7265 and
<tt><a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/cme">cme
</a></tt>. I'm
7266 not sure which one of them came first, but both seem to be able to
7267 create a sensible draft file. As far as I can tell, none of them can
7268 be trusted to get the result just right, so the content need to be
7269 polished a bit before the file is OK to upload. I found the debmake
7271 <a href=
"http://goofying-with-debian.blogspot.com/2014/07/debmake-checking-source-against-dep-5.html">a
7272 blog posts from
2014</a>.
7274 <p>To generate using debmake, use the -cc option:
7277 debmake -cc
> debian/copyright
7280 <p>Note there are some problems with python and non-ASCII names, so
7281 this might not be the best option.
</p>
7283 <p>The cme option is based on a config parsing library, and I found
7285 <a href=
"https://ddumont.wordpress.com/2015/04/05/improving-creation-of-debian-copyright-file/">a
7286 blog post from
2015</a>. To generate using cme, use the 'update
7287 dpkg-copyright' option:
7290 cme update dpkg-copyright
7293 <p>This will create or update debian/copyright. The cme tool seem to
7294 handle UTF-
8 names better than debmake.
</p>
7296 <p>When the copyright file is created, I would also like some help to
7297 check if the file is correct. For this I found two good options,
7298 <tt>debmake -k
</tt> and
<tt>license-reconcile
</tt>. The former seem
7299 to focus on license types and file matching, and is able to detect
7300 ineffective blocks in the copyright file. The latter reports missing
7301 copyright holders and years, but was confused by inconsistent license
7302 names (like CDDL vs. CDDL-
1.0). I suspect it is good to use both and
7303 fix all issues reported by them before uploading. But I do not know
7304 if the tools and the ftpmasters agree on what is important to fix in a
7305 copyright file, so the package might still be rejected.
</p>
7307 <p>The devscripts tool
<tt>licensecheck
</tt> deserve mentioning. It
7308 will read through the source and try to find all copyright statements.
7309 It is not comparing the result to the content of debian/copyright, but
7310 can be useful when verifying the content of the copyright file.
</p>
7312 <p>Are you aware of better tools in Debian to create and update
7313 debian/copyright file. Please let me know, or blog about it on
7314 planet.debian.org.
</p>
7316 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
7317 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
7318 <b><a href=
"bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a></b>.
</p>
7320 <p><strong>Update
2016-
02-
20</strong>: I got a tip from Mike Gabriel
7321 on how to use licensecheck and cdbs to create a draft copyright file
7324 licensecheck --copyright -r `find * -type f` | \
7325 /usr/lib/cdbs/licensecheck2dep5
> debian/copyright.auto
7328 <p>He mentioned that he normally check the generated file into the
7329 version control system to make it easier to discover license and
7330 copyright changes in the upstream source. I will try to do the same
7331 with my packages in the future.
</p>
7333 <p><strong>Update
2016-
02-
21</strong>: The cme author recommended
7334 against using -quiet for new users, so I removed it from the proposed
7341 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
7346 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7350 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Using_appstream_in_Debian_to_locate_packages_with_firmware_and_mime_type_support.html">Using appstream in Debian to locate packages with firmware and mime type support
</a>
7356 <p>The
<a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">appstream system
</a>
7357 is taking shape in Debian, and one provided feature is a very
7358 convenient way to tell you which package to install to make a given
7359 firmware file available when the kernel is looking for it. This can
7360 be done using apt-file too, but that is for someone else to blog
7363 <p>Here is a small recipe to find the package with a given firmware
7364 file, in this example I am looking for ctfw-
3.2.3.0.bin, randomly
7365 picked from the set of firmware announced using appstream in Debian
7366 unstable. In general you would be looking for the firmware requested
7367 by the kernel during kernel module loading. To find the package
7368 providing the example file, do like this:
</p>
7371 % apt install appstream
7375 % appstreamcli what-provides firmware:runtime ctfw-
3.2.3.0.bin | \
7376 awk '/Package:/ {print $
2}'
7381 <p>See
<a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/AppStream/Guidelines">the
7382 appstream wiki
</a> page to learn how to embed the package metadata in
7383 a way appstream can use.
</p>
7385 <p>This same approach can be used to find any package supporting a
7386 given MIME type. This is very useful when you get a file you do not
7387 know how to handle. First find the mime type using
<tt>file
7388 --mime-type
</tt>, and next look up the package providing support for
7389 it. Lets say you got an SVG file. Its MIME type is image/svg+xml,
7390 and you can find all packages handling this type like this:
</p>
7393 % apt install appstream
7397 % appstreamcli what-provides mimetype image/svg+xml | \
7398 awk '/Package:/ {print $
2}'
7422 <p>I believe the MIME types are fetched from the desktop file for
7423 packages providing appstream metadata.
</p>
7429 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
7434 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7438 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Creepy__visualise_geotagged_social_media_information___nice_free_software.html">Creepy, visualise geotagged social media information - nice free software
</a>
7444 <p>Most people seem not to realise that every time they walk around
7445 with the computerised radio beacon known as a mobile phone their
7446 position is tracked by the phone company and often stored for a long
7447 time (like every time a SMS is received or sent). And if their
7448 computerised radio beacon is capable of running programs (often called
7449 mobile apps) downloaded from the Internet, these programs are often
7450 also capable of tracking their location (if the app requested access
7451 during installation). And when these programs send out information to
7452 central collection points, the location is often included, unless
7453 extra care is taken to not send the location. The provided
7454 information is used by several entities, for good and bad (what is
7455 good and bad, depend on your point of view). What is certain, is that
7456 the private sphere and the right to free movement is challenged and
7457 perhaps even eradicated for those announcing their location this way,
7458 when they share their whereabouts with private and public
7461 <p align=
"center"><img width=
"70%" src=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2016-01-24-nice-creepy-desktop-window.png"></p>
7463 <p>The phone company logs provide a register of locations to check out
7464 when one want to figure out what the tracked person was doing. It is
7465 unavailable for most of us, but provided to selected government
7466 officials, company staff, those illegally buying information from
7467 unfaithful servants and crackers stealing the information. But the
7468 public information can be collected and analysed, and a free software
7469 tool to do so is called
7470 <a href=
"http://www.geocreepy.com/">Creepy or Cree.py
</a>. I
7471 discovered it when I read
7472 <a href=
"http://www.aftenposten.no/kultur/Slik-kan-du-bli-overvaket-pa-Twitter-og-Instagram-uten-a-ane-det-7787884.html">an
7473 article about Creepy
</a> in the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten i
7474 November
2014, and decided to check if it was available in Debian.
7475 The python program was in Debian, but
7476 <a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/creepy">the version in
7477 Debian
</a> was completely broken and practically unmaintained. I
7478 uploaded a new version which did not work quite right, but did not
7479 have time to fix it then. This Christmas I decided to finally try to
7480 get Creepy operational in Debian. Now a fixed version is available in
7481 Debian unstable and testing, and almost all Debian specific patches
7483 <a href=
"https://github.com/jkakavas/creepy">upstream
</a>.
</p>
7485 <p>The Creepy program visualises geolocation information fetched from
7486 Twitter, Instagram, Flickr and Google+, and allow one to get a
7487 complete picture of every social media message posted recently in a
7488 given area, or track the movement of a given individual across all
7489 these services. Earlier it was possible to use the search API of at
7490 least some of these services without identifying oneself, but these
7491 days it is impossible. This mean that to use Creepy, you need to
7492 configure it to log in as yourself on these services, and provide
7493 information to them about your search interests. This should be taken
7494 into account when using Creepy, as it will also share information
7495 about yourself with the services.
</p>
7497 <p>The picture above show the twitter messages sent from (or at least
7498 geotagged with a position from) the city centre of Oslo, the capital
7499 of Norway. One useful way to use Creepy is to first look at
7500 information tagged with an area of interest, and next look at all the
7501 information provided by one or more individuals who was in the area.
7502 I tested it by checking out which celebrity provide their location in
7503 twitter messages by checkout out who sent twitter messages near a
7504 Norwegian TV station, and next could track their position over time,
7505 making it possible to locate their home and work place, among other
7506 things. A similar technique have been
7507 <a href=
"http://www.buzzfeed.com/maxseddon/does-this-soldiers-instagram-account-prove-russia-is-covertl">used
7508 to locate Russian soldiers in Ukraine
</a>, and it is both a powerful
7509 tool to discover lying governments, and a useful tool to help people
7510 understand the value of the private information they provide to the
7513 <p>The package is not trivial to backport to Debian Stable/Jessie, as
7514 it depend on several python modules currently missing in Jessie (at
7515 least python-instagram, python-flickrapi and
7516 python-requests-toolbelt).
</p>
7519 <a href=
"https://screenshots.debian.net/package/creepy">the image to
7520 screenshots.debian.net
</a> and licensed it under the same terms as the
7521 Creepy program in Debian.)
</p>
7527 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software
</a>.
7532 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7536 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Always_download_Debian_packages_using_Tor___the_simple_recipe.html">Always download Debian packages using Tor - the simple recipe
</a>
7542 <p>During his DebConf15 keynote, Jacob Appelbaum
7543 <a href=
"https://summit.debconf.org/debconf15/meeting/331/what-is-to-be-done/">observed
7544 that those listening on the Internet lines would have good reason to
7545 believe a computer have a given security hole
</a> if it download a
7546 security fix from a Debian mirror. This is a good reason to always
7547 use encrypted connections to the Debian mirror, to make sure those
7548 listening do not know which IP address to attack. In August, Richard
7549 Hartmann observed that encryption was not enough, when it was possible
7550 to interfere download size to security patches or the fact that
7551 download took place shortly after a security fix was released, and
7552 <a href=
"http://richardhartmann.de/blog/posts/2015/08/24-Tor-enabled_Debian_mirror/">proposed
7553 to always use Tor to download packages from the Debian mirror
</a>. He
7554 was not the first to propose this, as the
7555 <tt><a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/apt-transport-tor">apt-transport-tor
</a></tt>
7556 package by Tim Retout already existed to make it easy to convince apt
7557 to use
<a href=
"https://www.torproject.org/">Tor
</a>, but I was not
7558 aware of that package when I read the blog post from Richard.
</p>
7560 <p>Richard discussed the idea with Peter Palfrader, one of the Debian
7561 sysadmins, and he set up a Tor hidden service on one of the central
7562 Debian mirrors using the address vwakviie2ienjx6t.onion, thus making
7563 it possible to download packages directly between two tor nodes,
7564 making sure the network traffic always were encrypted.
</p>
7566 <p>Here is a short recipe for enabling this on your machine, by
7567 installing
<tt>apt-transport-tor
</tt> and replacing http and https
7568 urls with tor+http and tor+https, and using the hidden service instead
7569 of the official Debian mirror site. I recommend installing
7570 <tt>etckeeper
</tt> before you start to have a history of the changes
7574 apt install apt-transport-tor
7575 sed -i 's% http://ftp.debian.org/% tor+http://vwakviie2ienjx6t.onion/%' /etc/apt/sources.list
7576 sed -i 's% http% tor+http%' /etc/apt/sources.list
7579 <p>If you have more sources listed in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/, run
7580 the sed commands for these too. The sed command is assuming your are
7581 using the ftp.debian.org Debian mirror. Adjust the command (or just
7582 edit the file manually) to match your mirror.
</p>
7584 <p>This work in Debian Jessie and later. Note that tools like
7585 <tt>apt-file
</tt> only recently started using the apt transport
7586 system, and do not work with these tor+http URLs. For
7587 <tt>apt-file
</tt> you need the version currently in experimental,
7588 which need a recent apt version currently only in unstable. So if you
7589 need a working
<tt>apt-file
</tt>, this is not for you.
</p>
7591 <p>Another advantage from this change is that your machine will start
7592 using Tor regularly and at fairly random intervals (every time you
7593 update the package lists or upgrade or install a new package), thus
7594 masking other Tor traffic done from the same machine. Using Tor will
7595 become normal for the machine in question.
</p>
7597 <p>On
<a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
</a>, APT
7598 is set up by default to use
<tt>apt-transport-tor
</tt> when Tor is
7599 enabled. It would be great if it was the default on any Debian
7606 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet
</a>.
7611 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7615 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/OpenALPR__find_car_license_plates_in_video_streams___nice_free_software.html">OpenALPR, find car license plates in video streams - nice free software
</a>
7621 <p>When I was a kid, we used to collect "car numbers", as we used to
7622 call the car license plate numbers in those days. I would write the
7623 numbers down in my little book and compare notes with the other kids
7624 to see how many region codes we had seen and if we had seen some
7625 exotic or special region codes and numbers. It was a fun game to pass
7626 time, as we kids have plenty of it.
</p>
7628 <p>A few days I came across
7629 <a href=
"https://github.com/openalpr/openalpr">the OpenALPR
7630 project
</a>, a free software project to automatically discover and
7631 report license plates in images and video streams, and provide the
7632 "car numbers" in a machine readable format. I've been looking for
7633 such system for a while now, because I believe it is a bad idea that the
7634 <a href=
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_number_plate_recognition">automatic
7635 number plate recognition
</a> tool only is available in the hands of
7636 the powerful, and want it to be available also for the powerless to
7637 even the score when it comes to surveillance and sousveillance. I
7638 discovered the developer
7639 <a href=
"https://bugs.debian.org/747509">wanted to get the tool into
7640 Debian
</a>, and as I too wanted it to be in Debian, I volunteered to
7641 help him get it into shape to get the package uploaded into the Debian
7644 <p>Today we finally managed to get the package into shape and uploaded
7645 it into Debian, where it currently
7646 <a href=
"https://ftp-master.debian.org//new/openalpr_2.2.1-1.html">waits
7647 in the NEW queue
</a> for review by the Debian ftpmasters.
</p>
7649 <p>I guess you are wondering why on earth such tool would be useful
7650 for the common folks, ie those not running a large government
7651 surveillance system? Well, I plan to put it in a computer on my bike
7652 and in my car, tracking the cars nearby and allowing me to be notified
7653 when number plates on my watch list are discovered. Another use case
7654 was suggested by a friend of mine, who wanted to set it up at his home
7655 to open the car port automatically when it discovered the plate on his
7656 car. When I mentioned it perhaps was a bit foolhardy to allow anyone
7657 capable of placing his license plate number of a piece of cardboard to
7658 open his car port, men replied that it was always unlocked anyway. I
7659 guess for such use case it make sense. I am sure there are other use
7660 cases too, for those with imagination and a vision.
</p>
7662 <p>If you want to build your own version of the Debian package, check
7663 out the upstream git source and symlink ./distros/debian to ./debian/
7664 before running "debuild" to build the source. Or wait a bit until the
7665 package show up in unstable.
</p>
7671 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software
</a>.
7676 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7680 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Using_appstream_with_isenkram_to_install_hardware_related_packages_in_Debian.html">Using appstream with isenkram to install hardware related packages in Debian
</a>
7686 <p>Around three years ago, I created
7687 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">the isenkram
7688 system
</a> to get a more practical solution in Debian for handing
7689 hardware related packages. A GUI system in the isenkram package will
7690 present a pop-up dialog when some hardware dongle supported by
7691 relevant packages in Debian is inserted into the machine. The same
7692 lookup mechanism to detect packages is available as command line
7693 tools in the isenkram-cli package. In addition to mapping hardware,
7694 it will also map kernel firmware files to packages and make it easy to
7695 install needed firmware packages automatically. The key for this
7696 system to work is a good way to map hardware to packages, in other
7697 words, allow packages to announce what hardware they will work
7700 <p>I started by providing data files in the isenkram source, and
7701 adding code to download the latest version of these data files at run
7702 time, to ensure every user had the most up to date mapping available.
7703 I also added support for storing the mapping in the Packages file in
7704 the apt repositories, but did not push this approach because while I
7705 was trying to figure out how to best store hardware/package mappings,
7706 <a href=
"http://www.freedesktop.org/software/appstream/docs/">the
7707 appstream system
</a> was announced. I got in touch and suggested to
7708 add the hardware mapping into that data set to be able to use
7709 appstream as a data source, and this was accepted at least for the
7710 Debian version of appstream.
</p>
7712 <p>A few days ago using appstream in Debian for this became possible,
7713 and today I uploaded a new version
0.20 of isenkram adding support for
7714 appstream as a data source for mapping hardware to packages. The only
7715 package so far using appstream to announce its hardware support is my
7716 pymissile package. I got help from Matthias Klumpp with figuring out
7717 how do add the required
7718 <a href=
"https://appstream.debian.org/html/sid/main/metainfo/pymissile.html">metadata
7719 in pymissile
</a>. I added a file debian/pymissile.metainfo.xml with
7723 <?xml
version="
1.0"
encoding="UTF-
8"?
>
7725 <id
>pymissile
</id
>
7726 <metadata_license
>MIT
</metadata_license
>
7727 <name
>pymissile
</name
>
7728 <summary
>Control original Striker USB Missile Launcher
</summary
>
7731 Pymissile provides a curses interface to control an original
7732 Marks and Spencer / Striker USB Missile Launcher, as well as a
7733 motion control script to allow a webcamera to control the
7736 </description
>
7738 <modalias
>usb:v1130p0202d*
</modalias
>
7743 <p>The key for isenkram is the component/provides/modalias value,
7744 which is a glob style match rule for hardware specific strings
7745 (modalias strings) provided by the Linux kernel. In this case, it
7746 will map to all USB devices with vendor code
1130 and product code
7749 <p>Note, it is important that the license of all the metadata files
7750 are compatible to have permissions to aggregate them into archive wide
7751 appstream files. Matthias suggested to use MIT or BSD licenses for
7752 these files. A challenge is figuring out a good id for the data, as
7753 it is supposed to be globally unique and shared across distributions
7754 (in other words, best to coordinate with upstream what to use). But
7755 it can be changed later or, so we went with the package name as
7756 upstream for this project is dormant.
</p>
7758 <p>To get the metadata file installed in the correct location for the
7759 mirror update scripts to pick it up and include its content the
7760 appstream data source, the file must be installed in the binary
7761 package under /usr/share/appdata/. I did this by adding the following
7762 line to debian/pymissile.install:
</p>
7765 debian/pymissile.metainfo.xml usr/share/appdata
7768 <p>With that in place, the command line tool isenkram-lookup will list
7769 all packages useful on the current computer automatically, and the GUI
7770 pop-up handler will propose to install the package not already
7771 installed if a hardware dongle is inserted into the machine in
7774 <p>Details of the modalias field in appstream is available from the
7775 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">DEP-
11</a> proposal.
</p>
7777 <p>To locate the modalias values of all hardware present in a machine,
7778 try running this command on the command line:
</p>
7781 cat $(find /sys/devices/|grep modalias)
7784 <p>To learn more about the isenkram system, please check out
7785 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">my
7786 blog posts tagged isenkram
</a>.
</p>
7792 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram
</a>.
7797 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7801 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/The_GNU_General_Public_License_is_not_magic_pixie_dust.html">The GNU General Public License is not magic pixie dust
</a>
7807 <p>A blog post from my fellow Debian developer Paul Wise titled
7808 "
<a href=
"http://bonedaddy.net/pabs3/log/2015/11/27/sfc-supporter/">The
7809 GPL is not magic pixie dust
</a>" explain the importance of making sure
7810 the <a href="http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html
">GPL</a> is enforced.
7811 I quote the blog post from Paul in full here with his permission:<p>
7815 <p><a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/
"><img src="https://sfconservancy.org/img/supporter-badge.png
" width="194" height="90" alt="Become a Software Freedom Conservancy Supporter!
" align="right
" border="0" /></a></p>
7818 The GPL is not magic pixie dust. It does not work by itself.<br/>
7820 The first step is to choose a
7821 <a href="https://copyleft.org/
">copyleft</a> license for your
7824 The next step is, when someone fails to follow that copyleft license,
7825 <b>it must be enforced</b><br/>
7827 and its a simple fact of our modern society that such type of
7830 is incredibly expensive to do and incredibly difficult to do.
7833 <p><small>-- <a href="http://ebb.org/bkuhn/
">Bradley Kuhn</a>, in
7834 <a href="http://faif.us/
" title="Free as in Freedom
">FaiF</a>
7835 <a href="http://faif.us/cast/
2015/nov/
24/
0x57/
">episode
7836 0x57</a></small></p>
7838 <p>As the Debian Website
7839 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/
794116">used</a>
7840 <a href="https://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/webwml/webwml/english/intro/free.wml?r1=
1.24&r2=
1.25">to</a>
7841 imply, public domain and permissively licensed software can lead to
7842 the production of more proprietary software as people discover useful
7843 software, extend it and or incorporate it into their hardware or
7844 software products. Copyleft licenses such as the GNU GPL were created
7845 to close off this avenue to the production of proprietary software but
7846 such licenses are not enough. With the ongoing adoption of Free
7847 Software by individuals and groups, inevitably the community's
7848 expectations of license compliance are violated, usually out of
7849 ignorance of the way Free Software works, but not always. As Karen
7850 and Bradley explained in <a href="http://faif.us/
" title="Free as in
7852 <a href="http://faif.us/cast/
2015/nov/
24/
0x57/
">episode 0x57</a>,
7853 copyleft is nothing if no-one is willing and able to stand up in court
7854 to protect it. The reality of today's world is that legal
7855 representation is expensive, difficult and time consuming. With
7856 <a href="http://gpl-violations.org/
">gpl-violations.org</a> in hiatus
7857 <a href="http://gpl-violations.org/news/
20151027-homepage-recovers/
">until</a>
7858 some time in 2016, the <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/
">Software
7859 Freedom Conservancy</a> (a tax-exempt charity) is the major defender
7860 of the Linux project, Debian and other groups against GPL violations.
7861 In March the SFC supported a
7862 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/
2015/mar/
05/vmware-lawsuit/
">lawsuit
7863 by Christoph Hellwig</a> against VMware for refusing to
7864 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/linux-compliance/vmware-lawsuit-faq.html
">comply
7865 with the GPL</a> in relation to their use of parts of the Linux
7866 kernel. Since then two of their sponsors pulled corporate funding and
7868 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/
2015/nov/
24/faif-carols-fundraiser/
">blocked
7869 or cancelled their talks</a>. As a result they have decided to rely
7870 less on corporate funding and more on the broad community of
7871 individuals who support Free Software and copyleft. So the SFC has
7872 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/
2015/nov/
23/
2015fundraiser/
">launched</a>
7873 a <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/
">campaign</a> to create
7874 a community of folks who stand up for copyleft and the GPL by
7875 supporting their work on promoting and supporting copyleft and Free
7878 <p>If you support Free Software,
7879 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/
2015/nov/
26/like-what-I-do/
">like</a>
7880 what the SFC do, agree with their
7881 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/linux-compliance/principles.html
">compliance
7882 principles</a>, are happy about their
7883 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/
">successes</a> in 2015,
7884 work on a project that is an SFC
7885 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/members/current/
">member</a> and or
7886 just want to stand up for copyleft, please join
7887 <a href="https://identi.ca/cwebber/image/JQGPA4qbTyyp3-MY8QpvuA
">Christopher
7889 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/
2015/nov/
24/faif-carols-fundraiser/
">Carol
7891 <a href="http://www.jonobacon.org/
2015/
11/
25/supporting-software-freedom-conservancy/
">Jono
7892 Bacon</a>, myself and
7893 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/sponsors/#supporters
">others</a> in
7895 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/
">supporter</a>. For the
7896 next week your donation will be
7897 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/
2015/nov/
27/black-friday/
">matched</a>
7898 by an anonymous donor. Please also consider asking your employer to
7899 match your donation or become a sponsor of SFC. Don't forget to
7900 spread the word about your support for SFC via email, your blog and or
7901 social media accounts.</p>
7905 <p>I agree with Paul on this topic and just signed up as a Supporter
7906 of Software Freedom Conservancy myself. Perhaps you should be a
7913 Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian
">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian edu
">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett
">opphavsrett</a>.
7918 <div class="padding
"></div>
7922 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/PGP_key_transition_statement_for_key_EE4E02F9.html
">PGP key transition statement for key EE4E02F9</a>
7928 <p>I've needed a new OpenPGP key for a while, but have not had time to
7929 set it up properly. I wanted to generate it offline and have it
7930 available on <a href="http://shop.kernelconcepts.de/#openpgp
">a OpenPGP
7931 smart card</a> for daily use, and learning how to do it and finding
7932 time to sit down with an offline machine almost took forever. But
7933 finally I've been able to complete the process, and have now moved
7934 from my old GPG key to a new GPG key. See
7935 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/
2015-
11-
17-new-gpg-key-transition.txt
">the
7936 full transition statement, signed with both my old and new key</a> for
7937 the details. This is my new key:</p>
7940 pub 3936R/<a href="http://pgp.cs.uu.nl/stats/
111D6B29EE4E02F9.html
">111D6B29EE4E02F9</a> 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-14]
7941 Key fingerprint = 3AC7 B2E3 ACA5 DF87 78F1 D827 111D 6B29 EE4E 02F9
7942 uid Petter Reinholdtsen <pere@hungry.com>
7943 uid Petter Reinholdtsen <pere@debian.org>
7944 sub 4096R/87BAFB0E 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
7945 sub 4096R/F91E6DE9 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
7946 sub 4096R/A0439BAB 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
7949 <p>The key can be downloaded from the OpenPGP key servers, signed by
7952 <p>If you signed my old key
7953 (<a href="http://pgp.cs.uu.nl/stats/DB4CCC4B2A30D729.html
">DB4CCC4B2A30D729</a>),
7954 I'd very much appreciate a signature on my new key, details and
7955 instructions in the transition statement. I m happy to reciprocate if
7956 you have a similarly signed transition statement to present.</p>
7962 Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian
">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet
">sikkerhet</a>.
7967 <div class="padding
"></div>
7971 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/The_life_and_death_of_a_laptop_battery.html
">The life and death of a laptop battery</a>
7977 <p>When I get a new laptop, the battery life time at the start is OK.
7978 But this do not last. The last few laptops gave me a feeling that
7979 within a year, the life time is just a fraction of what it used to be,
7980 and it slowly become painful to use the laptop without power connected
7981 all the time. Because of this, when I got a new Thinkpad X230 laptop
7982 about two years ago, I decided to monitor its battery state to have
7983 more hard facts when the battery started to fail.</p>
7985 <img src="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/
2015-
09-
24-laptop-battery-graph.png
"/>
7987 <p>First I tried to find a sensible Debian package to record the
7988 battery status, assuming that this must be a problem already handled
7989 by someone else. I found
7990 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats
">battery-stats</a>,
7991 which collects statistics from the battery, but it was completely
7992 broken. I sent a few suggestions to the maintainer, but decided to
7993 write my own collector as a shell script while I waited for feedback
7995 <a href="http://www.ifweassume.com/
2013/
08/the-de-evolution-of-my-laptop-battery.html
">a
7996 blog post about the battery development on a MacBook Air</a> I also
7998 <a href="https://github.com/jradavenport/batlog.git
">batlog</a>, not
7999 available in Debian.</p>
8001 <p>I started my collector 2013-07-15, and it has been collecting
8002 battery stats ever since. Now my
8003 /var/log/hjemmenett-battery-status.log file contain around 115,000
8004 measurements, from the time the battery was working great until now,
8005 when it is unable to charge above 7% of original capacity. My
8006 collector shell script is quite simple and look like this:</p>
8011 # http://www.ifweassume.com/2013/08/the-de-evolution-of-my-laptop-battery.html
8013 # http://blog.sleeplessbeastie.eu/2013/01/02/debian-how-to-monitor-battery-capacity/
8014 logfile=/var/log/hjemmenett-battery-status.log
8016 files="manufacturer model_name technology serial_number \
8017 energy_full energy_full_design energy_now cycle_count status"
8019 if [ ! -e "$logfile" ] ; then
8030 # Print complete message in one echo call, to avoid race condition
8031 # when several log processes run in parallel.
8032 msg=$(printf
"%s," $(date +%s); \
8033 for f in $files; do \
8034 printf
"%s," $(cat $f); \
8039 cd /sys/class/power_supply
8042 (cd $bat && log_battery
>> "$logfile")
8046 <p>The script is called when the power management system detect a
8047 change in the power status (power plug in or out), and when going into
8048 and out of hibernation and suspend. In addition, it collect a value
8049 every
10 minutes. This make it possible for me know when the battery
8050 is discharging, charging and how the maximum charge change over time.
8051 The code for the Debian package
8052 <a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-status">is now
8053 available on github
</a>.
</p>
8055 <p>The collected log file look like this:
</p>
8058 timestamp,manufacturer,model_name,technology,serial_number,energy_full,energy_full_design,energy_now,cycle_count,status,
8059 1376591133,LGC,
45N1025,Li-ion,
974,
62800000,
62160000,
39050000,
0,Discharging,
8061 1443090528,LGC,
45N1025,Li-ion,
974,
4900000,
62160000,
4900000,
0,Full,
8062 1443090601,LGC,
45N1025,Li-ion,
974,
4900000,
62160000,
4900000,
0,Full,
8065 <p>I wrote a small script to create a graph of the charge development
8066 over time. This graph depicted above show the slow death of my laptop
8069 <p>But why is this happening? Why are my laptop batteries always
8070 dying in a year or two, while the batteries of space probes and
8071 satellites keep working year after year. If we are to believe
8072 <a href=
"http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries">Battery
8073 University
</a>, the cause is me charging the battery whenever I have a
8074 chance, and the fix is to not charge the Lithium-ion batteries to
100%
8075 all the time, but to stay below
90% of full charge most of the time.
8076 I've been told that the Tesla electric cars
8077 <a href=
"http://my.teslamotors.com/de_CH/forum/forums/battery-charge-limit">limit
8078 the charge of their batteries to
80%
</a>, with the option to charge to
8079 100% when preparing for a longer trip (not that I would want a car
8080 like Tesla where rights to privacy is abandoned, but that is another
8081 story), which I guess is the option we should have for laptops on
8084 <p>Is there a good and generic way with Linux to tell the battery to
8085 stop charging at
80%, unless requested to charge to
100% once in
8086 preparation for a longer trip? I found
8087 <a href=
"http://askubuntu.com/questions/34452/how-can-i-limit-battery-charging-to-80-capacity">one
8088 recipe on askubuntu for Ubuntu to limit charging on Thinkpad to
8089 80%
</a>, but could not get it to work (kernel module refused to
8092 <p>I wonder why the battery capacity was reported to be more than
100%
8093 at the start. I also wonder why the "full capacity" increases some
8094 times, and if it is possible to repeat the process to get the battery
8095 back to design capacity. And I wonder if the discharge and charge
8096 speed change over time, or if this stay the same. I did not yet try
8097 to write a tool to calculate the derivative values of the battery
8098 level, but suspect some interesting insights might be learned from
8101 <p>Update
2015-
09-
24: I got a tip to install the packages
8102 acpi-call-dkms and tlp (unfortunately missing in Debian stable)
8103 packages instead of the tp-smapi-dkms package I had tried to use
8104 initially, and use 'tlp setcharge
40 80' to change when charging start
8105 and stop. I've done so now, but expect my existing battery is toast
8106 and need to be replaced. The proposal is unfortunately Thinkpad
8113 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
8118 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8122 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/New_laptop___some_more_clues_and_ideas_based_on_feedback.html">New laptop - some more clues and ideas based on feedback
</a>
8128 <p>Several people contacted me after my previous blog post about my
8129 need for a new laptop, and provided very useful feedback. I wish to
8130 thank every one of these. Several pointed me to the possibility of
8131 fixing my X230, and I am already in the process of getting Lenovo to
8132 do so thanks to the on site, next day support contract covering the
8133 machine. But the battery is almost useless (I expect to replace it
8134 with a non-official battery) and I do not expect the machine to live
8135 for many more years, so it is time to plan its replacement. If I did
8136 not have a support contract, it was suggested to find replacement parts
8137 using
<a href=
"http://www.francecrans.com/">FrancEcrans
</a>, but it
8138 might present a language barrier as I do not understand French.
</p>
8140 <p>One tip I got was to use the
8141 <a href=
"https://skinflint.co.uk/?cat=nb">Skinflint
</a> web service to
8142 compare laptop models. It seem to have more models available than
8143 prisjakt.no. Another tip I got from someone I know have similar
8144 keyboard preferences was that the HP EliteBook
840 keyboard is not
8145 very good, and this matches my experience with earlier EliteBook
8146 keyboards I tested. Because of this, I will not consider it any further.
8148 <p>When I wrote my blog post, I was not aware of Thinkpad X250, the
8149 newest Thinkpad X model. The keyboard reintroduces mouse buttons
8150 (which is missing from the X240), and is working fairly well with
8151 Debian Sid/Unstable according to
8152 <a href=
"http://www.corsac.net/X250/">Corsac.net
</a>. The reports I
8153 got on the keyboard quality are not consistent. Some say the keyboard
8154 is good, others say it is ok, while others say it is not very good.
8155 Those with experience from X41 and and X60 agree that the X250
8156 keyboard is not as good as those trusty old laptops, and suggest I
8157 keep and fix my X230 instead of upgrading, or get a used X230 to
8158 replace it. I'm also told that the X250 lack leds for caps lock, disk
8159 activity and battery status, which is very convenient on my X230. I'm
8160 also told that the CPU fan is running very often, making it a bit
8161 noisy. In any case, the X250 do not work out of the box with Debian
8162 Stable/Jessie, one of my requirements.
</p>
8164 <p>I have also gotten a few vendor proposals, one was
8165 <a href=
"http://pro-star.com">Pro-Star
</a>, another was
8166 <a href=
"http://shop.gluglug.org.uk/product/libreboot-x200/">Libreboot
</a>.
8167 The latter look very attractive to me.
</p>
8169 <p>Again, thank you all for the very useful feedback. It help a lot
8170 as I keep looking for a replacement.
</p>
8172 <p>Update
2015-
07-
06: I was recommended to check out the
8173 <a href=
"">lapstore.de
</a> web shop for used laptops. They got several
8175 <a href=
"http://www.lapstore.de/f.php/shop/lapstore/f/411/lang/x/kw/Lenovo_ThinkPad_X_Serie/">old
8176 thinkpad X models
</a>, and provide one year warranty.
</p>
8182 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
8187 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8191 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Time_to_find_a_new_laptop__as_the_old_one_is_broken_after_only_two_years.html">Time to find a new laptop, as the old one is broken after only two years
</a>
8197 <p>My primary work horse laptop is failing, and will need a
8198 replacement soon. The left
5 cm of the screen on my Thinkpad X230
8199 started flickering yesterday, and I suspect the cause is a broken
8200 cable, as changing the angle of the screen some times get rid of the
8203 <p>My requirements have not really changed since I bought it, and is
8205 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">I
8206 described them in
2013</a>. The last time I bought a laptop, I had
8208 <a href=
"http://www.prisjakt.no/category.php?k=353">prisjakt.no
</a>
8209 where I could select at least a few of the requirements (mouse pin,
8210 wifi, weight) and go through the rest manually. Three button mouse
8211 and a good keyboard is not available as an option, and all the three
8212 laptop models proposed today (Thinkpad X240, HP EliteBook
820 G1 and
8213 G2) lack three mouse buttons). It is also unclear to me how good the
8214 keyboard on the HP EliteBooks are. I hope Lenovo have not messed up
8215 the keyboard, even if the quality and robustness in the X series have
8216 deteriorated since X41.
</p>
8218 <p>I wonder how I can find a sensible laptop when none of the options
8219 seem sensible to me? Are there better services around to search the
8220 set of available laptops for features? Please send me an email if you
8221 have suggestions.
</p>
8223 <p>Update
2015-
07-
23: I got a suggestion to check out the FSF
8224 <a href=
"http://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/endorsement/respects-your-freedom">list
8225 of endorsed hardware
</a>, which is useful background information.
</p>
8231 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
8236 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8240 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/How_to_stay_with_sysvinit_in_Debian_Jessie.html">How to stay with sysvinit in Debian Jessie
</a>
8246 <p>By now, it is well known that Debian Jessie will not be using
8247 sysvinit as its boot system by default. But how can one keep using
8248 sysvinit in Jessie? It is fairly easy, and here are a few recipes,
8250 <a href=
"http://www.vitavonni.de/blog/201410/2014102101-avoiding-systemd.html">Erich
8252 <a href=
"http://smcv.pseudorandom.co.uk/2014/still_universal/">Simon
8255 <p>If you already are using Wheezy and want to upgrade to Jessie and
8256 keep sysvinit as your boot system, create a file
8257 <tt>/etc/apt/preferences.d/use-sysvinit
</tt> with this content before
8260 <p><blockquote><pre>
8261 Package: systemd-sysv
8262 Pin: release o=Debian
8264 </pre></blockquote><p>
8266 <p>This file content will tell apt and aptitude to not consider
8267 installing systemd-sysv as part of any installation and upgrade
8268 solution when resolving dependencies, and thus tell it to avoid
8269 systemd as a default boot system. The end result should be that the
8270 upgraded system keep using sysvinit.
</p>
8272 <p>If you are installing Jessie for the first time, there is no way to
8273 get sysvinit installed by default (debootstrap used by
8274 debian-installer have no option for this), but one can tell the
8275 installer to switch to sysvinit before the first boot. Either by
8276 using a kernel argument to the installer, or by adding a line to the
8277 preseed file used. First, the kernel command line argument:
8279 <p><blockquote><pre>
8280 preseed/
late_command="in-target apt-get install --purge -y sysvinit-core"
8281 </pre></blockquote><p>
8283 <p>Next, the line to use in a preseed file:
</p>
8285 <p><blockquote><pre>
8286 d-i preseed/late_command string in-target apt-get install -y sysvinit-core
8287 </pre></blockquote><p>
8289 <p>One can of course also do this after the first boot by installing
8290 the sysvinit-core package.
</p>
8292 <p>I recommend only using sysvinit if you really need it, as the
8293 sysvinit boot sequence in Debian have several hardware specific bugs
8294 on Linux caused by the fact that it is unpredictable when hardware
8295 devices show up during boot. But on the other hand, the new default
8296 boot system still have a few rough edges I hope will be fixed before
8297 Jessie is released.
</p>
8299 <p>Update
2014-
11-
26: Inspired by
8300 <ahref=
"https://www.mirbsd.org/permalinks/wlog-10-tg_e20141125-tg.htm#e20141125-tg_wlog-10-tg">a
8301 blog post by Torsten Glaser
</a>, added --purge to the preseed
8308 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
8313 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8317 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/A_Debian_package_for_SMTP_via_Tor__aka_SMTorP__using_exim4.html">A Debian package for SMTP via Tor (aka SMTorP) using exim4
</a>
8323 <p>The right to communicate with your friends and family in private,
8324 without anyone snooping, is a right every citicen have in a liberal
8325 democracy. But this right is under serious attack these days.
</p>
8327 <p>A while back it occurred to me that one way to make the dragnet
8328 surveillance conducted by NSA, GCHQ, FRA and others (and confirmed by
8329 the whisleblower Snowden) more expensive for Internet email,
8330 is to deliver all email using SMTP via Tor. Such SMTP option would be
8331 a nice addition to the FreedomBox project if we could send email
8332 between FreedomBox machines without leaking metadata about the emails
8333 to the people peeking on the wire. I
8334 <a href=
"http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2014-October/006493.html">proposed
8335 this on the FreedomBox project mailing list in October
</a> and got a
8336 lot of useful feedback and suggestions. It also became obvious to me
8337 that this was not a novel idea, as the same idea was tested and
8338 documented by Johannes Berg as early as
2006, and both
8339 <a href=
"https://github.com/pagekite/Mailpile/wiki/SMTorP">the
8340 Mailpile
</a> and
<a href=
"http://dee.su/cables">the Cables
</a> systems
8341 propose a similar method / protocol to pass emails between users.
</p>
8343 <p>To implement such system one need to set up a Tor hidden service
8344 providing the SMTP protocol on port
25, and use email addresses
8345 looking like username@hidden-service-name.onion. With such addresses
8346 the connections to port
25 on hidden-service-name.onion using Tor will
8347 go to the correct SMTP server. To do this, one need to configure the
8348 Tor daemon to provide the hidden service and the mail server to accept
8349 emails for this .onion domain. To learn more about Exim configuration
8350 in Debian and test the design provided by Johannes Berg in his FAQ, I
8351 set out yesterday to create a Debian package for making it trivial to
8352 set up such SMTP over Tor service based on Debian. Getting it to work
8353 were fairly easy, and
8354 <a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/exim4-smtorp">the
8355 source code for the Debian package
</a> is available from github. I
8356 plan to move it into Debian if further testing prove this to be a
8357 useful approach.
</p>
8359 <p>If you want to test this, set up a blank Debian machine without any
8360 mail system installed (or run
<tt>apt-get purge exim4-config
</tt> to
8361 get rid of exim4). Install tor, clone the git repository mentioned
8362 above, build the deb and install it on the machine. Next, run
8363 <tt>/usr/lib/exim4-smtorp/setup-exim-hidden-service
</tt> and follow
8364 the instructions to get the service up and running. Restart tor and
8365 exim when it is done, and test mail delivery using swaks like
8368 <p><blockquote><pre>
8369 torsocks swaks --server dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion \
8370 --to fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion
8371 </pre></blockquote></p>
8373 <p>This will test the SMTP delivery using tor. Replace the email
8374 address with your own address to test your server. :)
</p>
8376 <p>The setup procedure is still to complex, and I hope it can be made
8377 easier and more automatic. Especially the tor setup need more work.
8378 Also, the package include a tor-smtp tool written in C, but its task
8379 should probably be rewritten in some script language to make the deb
8380 architecture independent. It would probably also make the code easier
8381 to review. The tor-smtp tool currently need to listen on a socket for
8382 exim to talk to it and is started using xinetd. It would be better if
8383 no daemon and no socket is needed. I suspect it is possible to get
8384 exim to run a command line tool for delivery instead of talking to a
8385 socket, and hope to figure out how in a future version of this
8388 <p>Until I wipe my test machine, I can be reached using the
8389 <tt>fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion
</tt> mail address, deliverable over
8396 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance
</a>.
8401 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8405 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/listadmin__the_quick_way_to_moderate_mailman_lists___nice_free_software.html">listadmin, the quick way to moderate mailman lists - nice free software
</a>
8411 <p>If you ever had to moderate a mailman list, like the ones on
8412 alioth.debian.org, you know the web interface is fairly slow to
8413 operate. First you visit one web page, enter the moderation password
8414 and get a new page shown with a list of all the messages to moderate
8415 and various options for each email address. This take a while for
8416 every list you moderate, and you need to do it regularly to do a good
8417 job as a list moderator. But there is a quick alternative,
8418 <a href=
"http://heim.ifi.uio.no/kjetilho/hacks/#listadmin">the
8419 listadmin program
</a>. It allow you to check lists for new messages
8420 to moderate in a fraction of a second. Here is a test run on two
8421 lists I recently took over:
</p>
8423 <p><blockquote><pre>
8424 % time listadmin xiph
8425 fetching data for pkg-xiph-commits@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
8426 fetching data for pkg-xiph-maint@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
8432 </pre></blockquote></p>
8434 <p>In
1.7 seconds I had checked two mailing lists and confirmed that
8435 there are no message in the moderation queue. Every morning I
8436 currently moderate
68 mailman lists, and it normally take around two
8437 minutes. When I took over the two pkg-xiph lists above a few days
8438 ago, there were
400 emails waiting in the moderator queue. It took me
8439 less than
15 minutes to process them all using the listadmin
8443 <a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/listadmin">the listadmin
8444 package
</a> from Debian and create a file
<tt>~/.listadmin.ini
</tt>
8445 with content like this, the moderation task is a breeze:
</p>
8447 <p><blockquote><pre>
8448 username username@example.org
8451 discard_if_reason "Posting restricted to members only. Remove us from your mail list."
8454 adminurl https://{domain}/mailman/admindb/{list}
8455 mailman-list@lists.example.com
8458 other-list@otherserver.example.org
8459 </pre></blockquote></p>
8461 <p>There are other options to set as well. Check the manual page to
8462 learn the details.
</p>
8464 <p>If you are forced to moderate lists on a mailman installation where
8465 the SSL certificate is self signed or not properly signed by a
8466 generally accepted signing authority, you can set a environment
8467 variable when calling listadmin to disable SSL verification:
</p>
8469 <p><blockquote><pre>
8470 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=
0 listadmin
8471 </pre></blockquote></p>
8473 <p>If you want to moderate a subset of the lists you take care of, you
8474 can provide an argument to the listadmin script like I do in the
8475 initial screen dump (the xiph argument). Using an argument, only
8476 lists matching the argument string will be processed. This make it
8477 quick to accept messages if you notice the moderation request in your
8480 <p>Without the listadmin program, I would never be the moderator of
68
8481 mailing lists, as I simply do not have time to spend on that if the
8482 process was any slower. The listadmin program have saved me hours of
8483 time I could spend elsewhere over the years. It truly is nice free
8486 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
8487 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
8488 <b><a href=
"bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a></b>.
</p>
8490 <p>Update
2014-
10-
27: Added missing 'username' statement in
8491 configuration example. Also, I've been told that the
8492 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=
0 setting do not work for everyone. Not
8499 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software
</a>.
8504 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8508 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Debian_Jessie__PXE_and_automatic_firmware_installation.html">Debian Jessie, PXE and automatic firmware installation
</a>
8514 <p>When PXE installing laptops with Debian, I often run into the
8515 problem that the WiFi card require some firmware to work properly.
8516 And it has been a pain to fix this using preseeding in Debian.
8517 Normally something more is needed. But thanks to
8518 <a href=
"https://packages.qa.debian.org/i/isenkram.html">my isenkram
8519 package
</a> and its recent tasksel extension, it has now become easy
8520 to do this using simple preseeding.
</p>
8522 <p>The isenkram-cli package provide tasksel tasks which will install
8523 firmware for the hardware found in the machine (actually, requested by
8524 the kernel modules for the hardware). (It can also install user space
8525 programs supporting the hardware detected, but that is not the focus
8528 <p>To get this working in the default installation, two preeseding
8529 values are needed. First, the isenkram-cli package must be installed
8530 into the target chroot (aka the hard drive) before tasksel is executed
8531 in the pkgsel step of the debian-installer system. This is done by
8532 preseeding the base-installer/includes debconf value to include the
8533 isenkram-cli package. The package name is next passed to debootstrap
8534 for installation. With the isenkram-cli package in place, tasksel
8535 will automatically use the isenkram tasks to detect hardware specific
8536 packages for the machine being installed and install them, because
8537 isenkram-cli contain tasksel tasks.
</p>
8539 <p>Second, one need to enable the non-free APT repository, because
8540 most firmware unfortunately is non-free. This is done by preseeding
8541 the apt-mirror-setup step. This is unfortunate, but for a lot of
8542 hardware it is the only option in Debian.
</p>
8544 <p>The end result is two lines needed in your preseeding file to get
8545 firmware installed automatically by the installer:
</p>
8547 <p><blockquote><pre>
8548 base-installer base-installer/includes string isenkram-cli
8549 apt-mirror-setup apt-setup/non-free boolean true
8550 </pre></blockquote></p>
8552 <p>The current version of isenkram-cli in testing/jessie will install
8553 both firmware and user space packages when using this method. It also
8554 do not work well, so use version
0.15 or later. Installing both
8555 firmware and user space packages might give you a bit more than you
8556 want, so I decided to split the tasksel task in two, one for firmware
8557 and one for user space programs. The firmware task is enabled by
8558 default, while the one for user space programs is not. This split is
8559 implemented in the package currently in unstable.
</p>
8561 <p>If you decide to give this a go, please let me know (via email) how
8562 this recipe work for you. :)
</p>
8564 <p>So, I bet you are wondering, how can this work. First and
8565 foremost, it work because tasksel is modular, and driven by whatever
8566 files it find in /usr/lib/tasksel/ and /usr/share/tasksel/. So the
8567 isenkram-cli package place two files for tasksel to find. First there
8568 is the task description file (/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc):
</p>
8570 <p><blockquote><pre>
8571 Task: isenkram-packages
8573 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
8574 Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
8576 Test-new-install: show show
8578 Packages: for-current-hardware
8580 Task: isenkram-firmware
8582 Description: Hardware specific firmware packages (autodetected by isenkram)
8583 Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific firmware
8584 packages are proposed.
8585 Test-new-install: mark show
8587 Packages: for-current-hardware-firmware
8588 </pre></blockquote></p>
8590 <p>The key parts are Test-new-install which indicate how the task
8591 should be handled and the Packages line referencing to a script in
8592 /usr/lib/tasksel/packages/. The scripts use other scripts to get a
8593 list of packages to install. The for-current-hardware-firmware script
8594 look like this to list relevant firmware for the machine:
8596 <p><blockquote><pre>
8599 PATH=/usr/sbin:$PATH
8601 isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
8602 </pre></blockquote></p>
8604 <p>With those two pieces in place, the firmware is installed by
8605 tasksel during the normal d-i run. :)
</p>
8607 <p>If you want to test what tasksel will install when isenkram-cli is
8608 installed, run
<tt>DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical tasksel --test
8609 --new-install
</tt> to get the list of packages that tasksel would
8612 <p><a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu
</a> will be
8613 pilots in testing this feature, as isenkram is used there now to
8614 install firmware, replacing the earlier scripts.
</p>
8620 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin
</a>.
8625 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8629 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Ubuntu_used_to_show_the_bread_prizes_at_ICA_Storo.html">Ubuntu used to show the bread prizes at ICA Storo
</a>
8635 <p>Today I came across an unexpected Ubuntu boot screen. Above the
8636 bread shelf on the ICA shop at Storo in Oslo, the grub menu of Ubuntu
8637 with Linux kernel
3.2.0-
23 (ie probably version
12.04 LTS) was stuck
8638 on a screen normally showing the bread types and prizes:
</p>
8640 <p align=
"center"><img width=
"70%" src=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2014-10-04-ubuntu-ica-storo-crop.jpeg"></p>
8642 <p>If it had booted as it was supposed to, I would never had known
8643 about this hidden Linux installation. It is interesting what
8644 <a href=
"http://revealingerrors.com/">errors can reveal
</a>.
</p>
8650 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
8655 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8659 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/New_lsdvd_release_version_0_17_is_ready.html">New lsdvd release version
0.17 is ready
</a>
8665 <p>The
<a href=
"https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd project
</a>
8666 got a new set of developers a few weeks ago, after the original
8667 developer decided to step down and pass the project to fresh blood.
8668 This project is now maintained by Petter Reinholdtsen and Steve
8671 <p>I just wrapped up
8672 <a href=
"https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/message/32896061/">a
8673 new lsdvd release
</a>, available in git or from
8674 <a href=
"https://sourceforge.net/projects/lsdvd/files/lsdvd/">the
8675 download page
</a>. This is the changelog dated
2014-
10-
03 for version
8680 <li>Ignore 'phantom' audio, subtitle tracks
</li>
8681 <li>Check for garbage in the program chains, which indicate that a track is
8682 non-existant, to work around additional copy protection
</li>
8683 <li>Fix displaying content type for audio tracks, subtitles
</li>
8684 <li>Fix pallete display of first entry
</li>
8685 <li>Fix include orders
</li>
8686 <li>Ignore read errors in titles that would not be displayed anyway
</li>
8687 <li>Fix the chapter count
</li>
8688 <li>Make sure the array size and the array limit used when initialising
8689 the palette size is the same.
</li>
8690 <li>Fix array printing.
</li>
8691 <li>Correct subsecond calculations.
</li>
8692 <li>Add sector information to the output format.
</li>
8693 <li>Clean up code to be closer to ANSI C and compile without warnings
8694 with more GCC compiler warnings.
</li>
8698 <p>This change bring together patches for lsdvd in use in various
8699 Linux and Unix distributions, as well as patches submitted to the
8700 project the last nine years. Please check it out. :)
</p>
8706 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia
</a>.
8711 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8715 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/How_to_test_Debian_Edu_Jessie_despite_some_fatal_problems_with_the_installer.html">How to test Debian Edu Jessie despite some fatal problems with the installer
</a>
8721 <p>The
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
8722 project
</a> provide a Linux solution for schools, including a
8723 powerful desktop with education software, a central server providing
8724 web pages, user database, user home directories, central login and PXE
8725 boot of both clients without disk and the installation to install Debian
8726 Edu on machines with disk (and a few other services perhaps to small
8727 to mention here). We in the Debian Edu team are currently working on
8728 the Jessie based version, trying to get everything in shape before the
8729 freeze, to avoid having to maintain our own package repository in the
8731 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie">current
8732 status
</a> can be seen on the Debian wiki, and there is still heaps of
8733 work left. Some fatal problems block testing, breaking the installer,
8734 but it is possible to work around these to get anyway. Here is a
8735 recipe on how to get the installation limping along.
</p>
8737 <p>First, download the test ISO via
8738 <a href=
"ftp://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">ftp
</a>,
8739 <a href=
"http://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">http
</a>
8741 ftp.skolelinux.org::cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-
1.iso).
8742 The ISO build was broken on Tuesday, so we do not get a new ISO every
8743 12 hours or so, but thankfully the ISO we already got we are able to
8744 install with some tweaking.
</p>
8746 <p>When you get to the Debian Edu profile question, go to tty2
8747 (use Alt-Ctrl-F2), run
</p>
8749 <p><blockquote><pre>
8750 nano /usr/bin/edu-eatmydata-install
8751 </pre></blockquote></p>
8753 <p>and add 'exit
0' as the second line, disabling the eatmydata
8754 optimization. Return to the installation, select the profile you want
8755 and continue. Without this change, exim4-config will fail to install
8756 due to a known bug in eatmydata.
</p>
8758 <p>When you get the grub question at the end, answer /dev/sda (or if
8759 this do not work, figure out what your correct value would be. All my
8760 test machines need /dev/sda, so I have no advice if it do not fit
8763 <p>If you installed a profile including a graphical desktop, log in as
8764 root after the initial boot from hard drive, and install the
8765 education-desktop-XXX metapackage. XXX can be kde, gnome, lxde, xfce
8766 or mate. If you want several desktop options, install more than one
8767 metapackage. Once this is done, reboot and you should have a working
8768 graphical login screen. This workaround should no longer be needed
8769 once the education-tasks package version
1.801 enter testing in two
8772 <p>I believe the ISO build will start working on two days when the new
8773 tasksel package enter testing and Steve McIntyre get a chance to
8774 update the debian-cd git repository. The eatmydata, grub and desktop
8775 issues are already fixed in unstable and testing, and should show up
8776 on the ISO as soon as the ISO build start working again. Well the
8777 eatmydata optimization is really just disabled. The proper fix
8778 require an upload by the eatmydata maintainer applying the patch
8779 provided in bug
<a href=
"https://bugs.debian.org/702711">#
702711</a>.
8780 The rest have proper fixes in unstable.
</p>
8782 <p>I hope this get you going with the installation testing, as we are
8783 quickly running out of time trying to get our Jessie based
8784 installation ready before the distribution freeze in a month.
</p>
8790 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
8795 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8799 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Suddenly_I_am_the_new_upstream_of_the_lsdvd_command_line_tool.html">Suddenly I am the new upstream of the lsdvd command line tool
</a>
8805 <p>I use the
<a href=
"https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd tool
</a>
8806 to handle my fairly large DVD collection. It is a nice command line
8807 tool to get details about a DVD, like title, tracks, track length,
8808 etc, in XML, Perl or human readable format. But lsdvd have not seen
8809 any new development since
2006 and had a few irritating bugs affecting
8810 its use with some DVDs. Upstream seemed to be dead, and in January I
8811 sent a small probe asking for a version control repository for the
8812 project, without any reply. But I use it regularly and would like to
8813 get
<a href=
"https://packages.qa.debian.org/lsdvd">an updated version
8814 into Debian
</a>. So two weeks ago I tried harder to get in touch with
8815 the project admin, and after getting a reply from him explaining that
8816 he was no longer interested in the project, I asked if I could take
8817 over. And yesterday, I became project admin.
</p>
8819 <p>I've been in touch with a Gentoo developer and the Debian
8820 maintainer interested in joining forces to maintain the upstream
8821 project, and I hope we can get a new release out fairly quickly,
8822 collecting the patches spread around on the internet into on place.
8823 I've added the relevant Debian patches to the freshly created git
8824 repository, and expect the Gentoo patches to make it too. If you got
8825 a DVD collection and care about command line tools, check out
8826 <a href=
"https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/git/ci/master/tree/">the git source
</a> and join
8827 <a href=
"https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/">the project mailing
8834 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia
</a>.
8839 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8843 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Speeding_up_the_Debian_installer_using_eatmydata_and_dpkg_divert.html">Speeding up the Debian installer using eatmydata and dpkg-divert
</a>
8849 <p>The
<a href=
"https://www.debian.org/">Debian
</a> installer could be
8850 a lot quicker. When we install more than
2000 packages in
8851 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu
</a> using
8852 tasksel in the installer, unpacking the binary packages take forever.
8853 A part of the slow I/O issue was discussed in
8854 <a href=
"https://bugs.debian.org/613428">bug #
613428</a> about too
8855 much file system sync-ing done by dpkg, which is the package
8856 responsible for unpacking the binary packages. Other parts (like code
8857 executed by postinst scripts) might also sync to disk during
8858 installation. All this sync-ing to disk do not really make sense to
8859 me. If the machine crash half-way through, I start over, I do not try
8860 to salvage the half installed system. So the failure sync-ing is
8861 supposed to protect against, hardware or system crash, is not really
8862 relevant while the installer is running.
</p>
8864 <p>A few days ago, I thought of a way to get rid of all the file
8865 system sync()-ing in a fairly non-intrusive way, without the need to
8866 change the code in several packages. The idea is not new, but I have
8867 not heard anyone propose the approach using dpkg-divert before. It
8868 depend on the small and clever package
8869 <a href=
"https://packages.qa.debian.org/eatmydata">eatmydata
</a>, which
8870 uses LD_PRELOAD to replace the system functions for syncing data to
8871 disk with functions doing nothing, thus allowing programs to live
8872 dangerous while speeding up disk I/O significantly. Instead of
8873 modifying the implementation of dpkg, apt and tasksel (which are the
8874 packages responsible for selecting, fetching and installing packages),
8875 it occurred to me that we could just divert the programs away, replace
8876 them with a simple shell wrapper calling
8877 "eatmydata
$program
$@", to get the same effect.
8878 Two days ago I decided to test the idea, and wrapped up a simple
8879 implementation for the Debian Edu udeb.
</p>
8881 <p>The effect was stunning. In my first test it reduced the running
8882 time of the pkgsel step (installing tasks) from
64 to less than
44
8883 minutes (
20 minutes shaved off the installation) on an old Dell
8884 Latitude D505 machine. I am not quite sure what the optimised time
8885 would have been, as I messed up the testing a bit, causing the debconf
8886 priority to get low enough for two questions to pop up during
8887 installation. As soon as I saw the questions I moved the installation
8888 along, but do not know how long the question were holding up the
8889 installation. I did some more measurements using Debian Edu Jessie,
8890 and got these results. The time measured is the time stamp in
8891 /var/log/syslog between the "pkgsel: starting tasksel" and the
8892 "pkgsel: finishing up" lines, if you want to do the same measurement
8893 yourself. In Debian Edu, the tasksel dialog do not show up, and the
8894 timing thus do not depend on how quickly the user handle the tasksel
8900 <th>Machine/setup
</th>
8901 <th>Original tasksel
</th>
8902 <th>Optimised tasksel
</th>
8907 <td>Latitude D505 Main+LTSP LXDE
</td>
8908 <td>64 min (
07:
46-
08:
50)
</td>
8909 <td><44 min (
11:
27-
12:
11)
</td>
8910 <td>>20 min
18%
</td>
8914 <td>Latitude D505 Roaming LXDE
</td>
8915 <td>57 min (
08:
48-
09:
45)
</td>
8916 <td>34 min (
07:
43-
08:
17)
</td>
8921 <td>Latitude D505 Minimal
</td>
8922 <td>22 min (
10:
37-
10:
59)
</td>
8923 <td>11 min (
11:
16-
11:
27)
</td>
8928 <td>Thinkpad X200 Minimal
</td>
8929 <td>6 min (
08:
19-
08:
25)
</td>
8930 <td>4 min (
08:
04-
08:
08)
</td>
8935 <td>Thinkpad X200 Roaming KDE
</td>
8936 <td>19 min (
09:
21-
09:
40)
</td>
8937 <td>15 min (
10:
25-
10:
40)
</td>
8943 <p>The test is done using a netinst ISO on a USB stick, so some of the
8944 time is spent downloading packages. The connection to the Internet
8945 was
100Mbit/s during testing, so downloading should not be a
8946 significant factor in the measurement. Download typically took a few
8947 seconds to a few minutes, depending on the amount of packages being
8950 <p>The speedup is implemented by using two hooks in
8951 <a href=
"https://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/">Debian
8952 Installer
</a>, the pre-pkgsel.d hook to set up the diverts, and the
8953 finish-install.d hook to remove the divert at the end of the
8954 installation. I picked the pre-pkgsel.d hook instead of the
8955 post-base-installer.d hook because I test using an ISO without the
8956 eatmydata package included, and the post-base-installer.d hook in
8957 Debian Edu can only operate on packages included in the ISO. The
8958 negative effect of this is that I am unable to activate this
8959 optimization for the kernel installation step in d-i. If the code is
8960 moved to the post-base-installer.d hook, the speedup would be larger
8961 for the entire installation.
</p>
8963 <p>I've implemented this in the
8964 <a href=
"https://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-install">debian-edu-install
</a>
8965 git repository, and plan to provide the optimization as part of the
8966 Debian Edu installation. If you want to test this yourself, you can
8967 create two files in the installer (or in an udeb). One shell script
8968 need do go into /usr/lib/pre-pkgsel.d/, with content like this:
</p>
8970 <p><blockquote><pre>
8973 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
8975 logger -t my-pkgsel "info: $*"
8978 logger -t my-pkgsel "error: $*"
8980 override_install() {
8981 apt-install eatmydata || true
8982 if [ -x /target/usr/bin/eatmydata ] ; then
8983 for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
8985 # Test that the file exist and have not been diverted already.
8986 if [ -f /target$file ] ; then
8987 info "diverting $file using eatmydata"
8988 printf "#!/bin/sh\neatmydata $bin.distrib \"\$@\"\n" \
8990 chmod
755 /target$file.edu
8991 in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
8992 --rename --quiet --add $file
8993 ln -sf ./$bin.edu /target$file
8995 error "unable to divert $file, as it is missing."
8999 error "unable to find /usr/bin/eatmydata after installing the eatmydata pacage"
9004 </pre></blockquote></p>
9006 <p>To clean up, another shell script should go into
9007 /usr/lib/finish-install.d/ with code like this:
9009 <p><blockquote><pre>
9011 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
9013 logger -t my-finish-install "error: $@"
9015 remove_install_override() {
9016 for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
9018 if [ -x /target$file.edu ] ; then
9020 in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
9021 --rename --quiet --remove $file
9024 error "Missing divert for $file."
9027 sync # Flush file buffers before continuing
9030 remove_install_override
9031 </pre></blockquote></p>
9033 <p>In Debian Edu, I placed both code fragments in a separate script
9034 edu-eatmydata-install and call it from the pre-pkgsel.d and
9035 finish-install.d scripts.
</p>
9037 <p>By now you might ask if this change should get into the normal
9038 Debian installer too? I suspect it should, but am not sure the
9039 current debian-installer coordinators find it useful enough. It also
9040 depend on the side effects of the change. I'm not aware of any, but I
9041 guess we will see if the change is safe after some more testing.
9042 Perhaps there is some package in Debian depending on sync() and
9043 fsync() having effect? Perhaps it should go into its own udeb, to
9044 allow those of us wanting to enable it to do so without affecting
9047 <p>Update
2014-
09-
24: Since a few days ago, enabling this optimization
9048 will break installation of all programs using gnutls because of
9049 <a href=
"https://bugs.debian.org/702711">bug #
702711</a>. An updated
9050 eatmydata package in Debian will solve it.
</p>
9052 <p>Update
2014-
10-
17: The bug mentioned above is fixed in testing and
9053 the optimization work again. And I have discovered that the
9054 dpkg-divert trick is not really needed and implemented a slightly
9055 simpler approach as part of the debian-edu-install package. See
9056 tools/edu-eatmydata-install in the source package.
</p>
9058 <p>Update
2014-
11-
11: Unfortunately, a new
9059 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/765738">bug #
765738</a> in eatmydata only
9060 triggering on i386 made it into testing, and broke this installation
9061 optimization again. If
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/768893">unblock
9062 request
768893</a> is accepted, it should be working again.
</p>
9068 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
9073 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9077 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Good_bye_subkeys_pgp_net__welcome_pool_sks_keyservers_net.html">Good bye subkeys.pgp.net, welcome pool.sks-keyservers.net
</a>
9083 <p>Yesterday, I had the pleasure of attending a talk with the
9084 <a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group
</a> about
9085 <a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20140909-sks-keyservers/">the
9086 OpenPGP keyserver pool sks-keyservers.net
</a>, and was very happy to
9087 learn that there is a large set of publicly available key servers to
9088 use when looking for peoples public key. So far I have used
9089 subkeys.pgp.net, and some times wwwkeys.nl.pgp.net when the former
9090 were misbehaving, but those days are ended. The servers I have used
9091 up until yesterday have been slow and some times unavailable. I hope
9092 those problems are gone now.
</p>
9094 <p>Behind the round robin DNS entry of the
9095 <a href=
"https://sks-keyservers.net/">sks-keyservers.net
</a> service
9096 there is a pool of more than
100 keyservers which are checked every
9097 day to ensure they are well connected and up to date. It must be
9098 better than what I have used so far. :)
</p>
9100 <p>Yesterdays speaker told me that the service is the default
9101 keyserver provided by the default configuration in GnuPG, but this do
9102 not seem to be used in Debian. Perhaps it should?
</p>
9104 <p>Anyway, I've updated my ~/.gnupg/options file to now include this
9107 <p><blockquote><pre>
9108 keyserver pool.sks-keyservers.net
9109 </pre></blockquote></p>
9111 <p>With GnuPG version
2 one can also locate the keyserver using SRV
9112 entries in DNS. Just for fun, I did just that at work, so now every
9113 user of GnuPG at the University of Oslo should find a OpenGPG
9114 keyserver automatically should their need it:
</p>
9116 <p><blockquote><pre>
9117 % host -t srv _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no
9118 _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no has SRV record
0 100 11371 pool.sks-keyservers.net.
9120 </pre></blockquote></p>
9123 <a href=
"http://ietfreport.isoc.org/idref/draft-shaw-openpgp-hkp/">the
9124 HKP lookup protocol
</a> supported finding signature paths, I would be
9125 very happy. It can look up a given key or search for a user ID, but I
9126 normally do not want that, but to find a trust path from my key to
9127 another key. Given a user ID or key ID, I would like to find (and
9128 download) the keys representing a signature path from my key to the
9129 key in question, to be able to get a trust path between the two keys.
9130 This is as far as I can tell not possible today. Perhaps something
9131 for a future version of the protocol?
</p>
9137 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet
</a>.
9142 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9146 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/From_English_wiki_to_translated_PDF_and_epub_via_Docbook.html">From English wiki to translated PDF and epub via Docbook
</a>
9152 <p>The
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
9153 project
</a> provide an instruction manual for teachers, system
9154 administrators and other users that contain useful tips for setting up
9155 and maintaining a Debian Edu installation. This text is about how the
9156 text processing of this manual is handled in the project.
</p>
9158 <p>One goal of the project is to provide information in the native
9159 language of its users, and for this we need to handle translations.
9160 But we also want to make sure each language contain the same
9161 information, so for this we need a good way to keep the translations
9162 in sync. And we want it to be easy for our users to improve the
9163 documentation, avoiding the need to learn special formats or tools to
9164 contribute, and the obvious way to do this is to make it possible to
9165 edit the documentation using a web browser. We also want it to be
9166 easy for translators to keep the translation up to date, and give them
9167 help in figuring out what need to be translated. Here is the list of
9168 tools and the process we have found trying to reach all these
9171 <p>We maintain the authoritative source of our manual in the
9172 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">Debian
9173 wiki
</a>, as several wiki pages written in English. It consist of one
9174 front page with references to the different chapters, several pages
9175 for each chapter, and finally one "collection page" gluing all the
9176 chapters together into one large web page (aka
9177 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/AllInOne">the
9178 AllInOne page
</a>). The AllInOne page is the one used for further
9179 processing and translations. Thanks to the fact that the
9180 <a href=
"http://moinmo.in/">MoinMoin
</a> installation on
9181 wiki.debian.org support exporting pages in
9182 <a href=
"http://www.docbook.org/">the Docbook format
</a>, we can fetch
9183 the list of pages to export using the raw version of the AllInOne
9184 page, loop over each of them to generate a Docbook XML version of the
9185 manual. This process also download images and transform image
9186 references to use the locally downloaded images. The generated
9187 Docbook XML files are slightly broken, so some post-processing is done
9188 using the
<tt>documentation/scripts/get_manual
</tt> program, and the
9189 result is a nice Docbook XML file (debian-edu-wheezy-manual.xml) and
9190 a handfull of images. The XML file can now be used to generate PDF, HTML
9191 and epub versions of the English manual. This is the basic step of
9192 our process, making PDF (using dblatex), HTML (using xsltproc) and
9193 epub (using dbtoepub) version from Docbook XML, and the resulting files
9194 are placed in the debian-edu-doc-en binary package.
</p>
9196 <p>But English documentation is not enough for us. We want translated
9197 documentation too, and we want to make it easy for translators to
9198 track the English original. For this we use the
9199 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/poxml.html">poxml
</a> package,
9200 which allow us to transform the English Docbook XML file into a
9201 translation file (a .pot file), usable with the normal gettext based
9202 translation tools used by those translating free software. The pot
9203 file is used to create and maintain translation files (several .po
9204 files), which the translations update with the native language
9205 translations of all titles, paragraphs and blocks of text in the
9206 original. The next step is combining the original English Docbook XML
9207 and the translation file (say debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.po), to
9208 create a translated Docbook XML file (in this case
9209 debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.xml). This translated (or partly
9210 translated, if the translation is not complete) Docbook XML file can
9211 then be used like the original to create a PDF, HTML and epub version
9212 of the documentation.
</p>
9214 <p>The translators use different tools to edit the .po files. We
9216 <a href=
"http://www.kde.org/applications/development/lokalize/">lokalize
</a>,
9217 while some use emacs and vi, others can use web based editors like
9218 <a href=
"http://pootle.translatehouse.org/">Poodle
</a> or
9219 <a href=
"https://www.transifex.com/">Transifex
</a>. All we care about
9220 is where the .po file end up, in our git repository. Updated
9221 translations can either be committed directly to git, or submitted as
9222 <a href=
"https://bugs.debian.org/src:debian-edu-doc">bug reports
9223 against the debian-edu-doc package
</a>.
</p>
9225 <p>One challenge is images, which both might need to be translated (if
9226 they show translated user applications), and are needed in different
9227 formats when creating PDF and HTML versions (epub is a HTML version in
9228 this regard). For this we transform the original PNG images to the
9229 needed density and format during build, and have a way to provide
9230 translated images by storing translated versions in
9231 images/$LANGUAGECODE/. I am a bit unsure about the details here. The
9232 package maintainers know more.
</p>
9234 <p>If you wonder what the result look like, we provide
9235 <a href=
"http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/">the content
9236 of the documentation packages on the web
</a>. See for example the
9237 <a href=
"http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/it/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.pdf">Italian
9238 PDF version
</a> or the
9239 <a href=
"http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/de/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.html">German
9240 HTML version
</a>. We do not yet build the epub version by default,
9241 but perhaps it will be done in the future.
</p>
9243 <p>To learn more, check out
9244 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/debian-edu-doc.html">the
9245 debian-edu-doc package
</a>,
9246 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">the
9247 manual on the wiki
</a> and
9248 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/Translations">the
9249 translation instructions
</a> in the manual.
</p>
9255 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
9260 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9264 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Install_hardware_dependent_packages_using_tasksel__Isenkram_0_7_.html">Install hardware dependent packages using tasksel (Isenkram
0.7)
</a>
9270 <p>It would be nice if it was easier in Debian to get all the hardware
9271 related packages relevant for the computer installed automatically.
9272 So I implemented one, using
9273 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">my Isenkram
9274 package
</a>. To use it, install the tasksel and isenkram packages and
9275 run tasksel as user root. You should be presented with a new option,
9276 "Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)". When you
9277 select it, tasksel will install the packages isenkram claim is fit for
9278 the current hardware, hot pluggable or not.
<p>
9280 <p>The implementation is in two files, one is the tasksel menu entry
9281 description, and the other is the script used to extract the list of
9282 packages to install. The first part is in
9283 <tt>/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc
</tt> and look like
9286 <p><blockquote><pre>
9289 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
9290 Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
9292 Test-new-install: mark show
9294 Packages: for-current-hardware
9295 </pre></blockquote></p>
9297 <p>The second part is in
9298 <tt>/usr/lib/tasksel/packages/for-current-hardware
</tt> and look like
9301 <p><blockquote><pre>
9306 isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
9308 </pre></blockquote></p>
9310 <p>All in all, a very short and simple implementation making it
9311 trivial to install the hardware dependent package we all may want to
9312 have installed on our machines. I've not been able to find a way to
9313 get tasksel to tell you exactly which packages it plan to install
9314 before doing the installation. So if you are curious or careful,
9315 check the output from the isenkram-* command line tools first.
</p>
9317 <p>The information about which packages are handling which hardware is
9318 fetched either from the isenkram package itself in
9319 /usr/share/isenkram/, from git.debian.org or from the APT package
9320 database (using the Modaliases header). The APT package database
9321 parsing have caused a nasty resource leak in the isenkram daemon (bugs
9322 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/719837">#
719837</a> and
9323 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/730704">#
730704</a>). The cause is in
9324 the python-apt code (bug
9325 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/745487">#
745487</a>), but using a
9326 workaround I was able to get rid of the file descriptor leak and
9327 reduce the memory leak from ~
30 MiB per hardware detection down to
9328 around
2 MiB per hardware detection. It should make the desktop
9329 daemon a lot more useful. The fix is in version
0.7 uploaded to
9332 <p>I believe the current way of mapping hardware to packages in
9333 Isenkram is is a good draft, but in the future I expect isenkram to
9334 use the AppStream data source for this. A proposal for getting proper
9335 AppStream support into Debian is floating around as
9336 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">DEP-
11</a>, and
9337 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/SummerOfCode2014/Projects#SummerOfCode2014.2FProjects.2FAppStreamDEP11Implementation.AppStream.2FDEP-11_for_the_Debian_Archive">GSoC
9338 project
</a> will take place this summer to improve the situation. I
9339 look forward to seeing the result, and welcome patches for isenkram to
9340 start using the information when it is ready.
</p>
9342 <p>If you want your package to map to some specific hardware, either
9343 add a "Xb-Modaliases" header to your control file like I did in
9344 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">the pymissile
9345 package
</a> or submit a bug report with the details to the isenkram
9347 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">all my
9348 blog posts tagged isenkram
</a> for details on the notation. I expect
9349 the information will be migrated to AppStream eventually, but for the
9350 moment I got no better place to store it.
</p>
9356 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram
</a>.
9361 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9365 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/FreedomBox_milestone___all_packages_now_in_Debian_Sid.html">FreedomBox milestone - all packages now in Debian Sid
</a>
9371 <p>The
<a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
9372 project
</a> is working on providing the software and hardware to make
9373 it easy for non-technical people to host their data and communication
9374 at home, and being able to communicate with their friends and family
9375 encrypted and away from prying eyes. It is still going strong, and
9376 today a major mile stone was reached.
</p>
9378 <p>Today, the last of the packages currently used by the project to
9379 created the system images were accepted into Debian Unstable. It was
9380 the freedombox-setup package, which is used to configure the images
9381 during build and on the first boot. Now all one need to get going is
9382 the build code from the freedom-maker git repository and packages from
9383 Debian. And once the freedombox-setup package enter testing, we can
9384 build everything directly from Debian. :)
</p>
9386 <p>Some key packages used by Freedombox are
9387 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup
</a>,
9388 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/plinth">plinth
</a>,
9389 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/pagekite">pagekite
</a>,
9390 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/tor">tor
</a>,
9391 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy
</a>,
9392 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/owncloud">owncloud
</a> and
9393 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/dnsmasq">dnsmasq
</a>. There
9394 are plans to integrate more packages into the setup. User
9395 documentation is maintained on the Debian wiki. Please
9396 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/Manual/Jessie">check out
9397 the manual
</a> and help us improve it.
</p>
9399 <p>To test for yourself and create boot images with the FreedomBox
9400 setup, run this on a Debian machine using a user with sudo rights to
9404 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
9405 mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
9407 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
9409 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
9412 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
9413 devices. See the README in the freedom-maker git repo for more
9414 details on the build. If you do not want all three images, trim the
9415 make line. Note that the virtualbox-image target is not really
9416 virtualbox specific. It create a x86 image usable in kvm, qemu,
9417 vmware and any other x86 virtual machine environment. You might need
9418 the version of vmdebootstrap in Jessie to get the build working, as it
9419 include fixes for a race condition with kpartx.
</p>
9421 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
9422 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
9423 the preseed values:
</p>
9426 url=
<a href=
"http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat
</a>
9429 <p>I have not tested it myself the last few weeks, so I do not know if
9432 <p>If you wonder how to help, one task you could look at is using
9433 systemd as the boot system. It will become the default for Linux in
9434 Jessie, so we need to make sure it is usable on the Freedombox. I did
9435 a simple test a few weeks ago, and noticed dnsmasq failed to start
9436 during boot when using systemd. I suspect there are other problems
9437 too. :) To detect problems, there is a test suite included, which can
9438 be run from the plinth web interface.
</p>
9440 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
9441 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
9442 <a href=
"irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
9443 irc.debian.org)
</a> and
9444 <a href=
"http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
9445 mailing list
</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.
</p>
9451 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/web">web
</a>.
9456 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9460 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/S3QL__a_locally_mounted_cloud_file_system___nice_free_software.html">S3QL, a locally mounted cloud file system - nice free software
</a>
9466 <p>For a while now, I have been looking for a sensible offsite backup
9467 solution for use at home. My requirements are simple, it must be
9468 cheap and locally encrypted (in other words, I keep the encryption
9469 keys, the storage provider do not have access to my private files).
9470 One idea me and my friends had many years ago, before the cloud
9471 storage providers showed up, was to use Google mail as storage,
9472 writing a Linux block device storing blocks as emails in the mail
9473 service provided by Google, and thus get heaps of free space. On top
9474 of this one can add encryption, RAID and volume management to have
9475 lots of (fairly slow, I admit that) cheap and encrypted storage. But
9476 I never found time to implement such system. But the last few weeks I
9477 have looked at a system called
9478 <a href=
"https://bitbucket.org/nikratio/s3ql/">S3QL
</a>, a locally
9479 mounted network backed file system with the features I need.
</p>
9481 <p>S3QL is a fuse file system with a local cache and cloud storage,
9482 handling several different storage providers, any with Amazon S3,
9483 Google Drive or OpenStack API. There are heaps of such storage
9484 providers. S3QL can also use a local directory as storage, which
9485 combined with sshfs allow for file storage on any ssh server. S3QL
9486 include support for encryption, compression, de-duplication, snapshots
9487 and immutable file systems, allowing me to mount the remote storage as
9488 a local mount point, look at and use the files as if they were local,
9489 while the content is stored in the cloud as well. This allow me to
9490 have a backup that should survive fire. The file system can not be
9491 shared between several machines at the same time, as only one can
9492 mount it at the time, but any machine with the encryption key and
9493 access to the storage service can mount it if it is unmounted.
</p>
9495 <p>It is simple to use. I'm using it on Debian Wheezy, where the
9496 package is included already. So to get started, run
<tt>apt-get
9497 install s3ql
</tt>. Next, pick a storage provider. I ended up picking
9498 Greenqloud, after reading their nice recipe on
9499 <a href=
"https://greenqloud.zendesk.com/entries/44611757-How-To-Use-S3QL-to-mount-a-StorageQloud-bucket-on-Debian-Wheezy">how
9500 to use S3QL with their Amazon S3 service
</a>, because I trust the laws
9501 in Iceland more than those in USA when it come to keeping my personal
9502 data safe and private, and thus would rather spend money on a company
9503 in Iceland. Another nice recipe is available from the article
9504 <a href=
"http://www.admin-magazine.com/HPC/Articles/HPC-Cloud-Storage">S3QL
9505 Filesystem for HPC Storage
</a> by Jeff Layton in the HPC section of
9506 Admin magazine. When the provider is picked, figure out how to get
9507 the API key needed to connect to the storage API. With Greencloud,
9508 the key did not show up until I had added payment details to my
9511 <p>Armed with the API access details, it is time to create the file
9512 system. First, create a new bucket in the cloud. This bucket is the
9513 file system storage area. I picked a bucket name reflecting the
9514 machine that was going to store data there, but any name will do.
9515 I'll refer to it as
<tt>bucket-name
</tt> below. In addition, one need
9516 the API login and password, and a locally created password. Store it
9517 all in ~root/.s3ql/authinfo2 like this:
9519 <p><blockquote><pre>
9521 storage-url: s3c://s.greenqloud.com:
443/bucket-name
9522 backend-login: API-login
9523 backend-password: API-password
9524 fs-passphrase: local-password
9525 </pre></blockquote></p>
9527 <p>I create my local passphrase using
<tt>pwget
50</tt> or similar,
9528 but any sensible way to create a fairly random password should do it.
9529 Armed with these details, it is now time to run mkfs, entering the API
9530 details and password to create it:
</p>
9532 <p><blockquote><pre>
9533 # mkdir -m
700 /var/lib/s3ql-cache
9534 # mkfs.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
9535 --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:
443/bucket-name
9536 Enter backend login:
9537 Enter backend password:
9538 Before using S3QL, make sure to read the user's guide, especially
9539 the 'Important Rules to Avoid Loosing Data' section.
9540 Enter encryption password:
9541 Confirm encryption password:
9542 Generating random encryption key...
9543 Creating metadata tables...
9553 Compressing and uploading metadata...
9554 Wrote
0.00 MB of compressed metadata.
9555 #
</pre></blockquote></p>
9557 <p>The next step is mounting the file system to make the storage available.
9559 <p><blockquote><pre>
9560 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
9561 --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:
443/bucket-name /s3ql
9562 Using
4 upload threads.
9563 Downloading and decompressing metadata...
9573 Mounting filesystem...
9575 Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
9576 s3c://s.greenqloud.com:
443/bucket-name
1.0T
0 1.0T
0% /s3ql
9578 </pre></blockquote></p>
9580 <p>The file system is now ready for use. I use rsync to store my
9581 backups in it, and as the metadata used by rsync is downloaded at
9582 mount time, no network traffic (and storage cost) is triggered by
9583 running rsync. To unmount, one should not use the normal umount
9584 command, as this will not flush the cache to the cloud storage, but
9585 instead running the umount.s3ql command like this:
9587 <p><blockquote><pre>
9590 </pre></blockquote></p>
9592 <p>There is a fsck command available to check the file system and
9593 correct any problems detected. This can be used if the local server
9594 crashes while the file system is mounted, to reset the "already
9595 mounted" flag. This is what it look like when processing a working
9598 <p><blockquote><pre>
9599 # fsck.s3ql --force --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:
443/bucket-name
9600 Using cached metadata.
9601 File system seems clean, checking anyway.
9602 Checking DB integrity...
9603 Creating temporary extra indices...
9604 Checking lost+found...
9605 Checking cached objects...
9606 Checking names (refcounts)...
9607 Checking contents (names)...
9608 Checking contents (inodes)...
9609 Checking contents (parent inodes)...
9610 Checking objects (reference counts)...
9611 Checking objects (backend)...
9612 ..processed
5000 objects so far..
9613 ..processed
10000 objects so far..
9614 ..processed
15000 objects so far..
9615 Checking objects (sizes)...
9616 Checking blocks (referenced objects)...
9617 Checking blocks (refcounts)...
9618 Checking inode-block mapping (blocks)...
9619 Checking inode-block mapping (inodes)...
9620 Checking inodes (refcounts)...
9621 Checking inodes (sizes)...
9622 Checking extended attributes (names)...
9623 Checking extended attributes (inodes)...
9624 Checking symlinks (inodes)...
9625 Checking directory reachability...
9626 Checking unix conventions...
9627 Checking referential integrity...
9628 Dropping temporary indices...
9629 Backing up old metadata...
9639 Compressing and uploading metadata...
9640 Wrote
0.89 MB of compressed metadata.
9642 </pre></blockquote></p>
9644 <p>Thanks to the cache, working on files that fit in the cache is very
9645 quick, about the same speed as local file access. Uploading large
9646 amount of data is to me limited by the bandwidth out of and into my
9647 house. Uploading
685 MiB with a
100 MiB cache gave me
305 kiB/s,
9648 which is very close to my upload speed, and downloading the same
9649 Debian installation ISO gave me
610 kiB/s, close to my download speed.
9650 Both were measured using
<tt>dd
</tt>. So for me, the bottleneck is my
9651 network, not the file system code. I do not know what a good cache
9652 size would be, but suspect that the cache should e larger than your
9655 <p>I mentioned that only one machine can mount the file system at the
9656 time. If another machine try, it is told that the file system is
9659 <p><blockquote><pre>
9660 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
9661 --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:
443/bucket-name /s3ql
9662 Using
8 upload threads.
9663 Backend reports that fs is still mounted elsewhere, aborting.
9665 </pre></blockquote></p>
9667 <p>The file content is uploaded when the cache is full, while the
9668 metadata is uploaded once every
24 hour by default. To ensure the
9669 file system content is flushed to the cloud, one can either umount the
9670 file system, or ask S3QL to flush the cache and metadata using
9673 <p><blockquote><pre>
9674 # s3qlctrl upload-meta /s3ql
9675 # s3qlctrl flushcache /s3ql
9677 </pre></blockquote></p>
9679 <p>If you are curious about how much space your data uses in the
9680 cloud, and how much compression and deduplication cut down on the
9681 storage usage, you can use s3qlstat on the mounted file system to get
9684 <p><blockquote><pre>
9686 Directory entries:
9141
9689 Total data size:
22049.38 MB
9690 After de-duplication:
21955.46 MB (
99.57% of total)
9691 After compression:
21877.28 MB (
99.22% of total,
99.64% of de-duplicated)
9692 Database size:
2.39 MB (uncompressed)
9693 (some values do not take into account not-yet-uploaded dirty blocks in cache)
9695 </pre></blockquote></p>
9697 <p>I mentioned earlier that there are several possible suppliers of
9698 storage. I did not try to locate them all, but am aware of at least
9699 <a href=
"https://www.greenqloud.com/">Greenqloud
</a>,
9700 <a href=
"http://drive.google.com/">Google Drive
</a>,
9701 <a href=
"http://aws.amazon.com/s3/">Amazon S3 web serivces
</a>,
9702 <a href=
"http://www.rackspace.com/">Rackspace
</a> and
9703 <a href=
"http://crowncloud.net/">Crowncloud
</A>. The latter even
9704 accept payment in Bitcoin. Pick one that suit your need. Some of
9705 them provide several GiB of free storage, but the prize models are
9706 quite different and you will have to figure out what suits you
9709 <p>While researching this blog post, I had a look at research papers
9710 and posters discussing the S3QL file system. There are several, which
9711 told me that the file system is getting a critical check by the
9712 science community and increased my confidence in using it. One nice
9714 "
<a href=
"http://www.lanl.gov/orgs/adtsc/publications/science_highlights_2013/docs/pg68_69.pdf">An
9715 Innovative Parallel Cloud Storage System using OpenStack’s SwiftObject
9716 Store and Transformative Parallel I/O Approach
</a>" by Hsing-Bung
9717 Chen, Benjamin McClelland, David Sherrill, Alfred Torrez, Parks Fields
9718 and Pamela Smith. Please have a look.</p>
9720 <p>Given my problems with different file systems earlier, I decided to
9721 check out the mounted S3QL file system to see if it would be usable as
9722 a home directory (in other word, that it provided POSIX semantics when
9723 it come to locking and umask handling etc). Running
9724 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html
">my
9725 test code to check file system semantics</a>, I was happy to discover that
9726 no error was found. So the file system can be used for home
9727 directories, if one chooses to do so.</p>
9729 <p>If you do not want a locally file system, and want something that
9730 work without the Linux fuse file system, I would like to mention the
9731 <a href="http://www.tarsnap.com/
">Tarsnap service</a>, which also
9732 provide locally encrypted backup using a command line client. It have
9733 a nicer access control system, where one can split out read and write
9734 access, allowing some systems to write to the backup and others to
9735 only read from it.</p>
9737 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
9738 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
9739 <b><a href="bitcoin:
15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
9745 Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian
">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/nice free software
">nice free software</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/personvern
">personvern</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet
">sikkerhet</a>.
9750 <div class="padding
"></div>
9754 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Freedombox_on_Dreamplug__Raspberry_Pi_and_virtual_x86_machine.html
">Freedombox on Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and virtual x86 machine</a>
9760 <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox
">Freedombox
9761 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware for
9762 making it easy for non-technical people to host their data and
9763 communication at home, and being able to communicate with their
9764 friends and family encrypted and away from prying eyes. It has been
9765 going on for a while, and is slowly progressing towards a new test
9768 <p>And what day could be better than the Pi day to announce that the
9769 new version will provide "hard drive" / SD card / USB stick images for
9770 Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and VirtualBox (or any other virtualization
9771 system), and can also be installed using a Debian installer preseed
9772 file. The Debian based Freedombox is now based on Debian Jessie,
9773 where most of the needed packages used are already present. Only one,
9774 the freedombox-setup package, is missing. To try to build your own
9775 boot image to test the current status, fetch the freedom-maker scripts
9777 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/vmdebootstrap">vmdebootstrap
</a>
9778 with a user with sudo access to become root:
9781 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
9783 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
9784 mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
9786 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
9789 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
9790 devices. See the README for more details on the build. If you do not
9791 want all three images, trim the make line. But note that thanks to
<a
9792 href=
"https://bugs.debian.org/741407">a race condition in
9793 vmdebootstrap
</a>, the build might fail without the patch to the
9796 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
9797 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
9798 the preseed values:
</p>
9801 url=
<a href=
"http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat
</a>
9804 <p>But note that due to
<a href=
"https://bugs.debian.org/740673">a
9805 recently introduced bug in apt in Jessie
</a>, the installer will
9806 currently hang while setting up APT sources. Killing the
9807 '
<tt>apt-cdrom ident
</tt>' process when it hang a few times during the
9808 installation will get the installation going. This affect all
9809 installations in Jessie, and I expect it will be fixed soon.
</p>
9811 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
9812 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
9813 <a href=
"irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
9814 irc.debian.org)
</a> and
9815 <a href=
"http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
9816 mailing list
</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.
</p>
9822 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/web">web
</a>.
9827 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9831 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/New_home_and_release_1_0_for_netgroup_and_innetgr__aka_ng_utils_.html">New home and release
1.0 for netgroup and innetgr (aka ng-utils)
</a>
9837 <p>Many years ago, I wrote a GPL licensed version of the netgroup and
9838 innetgr tools, because I needed them in
9839 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
</a>. I called the project
9840 ng-utils, and it has served me well. I placed the project under the
9841 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/">Hungry Programmer
</a> umbrella, and it was maintained in our CVS
9842 repository. But many years ago, the CVS repository was dropped (lost,
9843 not migrated to new hardware, not sure), and the project have lacked a
9844 proper home since then.
</p>
9846 <p>Last summer, I had a look at the package and made a new release
9847 fixing a irritating crash bug, but was unable to store the changes in
9848 a proper source control system. I applied for a project on
9849 <a href=
"https://alioth.debian.org/">Alioth
</a>, but did not have time
9850 to follow up on it. Until today. :)
</p>
9852 <p>After many hours of cleaning and migration, the ng-utils project
9853 now have a new home, and a git repository with the highlight of the
9854 history of the project. I published all release tarballs and imported
9855 them into the git repository. As the project is really stable and not
9856 expected to gain new features any time soon, I decided to make a new
9857 release and call it
1.0. Visit the new project home on
9858 <a href=
"https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/">https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/
</a>
9859 if you want to check it out. The new version is also uploaded into
9860 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/ng-utils.html">Debian Unstable
</a>.
</p>
9866 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
9871 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9875 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Testing_sysvinit_from_experimental_in_Debian_Hurd.html">Testing sysvinit from experimental in Debian Hurd
</a>
9881 <p>A few days ago I decided to try to help the Hurd people to get
9882 their changes into sysvinit, to allow them to use the normal sysvinit
9883 boot system instead of their old one. This follow up on the
9884 <a href=
"https://teythoon.cryptobitch.de//categories/gsoc.html">great
9885 Google Summer of Code work
</a> done last summer by Justus Winter to
9886 get Debian on Hurd working more like Debian on Linux. To get started,
9887 I downloaded a prebuilt hard disk image from
9888 <a href=
"http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian-cd/hurd-i386/current/debian-hurd.img.tar.gz">http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian-cd/hurd-i386/current/debian-hurd.img.tar.gz
</a>,
9889 and started it using virt-manager.
</p>
9891 <p>The first think I had to do after logging in (root without any
9892 password) was to get the network operational. I followed
9893 <a href=
"https://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/hurd-install">the
9894 instructions on the Debian GNU/Hurd ports page
</a> and ran these
9895 commands as root to get the machine to accept a IP address from the
9896 kvm internal DHCP server:
</p>
9898 <p><blockquote><pre>
9899 settrans -fgap /dev/netdde /hurd/netdde
9900 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[p]finet/ { print $
2}')
9901 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[d]evnode/ { print $
2}')
9903 </pre></blockquote></p>
9905 <p>After this, the machine had internet connectivity, and I could
9906 upgrade it and install the sysvinit packages from experimental and
9907 enable it as the default boot system in Hurd.
</p>
9909 <p>But before I did that, I set a password on the root user, as ssh is
9910 running on the machine it for ssh login to work a password need to be
9911 set. Also, note that a bug somewhere in openssh on Hurd block
9912 compression from working. Remember to turn that off on the client
9915 <p>Run these commands as root to upgrade and test the new sysvinit
9918 <p><blockquote><pre>
9919 cat
> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/experimental.list
<<EOF
9920 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ experimental main
9923 apt-get dist-upgrade
9924 apt-get install -t experimental initscripts sysv-rc sysvinit \
9925 sysvinit-core sysvinit-utils
9926 update-alternatives --config runsystem
9927 </pre></blockquote></p>
9929 <p>To reboot after switching boot system, you have to use
9930 <tt>reboot-hurd
</tt> instead of just
<tt>reboot
</tt>, as there is not
9931 yet a sysvinit process able to receive the signals from the normal
9932 'reboot' command. After switching to sysvinit as the boot system,
9933 upgrading every package and rebooting, the network come up with DHCP
9934 after boot as it should, and the settrans/pkill hack mentioned at the
9935 start is no longer needed. But for some strange reason, there are no
9936 longer any login prompt in the virtual console, so I logged in using
9939 <p>Note that there are some race conditions in Hurd making the boot
9940 fail some times. No idea what the cause is, but hope the Hurd porters
9941 figure it out. At least Justus said on IRC (#debian-hurd on
9942 irc.debian.org) that they are aware of the problem. A way to reduce
9943 the impact is to upgrade to the Hurd packages built by Justus by
9944 adding this repository to the machine:
</p>
9946 <p><blockquote><pre>
9947 cat
> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hurd-ci.list
<<EOF
9948 deb http://darnassus.sceen.net/~teythoon/hurd-ci/ sid main
9950 </pre></blockquote></p>
9952 <p>At the moment the prebuilt virtual machine get some packages from
9953 http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian, because some of the packages in
9954 unstable do not yet include the required patches that are lingering in
9955 BTS. This is the completely list of "unofficial" packages installed:
</p>
9957 <p><blockquote><pre>
9958 # aptitude search '?narrow(?version(CURRENT),?origin(Debian Ports))'
9959 i emacs - GNU Emacs editor (metapackage)
9960 i gdb - GNU Debugger
9961 i hurd-recommended - Miscellaneous translators
9962 i isc-dhcp-client - ISC DHCP client
9963 i isc-dhcp-common - common files used by all the isc-dhcp* packages
9964 i libc-bin - Embedded GNU C Library: Binaries
9965 i libc-dev-bin - Embedded GNU C Library: Development binaries
9966 i libc0.3 - Embedded GNU C Library: Shared libraries
9967 i A libc0.3-dbg - Embedded GNU C Library: detached debugging symbols
9968 i libc0.3-dev - Embedded GNU C Library: Development Libraries and Hea
9969 i multiarch-support - Transitional package to ensure multiarch compatibilit
9970 i A x11-common - X Window System (X.Org) infrastructure
9971 i xorg - X.Org X Window System
9972 i A xserver-xorg - X.Org X server
9973 i A xserver-xorg-input-all - X.Org X server -- input driver metapackage
9975 </pre></blockquote></p>
9977 <p>All in all, testing hurd has been an interesting experience. :)
9978 X.org did not work out of the box and I never took the time to follow
9979 the porters instructions to fix it. This time I was interested in the
9980 command line stuff.
<p>
9986 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
9991 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9995 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_16.html">New chrpath release
0.16</a>
10001 <p><a href=
"http://www.coverity.com/">Coverity
</a> is a nice tool to
10002 find problems in C, C++ and Java code using static source code
10003 analysis. It can detect a lot of different problems, and is very
10004 useful to find memory and locking bugs in the error handling part of
10005 the source. The company behind it provide
10006 <a href=
"https://scan.coverity.com/">check of free software projects as
10007 a community service
</a>, and many hundred free software projects are
10008 already checked. A few days ago I decided to have a closer look at
10009 the Coverity system, and discovered that the
10010 <a href=
"http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/">gnash
</a> and
10011 <a href=
"http://sourceforge.net/projects/ipmitool/">ipmitool
</a>
10012 projects I am involved with was already registered. But these are
10013 fairly big, and I would also like to have a small and easy project to
10014 check, and decided to
<a href=
"http://scan.coverity.com/projects/1179">request
10015 checking of the chrpath project
</a>. It was
10016 added to the checker and discovered seven potential defects. Six of
10017 these were real, mostly resource "leak" when the program detected an
10018 error. Nothing serious, as the resources would be released a fraction
10019 of a second later when the program exited because of the error, but it
10020 is nice to do it right in case the source of the program some time in
10021 the future end up in a library. Having fixed all defects and added
10022 <a href=
"https://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/chrpath-devel">a
10023 mailing list for the chrpath developers
</a>, I decided it was time to
10024 publish a new release. These are the release notes:
</p>
10026 <p>New in
0.16 released
2014-
01-
14:
</p>
10030 <li>Fixed all minor bugs discovered by Coverity.
</li>
10031 <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project.
</li>
10032 <li>Mention new project mailing list in the documentation.
</li>
10037 <a href=
"https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
10038 new version
0.16 from alioth
</a>. Please let us know via the Alioth
10039 project if something is wrong with the new release. The test suite
10040 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
10041 include a test suite check.
</p>
10047 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
10052 <div class=
"padding"></div>
10054 <div class=
"entry">
10055 <div class=
"title">
10056 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_15.html">New chrpath release
0.15</a>
10062 <p>After many years break from the package and a vain hope that
10063 development would be continued by someone else, I finally pulled my
10064 acts together this morning and wrapped up a new release of chrpath,
10065 the command line tool to modify the rpath and runpath of already
10066 compiled ELF programs. The update was triggered by the persistence of
10067 Isha Vishnoi at IBM, which needed a new config.guess file to get
10068 support for the ppc64le architecture (powerpc
64-bit Little Endian) he
10069 is working on. I checked the
10070 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/chrpath">Debian
</a>,
10071 <a href=
"https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/chrpath">Ubuntu
</a> and
10072 <a href=
"https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/acls/name/chrpath">Fedora
</a>
10073 packages for interesting patches (failed to find the source from
10074 OpenSUSE and Mandriva packages), and found quite a few nice fixes.
10075 These are the release notes:
</p>
10077 <p>New in
0.15 released
2013-
11-
24:
</p>
10081 <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project to work
10082 with newer architectures. Thanks to isha vishnoi for the heads
10085 <li>Updated README with current URLs.
</li>
10087 <li>Added byteswap fix found in Ubuntu, credited Jeremy Kerr and
10088 Matthias Klose.
</li>
10090 <li>Added missing help for -k|--keepgoing option, using patch by
10091 Petr Machata found in Fedora.
</li>
10093 <li>Rewrite removal of RPATH/RUNPATH to make sure the entry in
10094 .dynamic is a NULL terminated string. Based on patch found in
10095 Fedora credited Axel Thimm and Christian Krause.
</li>
10100 <a href=
"https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
10101 new version
0.15 from alioth
</a>. Please let us know via the Alioth
10102 project if something is wrong with the new release. The test suite
10103 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
10104 include a testsuite check.
</p>
10110 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
10115 <div class=
"padding"></div>
10117 <div class=
"entry">
10118 <div class=
"title">
10119 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Debian_init_d_boot_script_example_for_rsyslog.html">Debian init.d boot script example for rsyslog
</a>
10125 <p>If one of the points of switching to a new init system in Debian is
10126 <a href=
"http://thomas.goirand.fr/blog/?p=147">to get rid of huge
10127 init.d scripts
</a>, I doubt we need to switch away from sysvinit and
10128 init.d scripts at all. Here is an example init.d script, ie a rewrite
10129 of /etc/init.d/rsyslog:
</p>
10132 #!/lib/init/init-d-script
10133 ### BEGIN INIT INFO
10134 # Provides: rsyslog
10135 # Required-Start: $remote_fs $time
10136 # Required-Stop: umountnfs $time
10137 # X-Stop-After: sendsigs
10138 # Default-Start:
2 3 4 5
10139 # Default-Stop:
0 1 6
10140 # Short-Description: enhanced syslogd
10141 # Description: Rsyslog is an enhanced multi-threaded syslogd.
10142 # It is quite compatible to stock sysklogd and can be
10143 # used as a drop-in replacement.
10145 DESC="enhanced syslogd"
10146 DAEMON=/usr/sbin/rsyslogd
10149 <p>Pretty minimalistic to me... For the record, the original sysv-rc
10150 script was
137 lines, and the above is just
15 lines, most of it meta
10153 <p>How to do this, you ask? Well, one create a new script
10154 /lib/init/init-d-script looking something like this:
10159 # Define LSB log_* functions.
10160 # Depend on lsb-base (
>=
3.2-
14) to ensure that this file is present
10161 # and status_of_proc is working.
10162 . /lib/lsb/init-functions
10165 # Function that starts the daemon/service
10171 #
0 if daemon has been started
10172 #
1 if daemon was already running
10173 #
2 if daemon could not be started
10174 start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON --test
> /dev/null \
10176 start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON -- \
10179 # Add code here, if necessary, that waits for the process to be ready
10180 # to handle requests from services started subsequently which depend
10181 # on this one. As a last resort, sleep for some time.
10185 # Function that stops the daemon/service
10190 #
0 if daemon has been stopped
10191 #
1 if daemon was already stopped
10192 #
2 if daemon could not be stopped
10193 # other if a failure occurred
10194 start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --retry=TERM/
30/KILL/
5 --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
10196 [ "$RETVAL" =
2 ] && return
2
10197 # Wait for children to finish too if this is a daemon that forks
10198 # and if the daemon is only ever run from this initscript.
10199 # If the above conditions are not satisfied then add some other code
10200 # that waits for the process to drop all resources that could be
10201 # needed by services started subsequently. A last resort is to
10202 # sleep for some time.
10203 start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --oknodo --retry=
0/
30/KILL/
5 --exec $DAEMON
10204 [ "$?" =
2 ] && return
2
10205 # Many daemons don't delete their pidfiles when they exit.
10211 # Function that sends a SIGHUP to the daemon/service
10215 # If the daemon can reload its configuration without
10216 # restarting (for example, when it is sent a SIGHUP),
10217 # then implement that here.
10219 start-stop-daemon --stop --signal
1 --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
10224 scriptbasename="$(basename $
1)"
10225 echo "SN: $scriptbasename"
10226 if [ "$scriptbasename" != "init-d-library" ] ; then
10234 NAME=$(basename $DAEMON)
10235 PIDFILE=/var/run/$NAME.pid
10237 # Exit if the package is not installed
10238 #[ -x "$DAEMON" ] || exit
0
10240 # Read configuration variable file if it is present
10241 [ -r /etc/default/$NAME ] && . /etc/default/$NAME
10243 # Load the VERBOSE setting and other rcS variables
10244 . /lib/init/vars.sh
10248 [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Starting $DESC" "$NAME"
10251 0|
1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg
0 ;;
10252 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg
1 ;;
10256 [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Stopping $DESC" "$NAME"
10259 0|
1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg
0 ;;
10260 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg
1 ;;
10264 status_of_proc "$DAEMON" "$NAME" && exit
0 || exit $?
10266 #reload|force-reload)
10268 # If do_reload() is not implemented then leave this commented out
10269 # and leave 'force-reload' as an alias for 'restart'.
10271 #log_daemon_msg "Reloading $DESC" "$NAME"
10275 restart|force-reload)
10277 # If the "reload" option is implemented then remove the
10278 # 'force-reload' alias
10280 log_daemon_msg "Restarting $DESC" "$NAME"
10286 0) log_end_msg
0 ;;
10287 1) log_end_msg
1 ;; # Old process is still running
10288 *) log_end_msg
1 ;; # Failed to start
10298 echo "Usage: $SCRIPTNAME {start|stop|status|restart|force-reload}"
>&
2
10306 <p>It is based on /etc/init.d/skeleton, and could be improved quite a
10307 lot. I did not really polish the approach, so it might not always
10308 work out of the box, but you get the idea. I did not try very hard to
10309 optimize it nor make it more robust either.
</p>
10311 <p>A better argument for switching init system in Debian than reducing
10312 the size of init scripts (which is a good thing to do anyway), is to
10313 get boot system that is able to handle the kernel events sensibly and
10314 robustly, and do not depend on the boot to run sequentially. The boot
10315 and the kernel have not behaved sequentially in years.
</p>
10321 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
10326 <div class=
"padding"></div>
10328 <div class=
"entry">
10329 <div class=
"title">
10330 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Browser_plugin_for_SPICE__spice_xpi__uploaded_to_Debian.html">Browser plugin for SPICE (spice-xpi) uploaded to Debian
</a>
10336 <p><a href=
"http://www.spice-space.org/">The SPICE protocol
</a> for
10337 remote display access is the preferred solution with oVirt and RedHat
10338 Enterprise Virtualization, and I was sad to discover the other day
10339 that the browser plugin needed to use these systems seamlessly was
10340 missing in Debian. The
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/668284">request
10341 for a package
</a> was from
2012-
04-
10 with no progress since
10342 2013-
04-
01, so I decided to wrap up a package based on the great work
10343 from Cajus Pollmeier and put it in a collab-maint maintained git
10344 repository to get a package I could use. I would very much like
10345 others to help me maintain the package (or just take over, I do not
10346 mind), but as no-one had volunteered so far, I just uploaded it to
10347 NEW. I hope it will be available in Debian in a few days.
</p>
10349 <p>The source is now available from
10350 <a href=
"http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/spice-xpi.git;a=summary">http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/spice-xpi.git;a=summary
</a>.
</p>
10356 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
10361 <div class=
"padding"></div>
10363 <div class=
"entry">
10364 <div class=
"title">
10365 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Teaching_vmdebootstrap_to_create_Raspberry_Pi_SD_card_images.html">Teaching vmdebootstrap to create Raspberry Pi SD card images
</a>
10372 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/v/vmdebootstrap.html">vmdebootstrap
</a>
10373 program is a a very nice system to create virtual machine images. It
10374 create a image file, add a partition table, mount it and run
10375 debootstrap in the mounted directory to create a Debian system on a
10376 stick. Yesterday, I decided to try to teach it how to make images for
10377 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi">Raspberry Pi
</a>, as part
10378 of a plan to simplify the build system for
10379 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the FreedomBox
10380 project
</a>. The FreedomBox project already uses vmdebootstrap for
10381 the virtualbox images, but its current build system made multistrap
10382 based system for Dreamplug images, and it is lacking support for
10385 <p>Armed with the knowledge on how to build "foreign" (aka non-native
10386 architecture) chroots for Raspberry Pi, I dived into the vmdebootstrap
10387 code and adjusted it to be able to build armel images on my amd64
10388 Debian laptop. I ended up giving vmdebootstrap five new options,
10389 allowing me to replicate the image creation process I use to make
10390 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html">Debian
10391 Jessie based mesh node images for the Raspberry Pi
</a>. First, the
10392 <tt>--foreign /path/to/binfm_handler
</tt> option tell vmdebootstrap to
10393 call debootstrap with --foreign and to copy the handler into the
10394 generated chroot before running the second stage. This allow
10395 vmdebootstrap to create armel images on an amd64 host. Next I added
10396 two new options
<tt>--bootsize size
</tt> and
<tt>--boottype
10397 fstype
</tt> to teach it to create a separate /boot/ partition with the
10398 given file system type, allowing me to create an image with a vfat
10399 partition for the /boot/ stuff. I also added a
<tt>--variant
10400 variant
</tt> option to allow me to create smaller images without the
10401 Debian base system packages installed. Finally, I added an option
10402 <tt>--no-extlinux
</tt> to tell vmdebootstrap to not install extlinux
10403 as a boot loader. It is not needed on the Raspberry Pi and probably
10404 most other non-x86 architectures. The changes were accepted by the
10405 upstream author of vmdebootstrap yesterday and today, and is now
10407 <a href=
"http://git.liw.fi/cgi-bin/cgit/cgit.cgi/vmdebootstrap/">the
10408 upstream project page
</a>.
</p>
10410 <p>To use it to build a Raspberry Pi image using Debian Jessie, first
10411 create a small script (the customize script) to add the non-free
10412 binary blob needed to boot the Raspberry Pi and the APT source
10417 set -e # Exit on first error
10420 cat
<<EOF
> etc/apt/sources.list
10421 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ jessie main contrib non-free
10423 # Install non-free binary blob needed to boot Raspberry Pi. This
10424 # install a kernel somewhere too.
10425 wget https://raw.github.com/Hexxeh/rpi-update/master/rpi-update \
10426 -O $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
10427 chmod a+x $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
10428 mkdir -p $rootdir/lib/modules
10429 touch $rootdir/boot/start.elf
10430 chroot $rootdir rpi-update
10433 <p>Next, fetch the latest vmdebootstrap script and call it like this
10434 to build the image:
</p>
10437 sudo ./vmdebootstrap \
10438 --variant minbase \
10440 --distribution jessie \
10441 --mirror http://http.debian.net/debian \
10446 --log-level debug \
10450 --root-password raspberry \
10451 --hostname raspberrypi \
10452 --foreign /usr/bin/qemu-arm-static \
10453 --customize `pwd`/customize \
10454 --package netbase \
10455 --package git-core \
10456 --package binutils \
10457 --package ca-certificates \
10462 <p>The list of packages being installed are the ones needed by
10463 rpi-update to make the image bootable on the Raspberry Pi, with the
10464 exception of netbase, which is needed by debootstrap to find
10465 /etc/hosts with the minbase variant. I really wish there was a way to
10466 set up an Raspberry Pi using only packages in the Debian archive, but
10467 that is not possible as far as I know, because it boots from the GPU
10468 using a non-free binary blob.
</p>
10470 <p>The build host need debootstrap, kpartx and qemu-user-static and
10471 probably a few others installed. I have not checked the complete
10472 build dependency list.
</p>
10474 <p>The resulting image will not use the hardware floating point unit
10475 on the Raspberry PI, because the armel architecture in Debian is not
10476 optimized for that use. So the images created will be a bit slower
10477 than
<a href=
"http://www.raspbian.org/">Raspbian
</a> based images.
</p>
10483 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network
</a>.
10488 <div class=
"padding"></div>
10490 <div class=
"entry">
10491 <div class=
"title">
10492 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Good_causes__Debian_Outreach_Program_for_Women__EFF_documenting_the_spying_and_Open_access_in_Norway.html">Good causes: Debian Outreach Program for Women, EFF documenting the spying and Open access in Norway
</a>
10498 <p>The last few days I came across a few good causes that should get
10499 wider attention. I recommend signing and donating to each one of
10502 <p>Via
<a href=
"http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2013/18/">Debian
10503 Project News for
2013-
10-
14</a> I came across the Outreach Program for
10504 Women program which is a Google Summer of Code like initiative to get
10505 more women involved in free software. One debian sponsor has offered
10506 to match
<a href=
"http://debian.ch/opw2013">any donation done to Debian
10507 earmarked
</a> for this initiative. I donated a few minutes ago, and
10508 hope you will to. :)
</p>
10510 <p>And the Electronic Frontier Foundation just announced plans to
10511 create
<a href=
"https://supporters.eff.org/donate/nsa-videos">video
10512 documentaries about the excessive spying
</a> on every Internet user that
10513 take place these days, and their need to fund the work. I've already
10514 donated. Are you next?
</p>
10516 <p>For my Norwegian audience, the organisation Studentenes og
10517 Akademikernes Internasjonale Hjelpefond is collecting signatures for a
10518 statement under the heading
10519 <a href=
"http://saih.no/Bloggers_United/">Bloggers United for Open
10520 Access
</a> for those of us asking for more focus on open access in the
10521 Norwegian government. So far
499 signatures. I hope you will sign it
10528 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance
</a>.
10533 <div class=
"padding"></div>
10535 <div class=
"entry">
10536 <div class=
"title">
10537 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Videos_about_the_Freedombox_project___for_inspiration_and_learning.html">Videos about the Freedombox project - for inspiration and learning
</a>
10540 27th September
2013
10543 <p>The
<a href=
"http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox
10544 project
</a> have been going on for a while, and have presented the
10545 vision, ideas and solution several places. Here is a little
10546 collection of videos of talks and presentation of the project.
</p>
10550 <li><a href=
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukvUz5taxvA">FreedomBox -
10551 2,
5 minute marketing film
</a> (Youtube)
</li>
10553 <li><a href=
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzW25QTVWsE">Eben Moglen
10554 discusses the Freedombox on CBS news
2011</a> (Youtube)
</li>
10556 <li><a href=
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae8SZbxfE0g">Eben Moglen -
10557 Freedom in the Cloud - Software Freedom, Privacy and and Security for
10558 Web
2.0 and Cloud computing at ISOC-NY Public Meeting
2010</a>
10561 <li><a href=
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNaIji_3xBE">Fosdem
2011
10562 Keynote by Eben Moglen presenting the Freedombox
</a> (Youtube)
</li>
10564 <li><a href=
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bDDUyJSQ9s">Presentation of
10565 the Freedombox by James Vasile at Elevate in Gratz
2011</a> (Youtube)
</li>
10567 <li><a href=
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQTmnk27g9s"> Freedombox -
10568 Discovery, Identity, and Trust by Nick Daly at Freedombox Hackfest New
10569 York City in
2012</a> (Youtube)
</li>
10571 <li><a href=
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkbSB4Ba7Ck">Introduction
10572 to the Freedombox at Freedombox Hackfest New York City in
2012</a>
10575 <li><a href=
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-P2Jaeg0aQ">Freedom, Out
10576 of the Box! by Bdale Garbee at linux.conf.au Ballarat,
2012</a> (Youtube)
</li>
10578 <li><a href=
"https://archive.fosdem.org/2013/schedule/event/freedombox/">Freedombox
10579 1.0 by Eben Moglen and Bdale Garbee at Fosdem
2013</a> (FOSDEM)
</li>
10581 <li><a href=
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1LpYX2zVYg">What is the
10582 FreedomBox today by Bdale Garbee at Debconf13 in Vaumarcus
10583 2013</a> (Youtube)
</li>
10587 <p>A larger list is available from
10588 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/TalksAndPresentations">the
10589 Freedombox Wiki
</a>.
</p>
10591 <p>On other news, I am happy to report that Freedombox based on Debian
10592 Jessie is coming along quite well, and soon both Owncloud and using
10593 Tor should be available for testers of the Freedombox solution. :) In
10594 a few weeks I hope everything needed to test it is included in Debian.
10595 The withsqlite package is already in Debian, and the plinth package is
10596 pending in NEW. The third and vital part of that puzzle is the
10597 metapackage/setup framework, which is still pending an upload. Join
10598 us on
<a href=
"irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC
10599 (#freedombox on irc.debian.org)
</a> and
10600 <a href=
"http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
10601 mailing list
</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.
</p>
10607 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/web">web
</a>.
10612 <div class=
"padding"></div>
10614 <div class=
"entry">
10615 <div class=
"title">
10616 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Recipe_to_test_the_Freedombox_project_on_amd64_or_Raspberry_Pi.html">Recipe to test the Freedombox project on amd64 or Raspberry Pi
</a>
10619 10th September
2013
10622 <p>I was introduced to the
10623 <a href=
"http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox project
</a>
10624 in
2010, when Eben Moglen presented his vision about serving the need
10625 of non-technical people to keep their personal information private and
10626 within the legal protection of their own homes. The idea is to give
10627 people back the power over their network and machines, and return
10628 Internet back to its intended peer-to-peer architecture. Instead of
10629 depending on a central service, the Freedombox will give everyone
10630 control over their own basic infrastructure.
</p>
10632 <p>I've intended to join the effort since then, but other tasks have
10633 taken priority. But this summers nasty news about the misuse of trust
10634 and privilege exercised by the "western" intelligence gathering
10635 communities increased my eagerness to contribute to a point where I
10636 actually started working on the project a while back.
</p>
10638 <p>The
<a href=
"https://alioth.debian.org/projects/freedombox/">initial
10639 Debian initiative
</a> based on the vision from Eben Moglen, is to
10640 create a simple and cheap Debian based appliance that anyone can hook
10641 up in their home and get access to secure and private services and
10642 communication. The initial deployment platform have been the
10643 <a href=
"http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/t-dreamplugdetails.aspx">Dreamplug
</a>,
10644 which is a piece of hardware I do not own. So to be able to test what
10645 the current Freedombox setup look like, I had to come up with a way to install
10646 it on some hardware I do have access to. I have rewritten the
10647 <a href=
"https://github.com/NickDaly/freedom-maker">freedom-maker
</a>
10648 image build framework to use .deb packages instead of only copying
10649 setup into the boot images, and thanks to this rewrite I am able to
10650 set up any machine supported by Debian Wheezy as a Freedombox, using
10651 the previously mentioned deb (and a few support debs for packages
10652 missing in Debian).
</p>
10654 <p>The current Freedombox setup consist of a set of bootstrapping
10656 (
<a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup
</a>),
10657 and a administrative web interface
10658 (
<a href=
"https://github.com/NickDaly/Plinth">plinth
</a> + exmachina +
10659 withsqlite), as well as a privacy enhancing proxy based on
10660 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy
</a>
10661 (freedombox-privoxy). There is also a web/javascript based XMPP
10662 client (
<a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/jwchat">jwchat
</a>)
10663 trying (unsuccessfully so far) to talk to the XMPP server
10664 (
<a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/ejabberd">ejabberd
</a>). The
10665 web interface is pluggable, and the goal is to use it to enable OpenID
10666 services, mesh network connectivity, use of TOR, etc, etc. Not much of
10667 this is really working yet, see
10668 <a href=
"https://github.com/NickDaly/freedombox-todos/blob/master/TODO">the
10669 project TODO
</a> for links to GIT repositories. Most of the code is
10670 on github at the moment. The HTTP proxy is operational out of the
10671 box, and the admin web interface can be used to add/remove plinth
10672 users. I've not been able to do anything else with it so far, but
10673 know there are several branches spread around github and other places
10674 with lots of half baked features.
</p>
10676 <p>Anyway, if you want to have a look at the current state, the
10677 following recipes should work to give you a test machine to poke
10680 <p><strong>Debian Wheezy amd64
</strong></p>
10684 <li>Fetch normal Debian Wheezy installation ISO.
</li>
10685 <li>Boot from it, either as CD or USB stick.
</li>
10686 <li><p>Press [tab] on the boot prompt and add this as a boot argument
10687 to the Debian installer:
<p>
10688 <pre>url=
<a href=
"http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat
</a></pre></li>
10690 <li>Answer the few language/region/password questions and pick disk to
10693 <li>When the installation is finished and the machine have rebooted a
10694 few times, your Freedombox is ready for testing.
</li>
10698 <p><strong>Raspberry Pi Raspbian
</strong></p>
10702 <li>Fetch a Raspbian SD card image, create SD card.
</li>
10703 <li>Boot from SD card, extend file system to fill the card completely.
</li>
10704 <li><p>Log in and add this to /etc/sources.list:
</p>
10706 deb
<a href=
"http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox
</a> wheezy main
10708 <li><p>Run this as root:
</p>
10710 wget -O - http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/BE1A583D.asc | \
10713 apt-get install freedombox-setup
10714 /usr/lib/freedombox/setup
10716 <li>Reboot into your freshly created Freedombox.
</li>
10720 <p>You can test it on other architectures too, but because the
10721 freedombox-privoxy package is binary, it will only work as intended on
10722 the architectures where I have had time to build the binary and put it
10723 in my APT repository. But do not let this stop you. It is only a
10724 short "
<tt>apt-get source -b freedombox-privoxy
</tt>" away. :)</p>
10726 <p>Note that by default Freedombox is a DHCP server on the
10727 192.168.1.0/24 subnet, so if this is your subnet be careful and turn
10728 off the DHCP server by running "<tt>update-rc.d isc-dhcp-server
10729 disable
</tt>" as root.</p>
10731 <p>Please let me know if this works for you, or if you have any
10732 problems. We gather on the IRC channel
10733 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:
6667/%
23freedombox
">#freedombox</a> on
10734 irc.debian.org and the
10735 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss
">project
10736 mailing list</a>.</p>
10738 <p>Once you get your freedombox operational, you can visit
10739 <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/</tt> to see the state of the plint
10740 welcome screen (dead end - do not be surprised if you are unable to
10741 get past it), and next visit <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/help/</tt>
10742 to look at the rest of plinth. The default user is 'admin' and the
10743 default password is 'secret'.</p>
10749 Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian
">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/freedombox
">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet
">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/surveillance
">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/web
">web</a>.
10754 <div class="padding
"></div>
10756 <div class="entry
">
10757 <div class="title
">
10758 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Intel_180_SSD_disk_with_Lenovo_firmware_can_not_use_Intel_firmware.html
">Intel 180 SSD disk with Lenovo firmware can not use Intel firmware</a>
10764 <p>Earlier, I reported about
10765 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html
">my
10766 problems using an Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB disk</a>. Friday I was
10767 told by IBM that the original disk should be thrown away. And as
10768 there no longer was a problem if I bricked the firmware, I decided
10769 today to try to install Intel firmware to replace the Lenovo firmware
10770 currently on the disk.</p>
10772 <p>I searched the Intel site for firmware, and found
10773 <a href="https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&ProdId=
3472&DwnldID=
18363&ProductFamily=Solid-State+Drives+and+Caching&ProductLine=Intel%c2%ae+High+Performance+Solid-State+Drive&ProductProduct=Intel%c2%ae+SSD+
520+Series+(
180GB%
2c+
2.5in+SATA+
6Gb%
2fs%
2c+
25nm%
2c+MLC)&lang=eng
">issdfut_2.0.4.iso</a>
10774 (aka Intel SATA Solid-State Drive Firmware Update Tool) which
10775 according to the site should contain the latest firmware for SSD
10776 disks. I inserted the broken disk in one of my spare laptops and
10777 booted the ISO from a USB stick. The disk was recognized, but the
10778 program claimed the newest firmware already were installed and refused
10779 to insert any Intel firmware. So no change, and the disk is still
10780 unable to handle write load. :( I guess the only way to get them
10781 working would be if Lenovo releases new firmware. No idea how likely
10782 that is. Anyway, just blogging about this test for completeness. I
10783 got a working Samsung disk, and see no point in spending more time on
10784 the broken disks.</p>
10790 Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian
">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>.
10795 <div class="padding
"></div>
10797 <div class="entry
">
10798 <div class="title
">
10799 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html
">How to fix a Thinkpad X230 with a broken 180 GB SSD disk</a>
10805 <p>Today I switched to
10806 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html
">my
10807 new laptop</a>. I've previously written about the problems I had with
10808 my new Thinkpad X230, which was delivered with an
10809 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Intel_SSD_520_Series_180_GB_with_Lenovo_firmware_still_lock_up_from_sustained_writes.html
">180
10810 GB Intel SSD disk with Lenovo firmware</a> that did not handle
10811 sustained writes. My hardware supplier have been very forthcoming in
10812 trying to find a solution, and after first trying with another
10813 identical 180 GB disks they decided to send me a 256 GB Samsung SSD
10814 disk instead to fix it once and for all. The Samsung disk survived
10815 the installation of Debian with encrypted disks (filling the disk with
10816 random data during installation killed the first two), and I thus
10817 decided to trust it with my data. I have installed it as a Debian Edu
10818 Wheezy roaming workstation hooked up with my Debian Edu Squeeze main
10819 server at home using Kerberos and LDAP, and will use it as my work
10820 station from now on.</p>
10822 <p>As this is a solid state disk with no moving parts, I believe the
10823 Debian Wheezy default installation need to be tuned a bit to increase
10824 performance and increase life time of the disk. The Linux kernel and
10825 user space applications do not yet adjust automatically to such
10826 environment. To make it easier for my self, I created a draft Debian
10827 package <tt>ssd-setup</tt> to handle this tuning. The
10828 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/ssd-setup.git
">source
10829 for the ssd-setup package</a> is available from collab-maint, and it
10830 is set up to adjust the setup of the machine by just installing the
10831 package. If there is any non-SSD disk in the machine, the package
10832 will refuse to install, as I did not try to write any logic to sort
10833 file systems in SSD and non-SSD file systems.</p>
10835 <p>I consider the package a draft, as I am a bit unsure how to best
10836 set up Debian Wheezy with an SSD. It is adjusted to my use case,
10837 where I set up the machine with one large encrypted partition (in
10838 addition to /boot), put LVM on top of this and set up partitions on
10839 top of this again. See the README file in the package source for the
10840 references I used to pick the settings. At the moment these
10841 parameters are tuned:</p>
10845 <li>Set up cryptsetup to pass TRIM commands to the physical disk
10846 (adding discard to /etc/crypttab)</li>
10848 <li>Set up LVM to pass on TRIM commands to the underlying device (in
10849 this case a cryptsetup partition) by changing issue_discards from
10850 0 to 1 in /etc/lvm/lvm.conf.</li>
10852 <li>Set relatime as a file system option for ext3 and ext4 file
10855 <li>Tell swap to use TRIM commands by adding 'discard' to
10858 <li>Change I/O scheduler from cfq to deadline using a udev rule.</li>
10860 <li>Run fstrim on every ext3 and ext4 file system every night (from
10863 <li>Adjust sysctl values vm.swappiness to 1 and vm.vfs_cache_pressure
10864 to 50 to reduce the kernel eagerness to swap out processes.</li>
10868 <p>During installation, I cancelled the part where the installer fill
10869 the disk with random data, as this would kill the SSD performance for
10870 little gain. My goal with the encrypted file system is to ensure
10871 those stealing my laptop end up with a brick and not a working
10872 computer. I have no hope in keeping the really resourceful people
10873 from getting the data on the disk (see
10874 <a href="http://xkcd.com/
538/
">XKCD #538</a> for an explanation why).
10875 Thus I concluded that adding the discard option to crypttab is the
10876 right thing to do.</p>
10878 <p>I considered using the noop I/O scheduler, as several recommended
10879 it for SSD, but others recommended deadline and a benchmark I found
10880 indicated that deadline might be better for interactive use.</p>
10882 <p>I also considered using the 'discard' file system option for ext3
10883 and ext4, but read that it would give a performance hit ever time a
10884 file is removed, and thought it best to that that slowdown once a day
10885 instead of during my work.</p>
10887 <p>My package do not set up tmpfs on /var/run, /var/lock and /tmp, as
10888 this is already done by Debian Edu.</p>
10890 <p>I have not yet started on the user space tuning. I expect
10891 iceweasel need some tuning, and perhaps other applications too, but
10892 have not yet had time to investigate those parts.</p>
10894 <p>The package should work on Ubuntu too, but I have not yet tested it
10897 <p>As for the answer to the question in the title of this blog post,
10898 as far as I know, the only solution I know about is to replace the
10899 disk. It might be possible to flash it with Intel firmware instead of
10900 the Lenovo firmware. But I have not tried and did not want to do so
10901 without approval from Lenovo as I wanted to keep the warranty on the
10902 disk until a solution was found and they wanted the broken disks
10909 Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian
">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>.
10914 <div class="padding
"></div>
10916 <div class="entry
">
10917 <div class="title
">
10918 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Intel_SSD_520_Series_180_GB_with_Lenovo_firmware_still_lock_up_from_sustained_writes.html
">Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB with Lenovo firmware still lock up from sustained writes</a>
10924 <p>A few days ago, I wrote about
10925 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html
">the
10926 problems I experienced with my new X230 and its SSD disk</a>, which
10927 was dying during installation because it is unable to cope with
10928 sustained write. My supplier is in contact with
10929 <a href="http://www.lenovo.com/
">Lenovo</a>, and they wanted to send a
10930 replacement disk to try to fix the problem. They decided to send an
10931 identical model, so my hopes for a permanent fix was slim.</p>
10933 <p>Anyway, today I got the replacement disk and tried to install
10934 Debian Edu Wheezy with encrypted disk on it. The new disk have the
10935 same firmware version as the original. This time my hope raised
10936 slightly as the installation progressed, as the original disk used to
10937 die after 4-7% of the disk was written to, while this time it kept
10938 going past 10%, 20%, 40% and even past 50%. But around 60%, the disk
10939 died again and I was back on square one. I still do not have a new
10940 laptop with a disk I can trust. I can not live with a disk that might
10941 lock up when I download a new
10942 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/
">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ISO or
10943 other large files. I look forward to hearing from my supplier with
10944 the next proposal from Lenovo.</p>
10946 <p>The original disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
10947 11S0C38722Z1ZNME35X1TR, ISN: CVCV321407HB180EGN, SA: G57560302, FW:
10948 LF1i, 29MAY2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
10949 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40002756C4, Model:
10950 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD
180G
5V
1A, ASM P/N
0C38732, FRU
10951 P/N
45N8295, P0C38732.
</p>
10953 <p>The replacement disk is marked Intel SSD
520 Series
180 GB,
10954 11S0C38722Z1ZNDE34N0L0, ISN: CVCV315306RK180EGN, SA: G57560-
302, FW:
10955 LF1i,
22APR2013, PBA: G39779-
300, LBA
351,
651,
888, LI P/N:
0C38722,
10956 Pb-free
2LI, LC P/N:
16-
200366, WWN:
55CD2E40000AB69E, Model:
10957 SSDSC2BW180A3L
2.5"
6Gb/s SATA SSD
180G
5V
1A, ASM P/N
0C38732, FRU
10958 P/N
45N8295, P0C38732.
</p>
10960 <p>The only difference is in the first number (serial number?), ISN,
10961 SA, date and WNPP values. Mentioning all the details here in case
10962 someone is able to use the information to find a way to identify the
10963 failing disk among working ones (if any such working disk actually
10970 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
10975 <div class=
"padding"></div>
10977 <div class=
"entry">
10978 <div class=
"title">
10979 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/July_13th__Debian_Ubuntu_BSP_and_Skolelinux_Debian_Edu_developer_gathering_in_Oslo.html">July
13th: Debian/Ubuntu BSP and Skolelinux/Debian Edu developer gathering in Oslo
</a>
10985 <p>The upcoming Saturday,
2013-
07-
13, we are organising a combined
10986 Debian Edu developer gathering and Debian and Ubuntu bug squashing
10987 party in Oslo. It is organised by
<a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/">the
10988 member assosiation NUUG
</a> and
10989 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
10990 project
</a> together with
<a href=
"http://bitraf.no/">the hack space
10993 <p>It starts
10:
00 and continue until late evening. Everyone is
10994 welcome, and there is no fee to participate. There is on the other
10995 hand limited space, and only room for
30 people. Please put your name
10996 on
<a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2013/07/13/no/Oslo">the event
10997 wiki page
</a> if you plan to join us.
</p>
11003 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
11008 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11010 <div class=
"entry">
11011 <div class=
"title">
11012 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">The Thinkpad is dead, long live the Thinkpad X230?
</a>
11018 <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a
11019 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">replacement
11020 for my trusty old Thinkpad X41
</a>. Unfortunately I did not have much
11021 time to spend on it, and it took a while to find a model I believe
11022 will do the job, but two days ago the replacement finally arrived. I
11024 <a href=
"http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad X230
</a>
11025 with SSD disk (NZDAJMN). I first test installed Debian Edu Wheezy as
11026 a roaming workstation, and it seemed to work flawlessly. But my
11027 second installation with encrypted disk was not as successful. More
11030 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
11031 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
11032 listed in the feature list. But I did get good help from the search
11033 feature at
<a href=
"http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt
</a>, which
11034 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
11035 requirements. A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks according
11036 to that search interface, so I had to drop specifying the number of
11037 disks from my search parameters. I also asked around among friends to
11038 get their impression on keyboards and robustness.
</p>
11040 <p>So the new laptop arrived, and it is quite a lot wider than the
11041 X41. I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is
11042 significantly wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my
11043 hand a lot more to reach the edges. But the key response is fairly
11044 good and the individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope
11045 I will get used to it. My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really
11046 needed a new laptop now. :)
</p>
11048 <p>Turning off the touch pad was simple. All it took was a quick
11049 visit to the BIOS during boot it disable it.
</p>
11051 <p>But there is a fatal problem with the laptop. The
180 GB SSD disk
11052 lock up during load. And this happen when installing Debian Wheezy
11053 with encrypted disk, while the disk is being filled with random data.
11054 I also tested to install Ubuntu Raring, and it happen there too if I
11055 reenable the code to fill the disk with random data (it is disabled by
11056 default in Ubuntu). And the bug with is already known. It was
11057 reported to Debian as
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/691427">BTS
11058 report #
691427 2012-
10-
25</a> (journal commit I/O error on brand-new
11059 Thinkpad T430s ext4 on lvm on SSD). It is also reported to the Linux
11060 kernel developers as
11061 <a href=
"https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51861">Kernel bugzilla
11062 report #
51861 2012-
12-
20</a> (Intel SSD
520 stops working under load
11063 (SSDSC2BW180A3L in Lenovo ThinkPad T430s)). It is also reported on the
11064 Lenovo forums, both for
11065 <a href=
"http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-and-newer-T-series/T430s-Intel-SSD-520-180GB-issue/m-p/1070549">T430
11066 2012-
11-
10</a> and for
11067 <a href=
"http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/X-Series-ThinkPad-Laptops/x230-SATA-errors-with-180GB-Intel-520-SSD-under-heavy-write-load/m-p/1068147">X230
11068 03-
20-
2013</a>. The problem do not only affect installation. The
11069 reports state that the disk lock up during use if many writes are done
11070 on the disk, so it is much no use to work around the installation
11071 problem and end up with a computer that can lock up at any moment.
11073 <a href=
"https://git.efficios.com/?p=test-ssd.git">small C program
11074 available
</a> that will lock up the hard drive after running a few
11075 minutes by writing to a file.
</p>
11077 <p>I've contacted my supplier and asked how to handle this, and after
11078 contacting PCHELP Norway (request
01D1FDP) which handle support
11079 requests for Lenovo, his first suggestion was to upgrade the disk
11080 firmware. Unfortunately there is no newer firmware available from
11081 Lenovo, as my disk already have the most recent one (version LF1i). I
11082 hope to hear more from him today and hope the problem can be
11089 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
11094 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11096 <div class=
"entry">
11097 <div class=
"title">
11098 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230.html">The Thinkpad is dead, long live the Thinkpad X230
</a>
11104 <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a replacement for my
11105 trusty old Thinkpad X41. Unfortunately I did not have much time to
11106 spend on it, but today the replacement finally arrived. I ended up
11107 picking a
<a href=
"http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad
11108 X230
</a> with SSD disk (NZDAJMN). I first test installed Debian Edu
11109 Wheezy as a roaming workstation, and it worked flawlessly. As I write
11110 this, it is installing what I hope will be a more final installation,
11111 with a encrypted hard drive to ensure any dope head stealing it end up
11112 with an expencive door stop.
</p>
11114 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
11115 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
11116 listed in the feature list. But I did get good help from the search
11117 feature at
<ahref=
"http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt
</a>, which
11118 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
11119 requirements. A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks, so I had
11120 to drop number of disks from my search parameters.
</p>
11122 <p>I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is significantly
11123 wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my hand a lot more
11124 to reach the edges. But the key response is fairly good and the
11125 individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope I will get
11126 used to it. My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really needed a
11127 new laptop now. :)
</p>
11129 <p>I look forward to figuring out how to turn off the touch pad.
</p>
11135 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
11140 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11142 <div class=
"entry">
11143 <div class=
"title">
11144 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Automatically_locate_and_install_required_firmware_packages_on_Debian__Isenkram_0_4_.html">Automatically locate and install required firmware packages on Debian (Isenkram
0.4)
</a>
11150 <p>It annoys me when the computer fail to do automatically what it is
11151 perfectly capable of, and I have to do it manually to get things
11152 working. One such task is to find out what firmware packages are
11153 needed to get the hardware on my computer working. Most often this
11154 affect the wifi card, but some times it even affect the RAID
11155 controller or the ethernet card. Today I pushed version
0.4 of the
11156 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram package
</a>
11157 including a new script isenkram-autoinstall-firmware handling the
11158 process of asking all the loaded kernel modules what firmware files
11159 they want, find debian packages providing these files and install the
11160 debian packages. Here is a test run on my laptop:
</p>
11163 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
11164 info: kernel drivers requested extra firmware: ipw2200-bss.fw ipw2200-ibss.fw ipw2200-sniffer.fw
11165 info: fetching http://http.debian.net/debian/dists/squeeze/Contents-i386.gz
11166 info: locating packages with the requested firmware files
11167 info: Updating APT sources after adding non-free APT source
11168 info: trying to install firmware-ipw2x00
11171 Preconfiguring packages ...
11172 Selecting previously deselected package firmware-ipw2x00.
11173 (Reading database ...
259727 files and directories currently installed.)
11174 Unpacking firmware-ipw2x00 (from .../firmware-ipw2x00_0.28+squeeze1_all.deb) ...
11175 Setting up firmware-ipw2x00 (
0.28+squeeze1) ...
11179 <p>When all the requested firmware is present, a simple message is
11180 printed instead:
</p>
11183 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
11184 info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules. exiting
11188 <p>It could use some polish, but it is already working well and saving
11189 me some time when setting up new machines. :)
</p>
11191 <p>So, how does it work? It look at the set of currently loaded
11192 kernel modules, and look up each one of them using modinfo, to find
11193 the firmware files listed in the module meta-information. Next, it
11194 download the Contents file from a nearby APT mirror, and search for
11195 the firmware files in this file to locate the package with the
11196 requested firmware file. If the package is in the non-free section, a
11197 non-free APT source is added and the package is installed using
11198 <tt>apt-get install
</tt>. The end result is a slightly better working
11201 <p>I hope someone find time to implement a more polished version of
11202 this script as part of the hw-detect debian-installer module, to
11203 finally fix
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/655507">BTS report
11204 #
655507</a>. There really is no need to insert USB sticks with
11205 firmware during a PXE install when the packages already are available
11206 from the nearby Debian mirror.
</p>
11212 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram
</a>.
11217 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11219 <div class=
"entry">
11220 <div class=
"title">
11221 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Fixing_the_Linux_black_screen_of_death_on_machines_with_Intel_HD_video.html">Fixing the Linux black screen of death on machines with Intel HD video
</a>
11227 <p>When installing RedHat, Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu on some machines,
11228 the screen just turn black when Linux boot, either during installation
11229 or on first boot from the hard disk. I've seen it once in a while the
11230 last few years, but only recently understood the cause. I've seen it
11231 on HP laptops, and on my latest acquaintance the Packard Bell laptop.
11232 The reason seem to be in the wiring of some laptops. The system to
11233 control the screen background light is inverted, so when Linux try to
11234 turn the brightness fully on, it end up turning it off instead. I do
11235 not know which Linux drivers are affected, but this post is about the
11236 i915 driver used by the
11237 <a href=
"http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
11238 EasyNote LV
</a>, Thinkpad X40 and many other laptops.
</p>
11240 <p>The problem can be worked around two ways. Either by adding
11241 i915.invert_brightness=
1 as a kernel option, or by adding a file in
11242 /etc/modprobe.d/ to tell modprobe to add the invert_brightness=
1
11243 option when it load the i915 kernel module. On Debian and Ubuntu, it
11244 can be done by running these commands as root:
</p>
11247 echo options i915 invert_brightness=
1 | tee /etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf
11248 update-initramfs -u -k all
11251 <p>Since March
2012 there is
11252 <a href=
"http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=4dca20efb1a9c2efefc28ad2867e5d6c3f5e1955">a
11253 mechanism in the Linux kernel
</a> to tell the i915 driver which
11254 hardware have this problem, and get the driver to invert the
11255 brightness setting automatically. To use it, one need to add a row in
11256 <a href=
"http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c">the
11257 intel_quirks array
</a> in the driver source
11258 <tt>drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c
</tt> (look for "
<tt>static
11259 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks
</tt>"), specifying the PCI device
11260 number (vendor number 8086 is assumed) and subdevice vendor and device
11263 <p>My Packard Bell EasyNote LV got this output from <tt>lspci
11264 -vvnn</tt> for the video card in question:</p>
11267 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation \
11268 3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller [8086:0156] \
11269 (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
11270 Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device [1025:0688]
11271 Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- \
11272 ParErr- Stepping- SE RR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
11273 Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- \
11274 <TAbort- <MAbort->SERR- <PERR- INTx-
11276 Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 42
11277 Region 0: Memory at c2000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
11278 Region 2: Memory at b0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
11279 Region 4: I/O ports at 4000 [size=64]
11280 Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled]
11281 Capabilities: <access denied>
11282 Kernel driver in use: i915
11285 <p>The resulting intel_quirks entry would then look like this:</p>
11288 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks[] = {
11290 /* Packard Bell EasyNote LV11HC needs invert brightness quirk */
11291 { 0x0156, 0x1025, 0x0688, quirk_invert_brightness },
11296 <p>According to the kernel module instructions (as seen using
11297 <tt>modinfo i915</tt>), information about hardware needing the
11298 invert_brightness flag should be sent to the
11299 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/dri-devel
">dri-devel
11300 (at) lists.freedesktop.org</a> mailing list to reach the kernel
11301 developers. But my email about the laptop sent 2013-06-03 have not
11303 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/
2013-June/thread.html
">the
11304 web archive for the mailing list</a>, so I suspect they do not accept
11305 emails from non-subscribers. Because of this, I sent my patch also to
11306 the Debian bug tracking system instead as
11307 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/
710938">BTS report #710938</a>, to make
11308 sure the patch is not lost.</p>
11310 <p>Unfortunately, it is not enough to fix the kernel to get Laptops
11311 with this problem working properly with Linux. If you use Gnome, your
11312 worries should be over at this point. But if you use KDE, there is
11313 something in KDE ignoring the invert_brightness setting and turning on
11314 the screen during login. I've reported it to Debian as
11315 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/
711237">BTS report #711237</a>, and
11316 have no idea yet how to figure out exactly what subsystem is doing
11317 this. Perhaps you can help? Perhaps you know what the Gnome
11318 developers did to handle this, and this can give a clue to the KDE
11319 developers? Or you know where in KDE the screen brightness is changed
11320 during login? If so, please update the BTS report (or get in touch if
11321 you do not know how to update BTS).</p>
11323 <p>Update 2013-07-19: The correct fix for this machine seem to be
11324 acpi_backlight=vendor, to disable ACPI backlight support completely,
11325 as the ACPI information on the machine is trash and it is better to
11326 leave it to the intel video driver to control the screen
11333 Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian
">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>.
11338 <div class="padding
"></div>
11340 <div class="entry
">
11341 <div class="title
">
11342 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/How_to_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8.html
">How to install Linux on a Packard Bell Easynote LV preinstalled with Windows 8</a>
11348 <p>Two days ago, I asked
11349 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/How_can_I_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8_.html
">how
11350 I could install Linux on a Packard Bell EasyNote LV computer
11351 preinstalled with Windows 8</a>. I found a solution, but am horrified
11352 with the obstacles put in the way of Linux users on a laptop with UEFI
11355 <p>I never found out if the cause of my problems were the use of UEFI
11356 secure booting or fast boot. I suspect fast boot was the problem,
11357 causing the firmware to boot directly from HD without considering any
11358 key presses and alternative devices, but do not know UEFI settings
11359 enough to tell.</p>
11361 <p>There is no way to install Linux on the machine in question without
11362 opening the box and disconnecting the hard drive! This is as far as I
11363 can tell, the only way to get access to the firmware setup menu
11364 without accepting the Windows 8 license agreement. I am told (and
11365 found description on how to) that it is possible to configure the
11366 firmware setup once booted into Windows 8. But as I believe the terms
11367 of that agreement are completely unacceptable, accepting the license
11368 was never an alternative. I do not enter agreements I do not intend
11371 <p>I feared I had to return the laptops and ask for a refund, and
11372 waste many hours on this, but luckily there was a way to get it to
11373 work. But I would not recommend it to anyone planning to run Linux on
11374 it, and I have become sceptical to Windows 8 certified laptops. Is
11375 this the way Linux will be forced out of the market place, by making
11376 it close to impossible for "normal" users to install Linux without
11377 accepting the Microsoft Windows license terms? Or at least not
11378 without risking to loose the warranty?
</p>
11380 <p>I've updated the
11381 <a href=
"http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Linux Laptop
11382 wiki page for Packard Bell EasyNote LV
</a>, to ensure the next person
11383 do not have to struggle as much as I did to get Linux into the
11386 <p>Thanks to Bob Rosbag, Florian Weimer, Philipp Kern, Ben Hutching,
11387 Michael Tokarev and others for feedback and ideas.
</p>
11393 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
11398 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11400 <div class=
"entry">
11401 <div class=
"title">
11402 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/How_can_I_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8_.html">How can I install Linux on a Packard Bell Easynote LV preinstalled with Windows
8?
</a>
11408 <p>I've run into quite a problem the last few days. I bought three
11409 new laptops for my parents and a few others. I bought Packard Bell
11410 Easynote LV to run Kubuntu on and use as their home computer. But I
11411 am completely unable to figure out how to install Linux on it. The
11412 computer is preinstalled with Windows
8, and I suspect it uses UEFI
11413 instead of a BIOS to boot.
</p>
11415 <p>The problem is that I am unable to get it to PXE boot, and unable
11416 to get it to boot the Linux installer from my USB stick. I have yet
11417 to try the DVD install, and still hope it will work. when I turn on
11418 the computer, there is no information on what buttons to press to get
11419 the normal boot menu. I expect to get some boot menu to select PXE or
11420 USB stick booting. When booting, it first ask for the language to
11421 use, then for some regional settings, and finally if I will accept the
11422 Windows
8 terms of use. As these terms are completely unacceptable to
11423 me, I have no other choice but to turn off the computer and try again
11424 to get it to boot the Linux installer.
</p>
11426 <p>I have gathered my findings so far on a Linlap page about the
11427 <a href=
"http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
11428 EasyNote LV
</a> model. If you have any idea how to get Linux
11429 installed on this machine, please get in touch or update that wiki
11430 page. If I can't find a way to install Linux, I will have to return
11431 the laptop to the seller and find another machine for my parents.
</p>
11433 <p>I wonder, is this the way Linux will be forced out of the market
11434 using UEFI and "secure boot" by making it impossible to install Linux
11435 on new Laptops?
</p>
11441 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
11446 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11448 <div class=
"entry">
11449 <div class=
"title">
11450 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/How_to_transform_a_Debian_based_system_to_a_Debian_Edu_installation.html">How to transform a Debian based system to a Debian Edu installation
</a>
11456 <p><a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a> is
11457 an operating system based on Debian intended for use in schools. It
11458 contain a turn-key solution for the computer network provided to
11459 pupils in the primary schools. It provide both the central server,
11460 network boot servers and desktop environments with heaps of
11461 educational software. The project was founded almost
12 years ago,
11462 2001-
07-
02. If you want to support the project, which is in need for
11463 cash to fund developer gatherings and other project related activity,
11464 <a href=
"http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">please
11465 donate some money
</a>.
11467 <p>A topic that come up again and again on the Debian Edu mailing
11468 lists and elsewhere, is the question on how to transform a Debian or
11469 Ubuntu installation into a Debian Edu installation. It isn't very
11470 hard, and last week I wrote a script to replicate the steps done by
11471 the Debian Edu installer.
</p>
11474 <a href=
"http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/branches/wheezy/debian-edu-config/share/debian-edu-config/tools/debian-edu-bless?view=markup">debian-edu-bless
<a/>
11475 in the debian-edu-config package, will go through these six steps and
11476 transform an existing Debian Wheezy or Ubuntu (untested) installation
11477 into a Debian Edu Workstation:
</p>
11481 <li>Add skolelinux related APT sources.
</li>
11482 <li>Create /etc/debian-edu/config with the wanted configuration.
</li>
11483 <li>Install debian-edu-install to load preseeding values and pull in
11484 our configuration.
</li>
11485 <li>Preseed debconf database with profile setup in
11486 /etc/debian-edu/config, and run tasksel to install packages
11487 according to the profile specified in the config above,
11488 overriding some of the Debian automation machinery.
</li>
11489 <li>Run debian-edu-cfengine-D installation to configure everything
11490 that could not be done using preseeding.
</li>
11491 <li>Ask for a reboot to enable all the configuration changes.
</li>
11495 <p>There are some steps in the Debian Edu installation that can not be
11496 replicated like this. Disk partitioning and LVM setup, for example.
11497 So this script just assume there is enough disk space to install all
11498 the needed packages.
</p>
11500 <p>The script was created to help a Debian Edu student working on
11501 setting up
<a href=
"http://www.raspberrypi.org">Raspberry Pi
</a> as a
11502 Debian Edu client, and using it he can take the existing
11503 <a href=
"http://www.raspbian.org/FrontPage">Raspbian
</a> installation and
11504 transform it into a fully functioning Debian Edu Workstation (or
11505 Roaming Workstation, or whatever :).
</p>
11507 <p>The default setting in the script is to create a KDE Workstation.
11508 If a LXDE based Roaming workstation is wanted instead, modify the
11509 PROFILE and DESKTOP values at the top to look like this instead:
</p>
11512 PROFILE="Roaming-Workstation"
11516 <p>The script could even become useful to set up Debian Edu servers in
11517 the cloud, by starting with a virtual Debian installation at some
11518 virtual hosting service and setting up all the services on first
11525 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
11530 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11532 <div class=
"entry">
11533 <div class=
"title">
11534 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Debian__the_Linux_distribution_of_choice_for_LEGO_designers_.html">Debian, the Linux distribution of choice for LEGO designers?
</a>
11541 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">I
11542 announced a
</a> new
<a href=
"irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">IRC
11543 channel #debian-lego
</a>, for those of us in the Debian and Linux
11544 community interested in
<a href=
"http://www.lego.com/">LEGO
</a>, the
11545 marvellous construction system from Denmark. We also created
11546 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">a wiki page
</a> to have
11547 a place to take notes and write down our plans and hopes. And several
11548 people showed up to help. I was very happy to see the effect of my
11549 call. Since the small start, we have a debtags tag
11550 <a href=
"http://debtags.debian.net/search/bytag?wl=hardware::hobby:lego">hardware::hobby:lego
</a>
11551 tag for LEGO related packages, and now count
10 packages related to
11552 LEGO and
<a href=
"http://mindstorms.lego.com/">Mindstorms
</a>:
</p>
11555 <tr><td><a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/brickos">brickos
</a></td><td>alternative OS for LEGO Mindstorms RCX. Supports development in C/C++
</td></tr>
11556 <tr><td><a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/leocad">leocad
</a></td><td>virtual brick CAD software
</td></tr>
11557 <tr><td><a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/libnxt">libnxt
</a></td><td>utility library for talking to the LEGO Mindstorms NX
</td></tr>
11558 <tr><td><a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/lnpd">lnpd
</a></td><td>daemon for LNP communication with BrickOS
</td></tr>
11559 <tr><td><a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/nbc">nbc
</a></td><td>compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks
</td></tr>
11560 <tr><td><a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/nqc">nqc
</a></td><td>Not Quite C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms RCX
</td></tr>
11561 <tr><td><a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/python-nxt">python-nxt
</a></td><td>python driver/interface/wrapper for the Lego Mindstorms NXT robot
</td></tr>
11562 <tr><td><a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/python-nxt-filer">python-nxt-filer
</a></td><td>simple GUI to manage files on a LEGO Mindstorms NXT
</td></tr>
11563 <tr><td><a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/scratch">scratch
</a></td><td>easy to use programming environment for ages
8 and up
</td></tr>
11564 <tr><td><a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/t2n">t2n
</a></td><td>simple command-line tool for Lego NXT
</td></tr>
11567 <p>Some of these are available in Wheezy, and all but one are
11568 currently available in Jessie/testing. leocad is so far only
11569 available in experimental.
</p>
11571 <p>If you care about LEGO in Debian, please join us on IRC and help
11572 adding the rest of the great free software tools available on Linux
11573 for LEGO designers.
</p>
11579 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/lego">lego
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/robot">robot
</a>.
11584 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11586 <div class=
"entry">
11587 <div class=
"title">
11588 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Debian_Wheezy_is_out___and_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_should_soon_follow___newinwheezy.html">Debian Wheezy is out - and Debian Edu / Skolelinux should soon follow! #newinwheezy
</a>
11594 <p>When I woke up this morning, I was very happy to see that the
11595 <a href=
"http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130504">release announcement
11596 for Debian Wheezy
</a> was waiting in my mail box. This is a great
11597 Debian release, and I expect to move my machines at home over to it fairly
11600 <p>The new debian release contain heaps of new stuff, and one program
11601 in particular make me very happy to see included. The
11602 <a href=
"http://scratch.mit.edu/">Scratch
</a> program, made famous by
11603 the
<a href=
"http://www.code.org/">Teach kids code
</a> movement, is
11604 included for the first time. Alongside similar programs like
11605 <a href=
"http://edu.kde.org/kturtle/">kturtle
</a> and
11606 <a href=
"http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Turtle_Art">turtleart
</a>,
11607 it allow for visual programming where syntax errors can not happen,
11608 and a friendly programming environment for learning to control the
11609 computer. Scratch will also be included in the next release of Debian
11612 <p>And now that Wheezy is wrapped up, we can wrap up the next Debian
11613 Edu/Skolelinux release too. The
11614 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/04/msg00132.html">first
11615 alpha release
</a> went out last week, and the next should soon
11622 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
11627 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11629 <div class=
"entry">
11630 <div class=
"title">
11631 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Isenkram_0_2_finally_in_the_Debian_archive.html">Isenkram
0.2 finally in the Debian archive
</a>
11637 <p>Today the
<a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram
11638 package
</a> finally made it into the archive, after lingering in NEW
11639 for many months. I uploaded it to the Debian experimental suite
11640 2013-
01-
27, and today it was accepted into the archive.
</p>
11642 <p>Isenkram is a system for suggesting to users what packages to
11643 install to work with a pluggable hardware device. The suggestion pop
11644 up when the device is plugged in. For example if a Lego Mindstorm NXT
11645 is inserted, it will suggest to install the program needed to program
11646 the NXT controller. Give it a go, and report bugs and suggestions to
11653 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram
</a>.
11658 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11660 <div class=
"entry">
11661 <div class=
"title">
11662 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Bitcoin_GUI_now_available_from_Debian_unstable__and_Ubuntu_raring_.html">Bitcoin GUI now available from Debian/unstable (and Ubuntu/raring)
</a>
11669 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">last
11670 bitcoin related blog post
</a> mentioned that the new
11671 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin package
</a> for
11672 Debian was waiting in NEW. It was accepted by the Debian ftp-masters
11673 2013-
01-
19, and have been available in unstable since then. It was
11674 automatically copied to Ubuntu, and is available in their Raring
11677 <p>But there is a strange problem with the build that block this new
11678 version from being available on the i386 and kfreebsd-i386
11679 architectures. For some strange reason, the autobuilders in Debian
11680 for these architectures fail to run the test suite on these
11681 architectures (
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/672524">BTS #
672524</a>).
11682 We are so far unable to reproduce it when building it manually, and
11683 no-one have been able to propose a fix. If you got an idea what is
11684 failing, please let us know via the BTS.
</p>
11686 <p>One feature that is annoying me with of the bitcoin client, because
11687 I often run low on disk space, is the fact that the client will exit
11688 if it run short on space (
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/696715">BTS
11689 #
696715</a>). So make sure you have enough disk space when you run
11692 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
11693 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
11694 <b><a href=
"bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a></b>.
</p>
11700 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
11705 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11707 <div class=
"entry">
11708 <div class=
"title">
11709 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">Welcome to the world, Isenkram!
</a>
11716 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">asked
11717 for testers
</a> for my prototype for making Debian better at handling
11718 pluggable hardware devices, which I
11719 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">set
11720 out to create
</a> earlier this month. Several valuable testers showed
11721 up, and caused me to really want to to open up the development to more
11722 people. But before I did this, I want to come up with a sensible name
11723 for this project. Today I finally decided on a new name, and I have
11724 renamed the project from hw-support-handler to this new name. In the
11725 process, I moved the source to git and made it available as a
11726 <a href=
"http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/isenkram.git">collab-maint
</a>
11727 repository in Debian. The new name? It is
<strong>Isenkram
</strong>.
11728 To fetch and build the latest version of the source, use
</p>
11731 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/collab-maint/isenkram.git
11732 cd isenkram && git-buildpackage -us -uc
11735 <p>I have not yet adjusted all files to use the new name yet. If you
11736 want to hack on the source or improve the package, please go ahead.
11737 But please talk to me first on IRC or via email before you do major
11738 changes, to make sure we do not step on each others toes. :)
</p>
11740 <p>If you wonder what 'isenkram' is, it is a Norwegian word for iron
11741 stuff, typically meaning tools, nails, screws, etc. Typical hardware
11742 stuff, in other words. I've been told it is the Norwegian variant of
11743 the German word eisenkram, for those that are familiar with that
11746 <p><strong>Update
2013-
01-
26</strong>: Added -us -us to build
11747 instructions, to avoid confusing people with an error from the signing
11750 <p><strong>Update
2013-
01-
27</strong>: Switch to HTTP URL for the git
11751 clone argument to avoid the need for authentication.
</p>
11757 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram
</a>.
11762 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11764 <div class=
"entry">
11765 <div class=
"title">
11766 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">First prototype ready making hardware easier to use in Debian
</a>
11772 <p>Early this month I set out to try to
11773 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">improve
11774 the Debian support for pluggable hardware devices
</a>. Now my
11775 prototype is working, and it is ready for a larger audience. To test
11777 <a href=
"http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">source
11778 from the Debian Edu subversion repository
</a>, build and install the
11779 package. You might have to log out and in again activate the
11780 autostart script.
</p>
11782 <p>The design is simple:
</p>
11786 <li>Add desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ causing a program
11787 hw-support-handlerd to start when the user log in.
</li>
11789 <li>This program listen for kernel events about new hardware (directly
11790 from the kernel like udev does), not using HAL dbus events as I
11791 initially did.
</li>
11793 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware modalias in
11794 the APT database, a database
11795 <a href=
"http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=markup">available
11796 via HTTP
</a> and a database available as part of the package.
</li>
11798 <li>If a package is mapped to the hardware in question, the package
11799 isn't installed yet and this is the first time the hardware was
11800 plugged in, show a desktop notification suggesting to install the
11801 package or packages.
</li>
11803 <li>If the user click on the 'install package now' button, ask
11804 aptdaemon via the PackageKit API to install the requrired package.
</li>
11806 <li>aptdaemon ask for root password or sudo password, and install the
11807 package while showing progress information in a window.
</li>
11811 <p>I still need to come up with a better name for the system. Here
11812 are some screen shots showing the prototype in action. First the
11813 notification, then the password request, and finally the request to
11814 approve all the dependencies. Sorry for the Norwegian Bokmål GUI.
</p>
11816 <p><img src=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-1-notification.png">
11817 <br><img src=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-2-password.png">
11818 <br><img src=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-3-dependencies.png">
11819 <br><img src=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-4-installing.png">
11820 <br><img src=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-5-installing-details.png" width=
"70%"></p>
11822 <p>The prototype still need to be improved with longer timeouts, but
11823 is already useful. The database of hardware to package mappings also
11824 need more work. It is currently compatible with the Ubuntu way of
11825 storing such information in the package control file, but could be
11826 changed to use other formats instead or in addition to the current
11827 method. I've dropped the use of discover for this mapping, as the
11828 modalias approach is more flexible and easier to use on Linux as long
11829 as the Linux kernel expose its modalias strings directly.
</p>
11831 <p><strong>Update
2013-
01-
21 16:
50</strong>: Due to popular demand,
11832 here is the command required to check out and build the source: Use
11834 svn://svn.debian.org/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/; cd
11835 hw-support-handler; debuild
</tt>'. If you lack debuild, install the
11836 devscripts package.
</p>
11838 <p><strong>Update
2013-
01-
23 12:
00</strong>: The project is now
11839 renamed to Isenkram and the source moved from the Debian Edu
11840 subversion repository to a Debian collab-maint git repository. See
11841 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">build
11842 instructions
</a> for details.
</p>
11848 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram
</a>.
11853 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11855 <div class=
"entry">
11856 <div class=
"title">
11857 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">Thank you Thinkpad X41, for your long and trustworthy service
</a>
11863 <p>This Christmas my trusty old laptop died. It died quietly and
11864 suddenly in bed. With a quiet whimper, it went completely quiet and
11865 black. The power button was no longer able to turn it on. It was a
11866 IBM Thinkpad X41, and the best laptop I ever had. Better than both
11867 Thinkpads X30, X31, X40, X60, X61 and X61S. Far better than the
11868 Compaq I had before that. Now I need to find a replacement. To keep
11869 going during Christmas, I moved the one year old SSD disk to my old
11870 X40 where it fitted (only one I had left that could use it), but it is
11871 not a durable solution.
11873 <p>My laptop needs are fairly modest. This is my wishlist from when I
11874 got a new one more than
10 years ago. It still holds true.:)
</p>
11878 <li>Lightweight (around
1 kg) and small volume (preferably smaller
11880 <li>Robust, it will be in my backpack every day.
</li>
11881 <li>Three button mouse and a mouse pin instead of touch pad.
</li>
11882 <li>Long battery life time. Preferable a week.
</li>
11883 <li>Internal WIFI network card.
</li>
11884 <li>Internal Twisted Pair network card.
</li>
11885 <li>Some USB slots (
2-
3 is plenty)
</li>
11886 <li>Good keyboard - similar to the Thinkpad.
</li>
11887 <li>Video resolution at least
1024x768, with size around
12" (A4 paper
11889 <li>Hardware supported by Debian Stable, ie the default kernel and
11890 X.org packages.
</li>
11891 <li>Quiet, preferably fan free (or at least not using the fan most of
11896 <p>You will notice that there are no RAM and CPU requirements in the
11897 list. The reason is simply that the specifications on laptops the
11898 last
10-
15 years have been sufficient for my needs, and I have to look
11899 at other features to choose my laptop. But are there still made as
11900 robust laptops as my X41? The Thinkpad X60/X61 proved to be less
11901 robust, and Thinkpads seem to be heading in the wrong direction since
11902 Lenovo took over. But I've been told that X220 and X1 Carbon might
11903 still be useful.
</p>
11905 <p>Perhaps I should rethink my needs, and look for a pad with an
11906 external keyboard? I'll have to check the
11907 <a href=
"http://www.linux-laptop.net/">Linux Laptops site
</a> for
11908 well-supported laptops, or perhaps just buy one preinstalled from one
11909 of the vendors listed on the
<a href=
"http://linuxpreloaded.com/">Linux
11910 Pre-loaded site
</a>.
</p>
11916 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
11921 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11923 <div class=
"entry">
11924 <div class=
"title">
11925 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/How_to_find_a_browser_plugin_supporting_a_given_MIME_type.html">How to find a browser plugin supporting a given MIME type
</a>
11931 <p>Some times I try to figure out which Iceweasel browser plugin to
11932 install to get support for a given MIME type. Thanks to
11933 <a href=
"https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Plugins">specifications
11934 done by Ubuntu
</a> and Mozilla, it is possible to do this in Debian.
11935 Unfortunately, not very many packages provide the needed meta
11936 information, Anyway, here is a small script to look up all browser
11937 plugin packages announcing ther MIME support using this specification:
</p>
11943 def pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
11944 cache = apt.Cache()
11948 version = pkg.candidate
11949 if version is None:
11950 version = pkg.installed
11951 if version is None:
11953 record = version.record
11954 if not record.has_key('Npp-MimeType'):
11956 mime_types = record['Npp-MimeType'].split(',')
11957 for t in mime_types:
11958 t = t.rstrip().strip()
11960 thepkgs.append(pkg.name)
11962 mimetype = "audio/ogg"
11963 if
1 < len(sys.argv):
11964 mimetype = sys.argv[
1]
11965 print "Browser plugin packages supporting %s:" % mimetype
11966 for pkg in pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
11970 <p>It can be used like this to look up a given MIME type:
</p>
11973 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype
11974 Browser plugin packages supporting audio/ogg:
11976 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype application/x-shockwave-flash
11977 Browser plugin packages supporting application/x-shockwave-flash:
11978 browser-plugin-gnash
11982 <p>In Ubuntu this mechanism is combined with support in the browser
11983 itself to query for plugins and propose to install the needed
11984 packages. It would be great if Debian supported such feature too. Is
11985 anyone working on adding it?
</p>
11987 <p><strong>Update
2013-
01-
18 14:
20</strong>: The Debian BTS
11988 request for icweasel support for this feature is
11989 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/484010">#
484010</a> from
2008 (and
11990 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/698426">#
698426</a> from today). Lack
11991 of manpower and wish for a different design is the reason thus feature
11992 is not yet in iceweasel from Debian.
</p>
11998 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
12003 <div class=
"padding"></div>
12005 <div class=
"entry">
12006 <div class=
"title">
12007 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/What_is_the_most_supported_MIME_type_in_Debian_.html">What is the most supported MIME type in Debian?
</a>
12013 <p>The
<a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/AppStreamDebianProposal">DEP-
11
12014 proposal to add AppStream information to the Debian archive
</a>, is a
12015 proposal to make it possible for a Desktop application to propose to
12016 the user some package to install to gain support for a given MIME
12017 type, font, library etc. that is currently missing. With such
12018 mechanism in place, it would be possible for the desktop to
12019 automatically propose and install leocad if some LDraw file is
12020 downloaded by the browser.
</p>
12022 <p>To get some idea about the current content of the archive, I decided
12023 to write a simple program to extract all .desktop files from the
12024 Debian archive and look up the claimed MIME support there. The result
12025 can be found on the
12026 <a href=
"http://ftp.skolelinux.org/pub/AppStreamTest">Skolelinux FTP
12027 site
</a>. Using the collected information, it become possible to
12028 answer the question in the title. Here are the
20 most supported MIME
12029 types in Debian stable (Squeeze), testing (Wheezy) and unstable (Sid).
12030 The complete list is available from the link above.
</p>
12032 <p><strong>Debian Stable:
</strong></p>
12036 ----- -----------------------
12050 18 audio/x-musepack
12052 18 application/x-ogg
12059 <p><strong>Debian Testing:
</strong></p>
12063 ----- -----------------------
12079 18 application/x-ogg
12082 17 audio/x-musepack
12086 <p><strong>Debian Unstable:
</strong></p>
12090 ----- -----------------------
12107 18 application/x-ogg
12108 17 audio/x-musepack
12113 <p>I am told that PackageKit can provide an API to access the kind of
12114 information mentioned in DEP-
11. I have not yet had time to look at
12115 it, but hope the PackageKit people in Debian are on top of these
12118 <p><strong>Update
2013-
01-
16 13:
35</strong>: Updated numbers after
12119 discovering a typo in my script.
</p>
12125 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
12130 <div class=
"padding"></div>
12132 <div class=
"entry">
12133 <div class=
"title">
12134 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Using_modalias_info_to_find_packages_handling_my_hardware.html">Using modalias info to find packages handling my hardware
</a>
12140 <p>Yesterday, I wrote about the
12141 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">modalias
12142 values provided by the Linux kernel
</a> following my hope for
12143 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">better
12144 dongle support in Debian
</a>. Using this knowledge, I have tested how
12145 modalias values attached to package names can be used to map packages
12146 to hardware. This allow the system to look up and suggest relevant
12147 packages when I plug in some new hardware into my machine, and replace
12148 discover and discover-data as the database used to map hardware to
12151 <p>I create a modaliases file with entries like the following,
12152 containing package name, kernel module name (if relevant, otherwise
12153 the package name) and globs matching the relevant hardware
12157 Package: package-name
12158 <br>Modaliases: module(modaliasglob, modaliasglob, modaliasglob)
</p>
12161 <p>It is fairly trivial to write code to find the relevant packages
12162 for a given modalias value using this file.
</p>
12164 <p>An entry like this would suggest the video and picture application
12165 cheese for many USB web cameras (interface bus class
0E01):
</p>
12169 <br>Modaliases: cheese(usb:v*p*d*dc*dsc*dp*ic0Eisc01ip*)
</p>
12172 <p>An entry like this would suggest the pcmciautils package when a
12173 CardBus bridge (bus class
0607) PCI device is present:
</p>
12176 Package: pcmciautils
12177 <br>Modaliases: pcmciautils(pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc06sc07i*)
12180 <p>An entry like this would suggest the package colorhug-client when
12181 plugging in a ColorHug with USB IDs
04D8:F8DA:
</p>
12184 Package: colorhug-client
12185 <br>Modaliases: colorhug-client(usb:v04D8pF8DAd*)
</p>
12188 <p>I believe the format is compatible with the format of the Packages
12189 file in the Debian archive. Ubuntu already uses their Packages file
12190 to store their mappings from packages to hardware.
</p>
12192 <p>By adding a XB-Modaliases: header in debian/control, any .deb can
12193 announce the hardware it support in a way my prototype understand.
12194 This allow those publishing packages in an APT source outside the
12195 Debian archive as well as those backporting packages to make sure the
12196 hardware mapping are included in the package meta information. I've
12197 tested such header in the pymissile package, and its modalias mapping
12198 is working as it should with my prototype. It even made it to Ubuntu
12201 <p>To test if it was possible to look up supported hardware using only
12202 the shell tools available in the Debian installer, I wrote a shell
12203 implementation of the lookup code. The idea is to create files for
12204 each modalias and let the shell do the matching. Please check out and
12206 <a href=
"http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/hw-support-lookup?view=co">hw-support-lookup
</a>
12207 shell script. It run without any extra dependencies and fetch the
12208 hardware mappings from the Debian archive and the subversion
12209 repository where I currently work on my prototype.
</p>
12211 <p>When I use it on a machine with a yubikey inserted, it suggest to
12212 install yubikey-personalization:
</p>
12215 % ./hw-support-lookup
12216 <br>yubikey-personalization
12220 <p>When I run it on my Thinkpad X40 with a PCMCIA/CardBus slot, it
12221 propose to install the pcmciautils package:
</p>
12224 % ./hw-support-lookup
12229 <p>If you know of any hardware-package mapping that should be added to
12230 <a href=
"http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=co">my
12231 database
</a>, please tell me about it.
</p>
12233 <p>It could be possible to generate several of the mappings between
12234 packages and hardware. One source would be to look at packages with
12235 kernel modules, ie packages with *.ko files in /lib/modules/, and
12236 extract their modalias information. Another would be to look at
12237 packages with udev rules, ie packages with files in
12238 /lib/udev/rules.d/, and extract their vendor/model information to
12239 generate a modalias matching rule. I have not tested any of these to
12240 see if it work.
</p>
12242 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
12243 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
12244 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
12245 <a href=
"irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel
</a>.
</p>
12251 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram
</a>.
12256 <div class=
"padding"></div>
12258 <div class=
"entry">
12259 <div class=
"title">
12260 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">Modalias strings - a practical way to map "stuff" to hardware
</a>
12266 <p>While looking into how to look up Debian packages based on hardware
12267 information, to find the packages that support a given piece of
12268 hardware, I refreshed my memory regarding modalias values, and decided
12269 to document the details. Here are my findings so far, also available
12271 <a href=
"http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
12272 Debian Edu subversion repository
</a>:
12274 <p><strong>Modalias decoded
</strong></p>
12276 <p>This document try to explain what the different types of modalias
12277 values stands for. It is in part based on information from
12278 <URL:
<a href=
"https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias">https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias
</a> >,
12279 <URL:
<a href=
"http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/26132/how-to-assign-usb-driver-to-device">http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/
26132/how-to-assign-usb-driver-to-device
</a> >,
12280 <URL:
<a href=
"http://code.metager.de/source/history/linux/stable/scripts/mod/file2alias.c">http://code.metager.de/source/history/linux/stable/scripts/mod/file2alias.c
</a> > and
12281 <URL:
<a href=
"http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/dmidecode/dmidecode.c?root=dmidecode&view=markup">http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/dmidecode/dmidecode.c?root=dmidecode&view=markup
</a> >.
12283 <p>The modalias entries for a given Linux machine can be found using
12284 this shell script:
</p>
12287 find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -
0 cat | sort -u
12290 <p>The supported modalias globs for a given kernel module can be found
12294 % /sbin/modinfo psmouse | grep alias:
12295 alias: serio:ty05pr*id*ex*
12296 alias: serio:ty01pr*id*ex*
12300 <p><strong>PCI subtype
</strong></p>
12302 <p>A typical PCI entry can look like this. This is an Intel Host
12303 Bridge memory controller:
</p>
12306 pci:v00008086d00002770sv00001028sd000001ADbc06sc00i00
12309 <p>This represent these values:
</p>
12312 v
00008086 (vendor)
12313 d
00002770 (device)
12314 sv
00001028 (subvendor)
12315 sd
000001AD (subdevice)
12317 sc
00 (bus subclass)
12321 <p>The vendor/device values are the same values outputted from 'lspci
12322 -n' as
8086:
2770. The bus class/subclass is also shown by lspci as
12323 0600. The
0600 class is a host bridge. Other useful bus values are
12324 0300 (VGA compatible card) and
0200 (Ethernet controller).
</p>
12326 <p>Not sure how to figure out the interface value, nor what it
12329 <p><strong>USB subtype
</strong></p>
12331 <p>Some typical USB entries can look like this. This is an internal
12332 USB hub in a laptop:
</p>
12335 usb:v1D6Bp0001d0206dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00
12338 <p>Here is the values included in this alias:
</p>
12341 v
1D6B (device vendor)
12342 p
0001 (device product)
12344 dc
09 (device class)
12345 dsc
00 (device subclass)
12346 dp
00 (device protocol)
12347 ic
09 (interface class)
12348 isc
00 (interface subclass)
12349 ip
00 (interface protocol)
12352 <p>The
0900 device class/subclass means hub. Some times the relevant
12353 class is in the interface class section. For a simple USB web camera,
12354 these alias entries show up:
</p>
12357 usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc01ip00
12358 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc02ip00
12359 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc01ip00
12360 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc02ip00
12363 <p>Interface class
0E01 is video control,
0E02 is video streaming (aka
12364 camera),
0101 is audio control device and
0102 is audio streaming (aka
12365 microphone). Thus this is a camera with microphone included.
</p>
12367 <p><strong>ACPI subtype
</strong></p>
12369 <p>The ACPI type is used for several non-PCI/USB stuff. This is an IR
12370 receiver in a Thinkpad X40:
</p>
12373 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
12376 <p>The values between the colons are IDs.
</p>
12378 <p><strong>DMI subtype
</strong></p>
12380 <p>The DMI table contain lots of information about the computer case
12381 and model. This is an entry for a IBM Thinkpad X40, fetched from
12382 /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/modalias:
</p>
12385 dmi:bvnIBM:bvr1UETB6WW(
1.66):bd06/
15/
2005:svnIBM:pn2371H4G:pvrThinkPadX40:rvnIBM:rn2371H4G:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
12388 <p>The values present are
</p>
12391 bvn IBM (BIOS vendor)
12392 bvr
1UETB
6WW(
1.66) (BIOS version)
12393 bd
06/
15/
2005 (BIOS date)
12394 svn IBM (system vendor)
12395 pn
2371H4G (product name)
12396 pvr ThinkPadX40 (product version)
12397 rvn IBM (board vendor)
12398 rn
2371H4G (board name)
12399 rvr NotAvailable (board version)
12400 cvn IBM (chassis vendor)
12401 ct
10 (chassis type)
12402 cvr NotAvailable (chassis version)
12405 <p>The chassis type
10 is Notebook. Other interesting values can be
12406 found in the dmidecode source:
</p>
12410 4 Low Profile Desktop
12423 17 Main Server Chassis
12424 18 Expansion Chassis
12426 20 Bus Expansion Chassis
12427 21 Peripheral Chassis
12429 23 Rack Mount Chassis
12438 <p>The chassis type values are not always accurately set in the DMI
12439 table. For example my home server is a tower, but the DMI modalias
12440 claim it is a desktop.
</p>
12442 <p><strong>SerIO subtype
</strong></p>
12444 <p>This type is used for PS/
2 mouse plugs. One example is from my
12448 serio:ty01pr00id00ex00
12451 <p>The values present are
</p>
12460 <p>This type is supported by the psmouse driver. I am not sure what
12461 the valid values are.
</p>
12463 <p><strong>Other subtypes
</strong></p>
12465 <p>There are heaps of other modalias subtypes according to
12466 file2alias.c. There is the rest of the list from that source: amba,
12467 ap, bcma, ccw, css, eisa, hid, i2c, ieee1394, input, ipack, isapnp,
12468 mdio, of, parisc, pcmcia, platform, scsi, sdio, spi, ssb, vio, virtio,
12469 vmbus, x86cpu and zorro. I did not spend time documenting all of
12470 these, as they do not seem relevant for my intended use with mapping
12471 hardware to packages when new stuff is inserted during run time.
</p>
12473 <p><strong>Looking up kernel modules using modalias values
</strong></p>
12475 <p>To check which kernel modules provide support for a given modalias,
12476 one can use the following shell script:
</p>
12479 for id in $(find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -
0 cat | sort -u); do \
12481 /sbin/modprobe --show-depends "$id"|sed 's/^/ /' ; \
12485 <p>The output can look like this (only the first few entries as the
12486 list is very long on my test machine):
</p>
12490 insmod /lib/modules/
2.6.32-
5-
686/kernel/drivers/acpi/ac.ko
12492 FATAL: Module acpi:device: not found.
12494 insmod /lib/modules/
2.6.32-
5-
686/kernel/drivers/char/nvram.ko
12495 insmod /lib/modules/
2.6.32-
5-
686/kernel/drivers/leds/led-class.ko
12496 insmod /lib/modules/
2.6.32-
5-
686/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko
12497 insmod /lib/modules/
2.6.32-
5-
686/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.ko
12498 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
12499 insmod /lib/modules/
2.6.32-
5-
686/kernel/lib/crc-ccitt.ko
12500 insmod /lib/modules/
2.6.32-
5-
686/kernel/net/irda/irda.ko
12501 insmod /lib/modules/
2.6.32-
5-
686/kernel/drivers/net/irda/nsc-ircc.ko
12505 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
12506 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
12507 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
12508 <a href=
"irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel
</a>.
</p>
12510 <p><strong>Update
2013-
01-
15:
</strong> Rewrite "cat $(find ...)" to
12511 "find ... -print0 | xargs -
0 cat" to make sure it handle directories
12512 in /sys/ with space in them.
</p>
12518 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram
</a>.
12523 <div class=
"padding"></div>
12525 <div class=
"entry">
12526 <div class=
"title">
12527 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Moved_the_pymissile_Debian_packaging_to_collab_maint.html">Moved the pymissile Debian packaging to collab-maint
</a>
12533 <p>As part of my investigation on how to improve the support in Debian
12534 for hardware dongles, I dug up my old Mark and Spencer USB Rocket
12535 Launcher and updated the Debian package
12536 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">pymissile
</a> to make
12537 sure udev will fix the device permissions when it is plugged in. I
12538 also added a "Modaliases" header to test it in the Debian archive and
12539 hopefully make the package be proposed by jockey in Ubuntu when a user
12540 plug in his rocket launcher. In the process I moved the source to a
12541 git repository under collab-maint, to make it easier for any DD to
12542 contribute.
<a href=
"http://code.google.com/p/pymissile/">Upstream
</a>
12543 is not very active, but the software still work for me even after five
12544 years of relative silence. The new git repository is not listed in
12545 the uploaded package yet, because I want to test the other changes a
12546 bit more before I upload the new version. If you want to check out
12547 the new version with a .desktop file included, visit the
12548 <a href=
"http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/pymissile.git">gitweb
12549 view
</a> or use "
<tt>git clone
12550 git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/pymissile.git
</tt>".</p>
12556 Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian
">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/isenkram
">isenkram</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/robot
">robot</a>.
12561 <div class="padding
"></div>
12563 <div class="entry
">
12564 <div class="title
">
12565 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html
">Lets make hardware dongles easier to use in Debian</a>
12571 <p>One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
12572 general, is that there is a great package management system with the
12573 ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
12574 from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
12575 install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
12576 machine. Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
12577 Linux distribution. When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
12578 suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
12579 I need to talk to it. When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
12580 yubikey-personalization package. The information required to do this
12581 is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.</p>
12583 <p>Some years ago, I proposed to
12584 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/
2010/
05/msg01206.html
">use
12585 the discover subsystem to implement this</a>. The idea is fairly
12590 <li>Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
12591 starting when a user log in.</li>
12593 <li>Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
12594 hardware is inserted into the computer.</li>
12596 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
12597 database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
12600 <li>Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
12601 package, and make it easy to install it.</li>
12605 <p>I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
12606 initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
12607 discover database to find packages and
12608 <a href="http://www.packagekit.org/
">PackageKit</a> to install
12611 <p>Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
12612 draft package is now checked into
12613 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/
">the
12614 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>. In the process, I updated the
12615 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html
">discover-data</a>
12616 package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
12617 the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
12618 2.2013.01.09 to unstable. I also discovered that the current
12619 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html
">discover</a>
12620 package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
12621 /proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present. I ported it to use
12622 libusb as a fall back option to get it working. The fixed package
12623 version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn't upload it to unstable
12624 because of the freeze).</p>
12626 <p>With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
12627 desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
12630 <p align="center
"><img src="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/
2013-
01-
09-hw-autoinstall.png
"></p>
12632 <p>For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
12633 install the proposed packages by pressing the "Please install
12634 program(s)" button should to be implemented.
</p>
12636 <p>If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
12637 happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
12638 from hardware to Debian packages. Check if 'discover-pkginstall -l'
12639 list the package you would like to have installed when a given
12640 hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
12641 reportbug if it isn't. Or, if you know of a better way to provide
12642 such mapping, please let me know.
</p>
12644 <p>This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
12645 should be considered before it is ready for production use. Is dbus
12646 the correct way to detect new hardware? At the moment I look for HAL
12647 dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
12648 on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop. Are there better events to use?
12649 How should the user be notified? Is the desktop notification
12650 mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
12651 popup instead? How should packages be installed? When should they
12652 not be installed?
</p>
12654 <p>If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
12655 please send me an email. :)
</p>
12661 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram
</a>.
12666 <div class=
"padding"></div>
12668 <div class=
"entry">
12669 <div class=
"title">
12670 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">New IRC channel for LEGO designers using Debian
</a>
12676 <p>During Christmas, I have worked a bit on the Debian support for
12677 <a href=
"http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx">LEGO Mindstorm
12678 NXT
</a>. My son and I have played a bit with my NXT set, and I
12679 discovered I had to build all the tools myself because none were
12680 already in Debian Squeeze. If Debian support for LEGO is something
12681 you care about, please join me on the IRC channel
12682 <a href=
"irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego
</a> (server
12683 irc.debian.org). There is a lot that could be done to improve the
12684 Debian support for LEGO designers. For example both CAD software
12685 and Mindstorm compilers are missing. :)
</p>
12687 <p>Update
2012-
01-
03: A
12688 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">project page
</a>
12689 including links to Lego related packages is now available.
</p>
12695 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/lego">lego
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/robot">robot
</a>.
12700 <div class=
"padding"></div>
12702 <div class=
"entry">
12703 <div class=
"title">
12704 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">How to backport bitcoin-qt version
0.7.2-
2 to Debian Squeeze
</a>
12710 <p>Let me start by wishing you all marry Christmas and a happy new
12711 year! I hope next year will prove to be a good year.
</p>
12713 <p><a href=
"http://www.bitcoin.org/">Bitcoin
</a>, the digital
12714 decentralised "currency" that allow people to transfer bitcoins
12715 between each other with minimal overhead, is a very interesting
12716 experiment. And as I wrote a few days ago, the bitcoin situation in
12717 <a href=
"http://www.debian.org/">Debian
</a> is about to improve a bit.
12718 The
<a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">new debian source
12719 package
</a> (version
0.7.2-
2) was uploaded yesterday, and is waiting
12720 in
<a href=
"http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the NEW queue
</A>
12721 for one of the ftpmasters to approve the new bitcoin-qt package
12724 <p>And thanks to the great work of Jonas and the rest of the bitcoin
12725 team in Debian, you can easily test the package in Debian Squeeze
12726 using the following steps to get a set of working packages:
</p>
12729 git clone git://git.debian.org/git/collab-maint/bitcoin
12731 DEB_MAINTAINER_MODE=
1 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp fakeroot debian/rules clean
12732 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp git-buildpackage --git-ignore-new
12733 </pre></blockquote>
12735 <p>You might have to install some build dependencies as well. The
12736 list of commands should give you two packages, bitcoind and
12737 bitcoin-qt, ready for use in a Squeeze environment. Note that the
12738 client will download the complete set of bitcoin "blocks", which need
12739 around
5.6 GiB of data on my machine at the moment. Make sure your
12740 ~/.bitcoin/ directory have lots of spare room if you want to download
12741 all the blocks. The client will warn if the disk is getting full, so
12742 there is not really a problem if you got too little room, but you will
12743 not be able to get all the features out of the client.
</p>
12745 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
12746 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
12747 <b><a href=
"bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a></b>.
</p>
12753 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
12758 <div class=
"padding"></div>
12760 <div class=
"entry">
12761 <div class=
"title">
12762 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html">A word on bitcoin support in Debian
</a>
12768 <p>It has been a while since I wrote about
12769 <a href=
"http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin
</a>, the decentralised
12770 peer-to-peer based crypto-currency, and the reason is simply that I
12771 have been busy elsewhere. But two days ago, I started looking at the
12772 state of
<a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin in
12773 Debian
</a> again to try to recover my old bitcoin wallet. The package
12774 is now maintained by a
12775 <a href=
"https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-bitcoin/">team of
12776 people
</a>, and the grunt work had already been done by this team. We
12777 owe a huge thank you to all these team members. :)
12778 But I was sad to discover that the bitcoin client is missing in
12779 Wheezy. It is only available in Sid (and an outdated client from
12780 backports). The client had several RC bugs registered in BTS blocking
12781 it from entering testing. To try to help the team and improve the
12782 situation, I spent some time providing patches and triaging the bug
12783 reports. I also had a look at the bitcoin package available from Matt
12785 <a href=
"https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin">PPA for
12786 Ubuntu
</a>, and moved the useful pieces from that version into the
12787 Debian package.
</p>
12789 <p>After checking with the main package maintainer Jonas Smedegaard on
12790 IRC, I pushed several patches into the collab-maint git repository to
12791 improve the package. It now contains fixes for the RC issues (not from
12792 me, but fixed by Scott Howard), build rules for a Qt GUI client
12793 package, konqueror support for the bitcoin: URI and bash completion
12794 setup. As I work on Debian Squeeze, I also created
12795 <a href=
"http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-bitcoin-devel/Week-of-Mon-20121217/000041.html">a
12796 patch to backport
</a> the latest version. Jonas is going to look at
12797 it and try to integrate it into the git repository before uploading a
12798 new version to unstable.
12800 <p>I would very much like bitcoin to succeed, to get rid of the
12801 centralized control currently exercised in the monetary system. I
12802 find it completely unacceptable that the USA government is collecting
12803 transaction data for almost all international money transfers (most are done in USD and transaction logs shipped to the spooks), and
12804 that the major credit card companies can block legal money
12805 transactions to Wikileaks. But for bitcoin to succeed, more people
12806 need to use bitcoins, and more people need to accept bitcoins when
12807 they sell products and services. Improving the bitcoin support in
12808 Debian is a small step in the right direction, but not enough.
12809 Unfortunately the user experience when browsing the web and wanting to
12810 pay with bitcoin is still not very good. The bitcoin: URI is a step
12811 in the right direction, but need to work in most or every browser in
12812 use. Also the bitcoin-qt client is too heavy to fire up to do a
12813 quick transaction. I believe there are other clients available, but
12814 have not tested them.
</p>
12817 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">experiment
12818 with bitcoins
</a> showed that at least some of my readers use bitcoin.
12819 I received
20.15 BTC so far on the address I provided in my blog two
12820 years ago, as can be
12821 <a href=
"http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">seen
12822 on the blockexplorer service
</a>. Thank you everyone for your
12823 donation. The blockexplorer service demonstrates quite well that
12824 bitcoin is not quite anonymous and untracked. :) I wonder if the
12825 number of users have gone up since then. If you use bitcoin and want
12826 to show your support of my activity, please send Bitcoin donations to
12827 the same address as last time,
12828 <b><a href=
"bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a></b>.
</p>
12834 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
12839 <div class=
"padding"></div>
12841 <div class=
"entry">
12842 <div class=
"title">
12843 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Git_repository_for_song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Git repository for song book for Computer Scientists
</a>
12850 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">mentioned
12851 this summer
</a>, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
12852 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
12853 <a href=
"https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook">Gitorious
12854 repository for the project
</a>.
</p>
12856 <p>If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
12857 to the HTML version. To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
12858 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
12859 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.
</p>
12861 <p>Want to sing? You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
12862 PostScript formats at
12863 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's Computer
12864 Science Songbook
</a>.
</p>
12870 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia
</a>.
12875 <div class=
"padding"></div>
12877 <div class=
"entry">
12878 <div class=
"title">
12879 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Gratulerer_med_19__rsdagen__Debian_.html">Gratulerer med
19-årsdagen, Debian!
</a>
12886 <a href=
"http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120813">Debian-prosjektet
19
12887 år
</a>. Jeg har fulgt det de siste
12 årene, og er veldig glad for å kunne
12888 si gratulerer med dagen, Debian!
</p>
12894 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk
</a>.
12899 <div class=
"padding"></div>
12901 <div class=
"entry">
12902 <div class=
"title">
12903 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Song book for Computer Scientists
</a>
12909 <p>Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
12910 <a href=
"http://www.uit.no/">University of Tromsø
</a>, I started
12911 collecting computer related songs for use at parties. The original
12912 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
12913 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
12914 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format. I have
12915 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
12916 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
12917 help me extend and update the book. If anyone is volunteering to help
12918 me with this, send me an email. Also let me know if there are songs
12919 missing in my book.
</p>
12921 <p>I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
12922 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
12923 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
12924 Especially now that
<a href=
"http://debconf12.debconf.org/">Debconf
12925 12</a> is about to start (and I am not going). Want to sing? Check
12926 out
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's
12927 Computer Science Songbook
</a>.
12933 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia
</a>.
12938 <div class=
"padding"></div>
12940 <div class=
"entry">
12941 <div class=
"title">
12942 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html">Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge
</a>
12948 <p>At work we have heaps of servers. I believe the total count is
12949 around
1000 at the moment. To be able to get help from the vendors
12950 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
12951 up to date. If the firmware isn't the latest and greatest, the
12952 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
12953 firmware is upgraded. So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
12954 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
12955 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
12956 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
12957 the tools to do so.
</p>
12959 <p>To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
12960 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got. Most of
12961 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
12962 so far. This blog post is about the Dell part.
</P>
12964 <p>On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
12965 <a href=
"ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz">an XML file
</a>
12966 with firmware information for all
11th generation servers, listing
12967 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
12968 site I can find it. Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
12969 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
12970 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
12971 be activated on the first reboot.
</p>
12973 <p>This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
12974 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
12975 servers at a site? Please get in touch and lets share resources.
</p>
12981 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
12983 # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
12984 my %rhelmodules = (
12985 'XML::Simple' =
> 'perl-XML-Simple',
12987 for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
12988 eval "use $module;";
12990 my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
12991 system("yum install -y $pkg");
12992 eval "use $module;";
12996 my $errorsto = 'pere@hungry.com';
13002 sub run_firmware_script {
13003 my ($opts, $script) = @_;
13005 print STDERR "fail: missing script name\n";
13008 print STDERR "Running $script\n\n";
13010 if (
0 == system("sh $script $opts")) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
13011 print STDERR "success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n";
13013 print STDERR "fail: firmware script returned error\n";
13017 sub run_firmware_scripts {
13018 my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
13019 # Run firmware packages
13020 for my $dir (@dirs) {
13021 print STDERR "info: Running scripts in $dir\n";
13022 opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die "Unable to open directory $dir: $!";
13023 while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
13024 next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
13025 run_firmware_script($opts, "$dir/$s");
13033 print STDERR "info: Downloading $url\n";
13034 system("wget --quiet \"$url\"");
13039 my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
13042 if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
13044 # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
13045 system('yum install -y compat-libstdc++-
33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail');
13047 my $tmpdir = tempdir(
13051 fetch_dell_fw('catalog/Catalog.xml.gz');
13052 system('gunzip Catalog.xml.gz');
13053 my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list('Catalog.xml');
13054 # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
13057 for my $url (@paths) {
13058 fetch_dell_fw($url);
13060 run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
13062 print STDERR
"error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
13063 print STDERR
"error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
13067 print STDERR
"error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
13068 print STDERR
"error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
13072 sub fetch_dell_fw {
13074 my $url =
"ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path";
13078 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
13079 # firmware packages to download from Dell. Only work for Linux
13080 # machines and
11th generation Dell servers.
13081 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
13082 my $filename = shift;
13084 my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
13086 my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
13088 print STDERR
"Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n";
13090 my $xml = XMLin($filename);
13092 for my $bundle (@{$xml-
>{SoftwareBundle}}) {
13093 my $brand = $bundle-
>{TargetSystems}-
>{Brand}-
>{Display}-
>{content};
13094 my $model = $bundle-
>{TargetSystems}-
>{Brand}-
>{Model}-
>{Display}-
>{content};
13096 if ("ARRAY" eq ref $bundle-
>{TargetOSes}-
>{OperatingSystem}) {
13097 $oscode = $bundle-
>{TargetOSes}-
>{OperatingSystem}[
0]-
>{osCode};
13099 $oscode = $bundle-
>{TargetOSes}-
>{OperatingSystem}-
>{osCode};
13101 if ($mybrand eq $brand && $mymodel eq $model && "LIN" eq $oscode)
13103 @paths = map { $_-
>{path} } @{$bundle-
>{Contents}-
>{Package}};
13106 for my $component (@{$xml-
>{SoftwareComponent}}) {
13107 my $componenttype = $component-
>{ComponentType}-
>{value};
13109 # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
13110 next if 'APAC' eq $componenttype;
13112 my $cpath = $component-
>{path};
13113 for my $path (@paths) {
13114 if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
13115 push(@paths, $cpath);
13123 <p>The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
13124 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking. Anyone know a
13125 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers? At the
13126 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
13133 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
13138 <div class=
"padding"></div>
13140 <div class=
"entry">
13141 <div class=
"title">
13142 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/How_is_booting_into_runlevel_1_different_from_single_user_boots_.html">How is booting into runlevel
1 different from single user boots?
</a>
13148 <p>Wouter Verhelst have some
13149 <a href=
"http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot">interesting
13150 comments and opinions
</a> on my blog post on
13151 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">the
13152 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian
</a> and my blog post about
13153 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">the
13154 default KDE desktop in Debian
</a>. I only have time to address one
13155 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
13156 misunderstanding he bring forward:
</p>
13159 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
13160 single-user system (by adding 'single' to the kernel command line;
13161 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
13164 <p>This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
13165 and booting into runlevel
1 is the same. I am not surprised he
13166 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
13167 thing to believe. But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
13168 runlevel
1 do not work properly and it isn't the same as single user
13169 mode. I'll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
13170 hard to explain.
</p>
13172 <p>Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
13173 "
<tt>~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin
</tt>". This means the only thing that is
13174 executed in single user mode is sulogin. Single user mode is a boot
13175 state "between
" the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
13176 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
13177 enters the single user state. When switching to runlevel 1, the state
13178 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
13179 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
13180 runs "init -t1 S
" to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
13181 1. It is confusing that the 'S' (single user) init mode is not the
13182 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
13185 <p>This summary might make it clearer. When booting for the first
13186 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
13187 "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin
</tt>". When booting into
13188 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc
13189 S; /etc/init.d/rc
1; /sbin/sulogin
</tt>". A problem show up when
13190 trying to continue after visiting single user mode. Not all services
13191 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
13192 unpredicatble state. This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
13193 after visiting single user mode.</p>
13195 <p>A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
13196 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/. When switching from say runlevel 2
13197 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
13198 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
13199 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
13200 2-5. I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
13201 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not <strong>required</strong> to get a
13202 functioning single user mode during boot.</p>
13204 <p>I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
13205 and discovered this problem a few years ago. I suspect it originates
13206 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.</p>
13212 Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/bootsystem
">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian
">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>.
13217 <div class="padding
"></div>
13219 <div class="entry
">
13220 <div class="title
">
13221 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html
">What should start from /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian? - almost nothing</a>
13227 <p>In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
13228 are started from /etc/rcS.d/. In fact, there is a bite more of them
13229 than make sense, and this causes a few problems. What kind of
13230 problems, you might ask. There are at least two problems. The first
13231 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
13232 runlevel 1. One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
13233 the expected state. The other is that single user boot will sometimes
13234 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
13235 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
13236 machine from a problem in that subsystem. A minor additional point is
13237 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
13238 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
13239 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.</p>
13241 <p>So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/. In short, only the
13242 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
13243 presented during a single user boot should go there. Everything else
13244 should go into the numeric runlevels. This means things like
13245 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
13246 the numeric runlevels. Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
13247 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
13248 out. Do your package have one of them? Please help us make single
13249 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.</p>
13251 <p>Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
13252 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
13253 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
13256 <p>As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound. To keep
13257 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
13258 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
13259 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
13260 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
13261 moved first. This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
13262 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
13263 the system state correct. This will require some coordination when it
13264 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
13265 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
13266 on them. Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
13267 package, while others are still left to do. I wish I had time to work
13268 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
13269 find time to push this forward.</p>
13275 Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/bootsystem
">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian
">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>.
13280 <div class="padding
"></div>
13282 <div class="entry
">
13283 <div class="title
">
13284 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html
">What is missing in the Debian desktop, or why my parents use Kubuntu</a>
13290 <p>While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
13291 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
13292 desktop to be useful for more people. The use case for this is my
13293 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
13296 <p>I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
13297 implement. After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
13298 do this in Debian we would have a source.</p>
13302 <li><strong>Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.</strong> When there
13303 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
13304 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
13305 tool to handle it. I have no problem guiding both of my parents
13306 through the process over the phone. If a kernel reboot is required,
13307 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool. Last
13308 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
13311 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
13312 plugins.</strong> When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
13313 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
13314 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
13315 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
13316 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
13317 Packages file in the APT archive). If one or more packages are found,
13318 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
13319 type. If the package require the user to accept some non-free
13320 license, this is explained to the user. The entire process make it
13321 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
13322 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
13323 not the browser for any missing features.</li>
13325 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
13326 handlers.</strong> When the media players encounter a format or codec
13327 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
13328 should search for a package that would add support for it. This
13329 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264. The selection
13330 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
13331 plugin handling. This is as far as I know implemented using a
13332 gstreamer hook. The end result is that the user easily get access to
13333 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
13334 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.</li>
13336 <li><strong>Better browser handling of some MIME types.</strong> When
13337 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
13338 start emacs to show it. If I remember correctly, when doing the same
13339 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser. At least I
13340 know Opera will show text files within the browser. I much prefer the
13341 latter behaviour.</li>
13345 <p>There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
13346 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
13347 it do not matter much.</p>
13349 <p>I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
13350 Debian release. It would require the coordinated effort of several
13351 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.</p>
13357 Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian
">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/h264
">h264</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/multimedia
">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/web
">web</a>.
13362 <div class="padding
"></div>
13364 <div class="entry
">
13365 <div class="title
">
13366 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Perl_modules_used_by_FixMyStreet_which_are_missing_in_Debian_Squeeze.html
">Perl modules used by FixMyStreet which are missing in Debian/Squeeze</a>
13372 <p>The Norwegian <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/
">FiksGataMi</A>
13373 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
13374 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
13375 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
13376 security support for a few years.</p>
13378 <p>The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
13379 that are missing in Debian at the moment. It would be great if these
13380 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
13381 their own <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com
">FixMyStreet</a> clone
13382 in their own country using only Debian packages. The list of modules
13383 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn't very long, and I hope the perl group
13384 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
13385 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
13386 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
13387 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
13388 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
13389 easier in the future.</p>
13391 <p>Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
13392 installed on my server was a simple call to 'cpan2deb Module::Name'
13393 and 'dpkg -i' to install the resulting package. But this leave me
13394 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
13395 do not have time for.</p>
13401 Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian
">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami
">fiksgatami</a>.
13406 <div class="padding
"></div>
13408 <div class="entry
">
13409 <div class="title
">
13410 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/A_Norwegian_FixMyStreet_have_kept_me_busy_the_last_few_weeks.html
">A Norwegian FixMyStreet have kept me busy the last few weeks</a>
13416 <p>Here is a small update for my English readers. Most of my blog
13417 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
13418 update in English.</p>
13420 <p>The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
13421 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
13422 of the British service
13423 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/
">FixMyStreet</a> up and running,
13424 and it has been running for a month now. The entire project has been
13425 organised by me and two others. Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
13426 to fund the development work. In January I drafted a contract with
13427 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/
">mySociety</a> on what to develop,
13428 and in February the development took place. Most of it involved
13429 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
13430 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
13431 running in any country by now. The Norwegian
13432 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/
">FiksGataMi</a> is using
13433 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/
">OpenStreetmap</a> as the map
13434 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
13435 support for this had to be added/fixed.</p>
13437 <p>The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
13438 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th. The system is
13439 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
13440 problem reports in a few weeks. Soon we hope to announce the Android
13441 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
13442 public infrastructure.</p>
13444 <p>Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
13451 Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian
">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami
">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/kart
">kart</a>.
13456 <div class="padding
"></div>
13458 <div class="entry
">
13459 <div class="title
">
13460 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Using_NVD_and_CPE_to_track_CVEs_in_locally_maintained_software.html
">Using NVD and CPE to track CVEs in locally maintained software</a>
13466 <p>The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
13467 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo. My idea is that
13468 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
13469 available on the Internet, and check our locally
13470 maintained/distributed software against this information. It should
13471 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten. The
13472 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
13473 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
13474 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
13475 out which security holes were present in our free software
13478 <p>After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
13479 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
13480 consistent way across data sources. I considered several ways to do
13481 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
13482 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
13483 existing naming scheme. And it seem like I am not the first one to
13484 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
13485 solution. Enter the <a href="http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html
">Common
13486 Platform Enumeration</a> dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
13487 software, hardware and other platform components. The CPE ids are
13488 mapped to CVEs in the <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/
">National
13489 Vulnerability Database</a>, allowing me to look up know security
13490 issues for any CPE name. With this in place, all I need to do is to
13491 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
13492 This is fairly trivial (I google for 'cve cpe $package' and check the
13493 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).</p>
13495 <p>To give you an example. The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
13496 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip. If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
13497 check out, one could look up
13498 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/search?cpe=cpe%
3A%
2Fa%
3Agnu%
3Agzip:
1.3.3">cpe:/a:gnu:gzip:1.3.3
13499 in NVD</a> and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
13500 The most recent one is
13501 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-
2010-
0001">CVE-2010-0001</a>,
13502 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
13503 list of affected versions is provided.</p>
13505 <p>The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
13506 for offline processing of issues. Using this dump, I've written a
13507 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
13508 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs. One give it CPEs
13509 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
13510 security issues out.</p>
13512 <p>Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
13513 information need to be high. For that to happen, I believe as many as
13514 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database. I notice
13516 <a href="https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt
">a
13517 map from CVE to CPE</a>, indicating that they are using the CPE
13518 information. I'm not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.</p>
13520 <p>To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
13521 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
13522 the CVE database in NVD. The result look fairly good, but there are
13523 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
13524 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
13525 Debian believe are affected by a CVE). Hope to find time to improve
13526 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
13527 someone maintaining it. So far my three emails with questions and
13528 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
13529 established soon.</p>
13531 <p>An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
13532 mapping. It would be useful to know which packages in for example
13533 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
13534 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
13535 for their packages.</p>
13541 Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian
">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet
">sikkerhet</a>.
13546 <div class="padding
"></div>
13548 <div class="entry
">
13549 <div class="title
">
13550 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Which_module_is_loaded_for_a_given_PCI_and_USB_device_.html
">Which module is loaded for a given PCI and USB device?</a>
13557 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data
">discover-data</a>
13558 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
13559 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
13560 information. One part of this script that I find very useful when
13561 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
13562 to the PCI device it claims. It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
13563 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with. To see
13564 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
13565 <tt>/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3>&1</tt>. The relevant output on
13566 one of my machines like this:</p>
13570 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
13573 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
13578 109e:0878 snd_bt87x
13582 <p>The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
13583 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:</p>
13586 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
13587 echo loaded pci modules:
13589 cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
13590 for address in * ; do
13591 if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
13592 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
13593 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
13594 address=$(echo $address |sed s/
0000://)
13595 id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n
1 | awk '{print $
3}'`
13605 <p>Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
13609 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
13610 echo loaded usb modules:
13612 cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
13613 for address in * ; do
13614 if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
13615 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
13616 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
13617 address=$(echo $address |sed s/
0000://)
13618 id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n
1 | awk '{print $
6}')
13619 if [ "$id" ] ; then
13630 <p>This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
13637 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
13642 <div class=
"padding"></div>
13644 <div class=
"entry">
13645 <div class=
"title">
13646 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/How_to_test_if_a_laptop_is_working_with_Linux.html">How to test if a laptop is working with Linux
</a>
13652 <p>The last few days I have spent at work here at the
<a
13653 href=
"http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo
</a> testing if the new
13654 batch of computers will work with Linux. Every year for the last few
13655 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
13656 computers, and this year HP won the bid. Two different desktops and
13657 five different laptops are on the list this year. We in the UNIX
13658 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
13659 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
13662 <p>My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
13663 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well. To test, I PXE
13664 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
13665 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware. When
13666 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
13667 on. If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
13668 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
13669 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.
</p>
13671 <p>Anyway, to get to the point of this post. Here is the simple tests
13672 I perform on a new model.
</p>
13676 <li>Is PXE installation working? I'm testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
13677 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment. If I feel like it, I also test with
13678 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.
</li>
13680 <li>Is X.org working? If the graphical login screen show up after
13681 installation, X.org is working.
</li>
13683 <li>Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working? Running glxgears (in
13684 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
13685 reported by the program.
</li>
13687 <li>Is sound working? With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
13688 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful. If there
13689 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
13690 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound. I
13691 normally test this by playing
13692 <a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ ">a HTML5
13693 video
</a> in Firefox/Iceweasel.
</li>
13695 <li>Is the USB subsystem working? I test this by plugging in a USB
13696 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.
</li>
13698 <li>Is the CD/DVD player working? I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
13699 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.
</li>
13701 <li>Is any built in camera working? Test using cheese, and see if a
13702 picture from the v4l device show up.
</li>
13704 <li>Is bluetooth working? Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
13705 any bluetooth devices are discovered. In my office, I normally see a
13708 <li>For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working. I have
13709 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
13712 <li>For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working? I'm testing if the
13713 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
13716 <li>For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
13717 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
13718 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc? The set of buttons differ from
13719 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
13722 <li>Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
13723 acceleration sensors etc. I rarely test these, as I do not know how
13724 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
13729 <p>By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
13730 for the HP machines I am testing. I'm not done yet, so I will report
13731 the test results later. For now I can report that HP
8100 Elite work
13732 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook
8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
13733 and audio fail on RHEL6. Ubuntu Maverik worked with
8440p. As you
13734 can see, I have most machines left to test. One interesting
13735 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
13736 RHEL6 with glxgears. No idea why.
</p>
13742 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
13747 <div class=
"padding"></div>
13749 <div class=
"entry">
13750 <div class=
"title">
13751 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html">Some thoughts on BitCoins
</a>
13757 <p>As I continue to explore
13758 <a href=
"http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin
</a>, I've starting to wonder
13759 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
13760 and regulations here in Norway. Here are some random notes.
</p>
13762 <p>One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
13763 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
13764 is known to everyone. This means that if a BitCoin address has been
13765 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
13766 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
13767 that address. There is even a web service to look at the details for
13768 all transactions. There I can see that my address
13769 <a href=
"http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a>
13770 have received
16.06 Bitcoin, the
13771 <a href=
"http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3">1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv
8MHqvwst
3</a>
13772 address of Simon Phipps have received
181.97 BitCoin and the address
13773 <a href=
"http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt">1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt
</A>
13774 of EFF have received
2447.38 BitCoins so far. Thank you to each and
13775 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
13776 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
13777 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
13778 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction. I'm told
13779 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
13780 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
13781 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.
</p>
13783 <p>In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
13784 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
13785 without declaring it. There are money laundering, tax and accounting
13786 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
13787 If the Skolelinux foundation
13788 (
<a href=
"http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">SLX
13789 Debian Labs
</a>) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
13790 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
13791 Given that it is impossible to know if money can cross the border or
13792 not, should everything or nothing be declared? What exchange rate
13793 should be used when calculating taxes? Would receivers have to pay
13794 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
13795 BitCoin? I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.
</p>
13797 <p>For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
13798 accepted by a lot of users. It must be possible to get easy access to
13799 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
13800 easy to spend it. At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
13801 access to, but there are very few places to spend it. I am not really
13802 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
13803 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins. I
13804 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
13805 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
13806 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
13807 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular. I'm sure they
13808 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
13809 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
13810 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
13813 <p>The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
13814 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
13815 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
13816 to see which one get the next lump of cash). The "winner" get
50
13817 BitCoin when this happen. Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
13818 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
13819 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
13820 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the
50
13821 BitCoins. Check out
13822 <a href=
"http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/">BitCoin Pool
</a>
13823 if this sounds interesting. I have not had time to try to set up a
13824 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
13825 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
13828 <p>Update
2010-
12-
15: Found an
<a
13829 href=
"http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi">interesting
13830 criticism
</a> of bitcoin. Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
13831 it was interesting to read. The arguments presented seem to be
13832 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.
</p>
13838 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet
</a>.
13843 <div class=
"padding"></div>
13845 <div class=
"entry">
13846 <div class=
"title">
13847 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">Now accepting bitcoins - anonymous and distributed p2p crypto-money
</a>
13853 <p>With this weeks lawless
13854 <a href=
"http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html">governmental
13855 attacks
</a> on Wikileak and
13856 <a href=
"http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech">free
13857 speech
</a>, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
13858 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
13860 <a href=
"http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/">Simon
13861 Phipps on bitcoin
</a> reminded me about a project that a friend of
13862 mine mentioned earlier. I decided to follow Simon's example, and get
13863 involved with
<a href=
"http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin
</a>. I got
13864 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
13865 some bitcoins to get started. I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
13866 for helping me remember BitCoin.
</p>
13868 <p>So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder? It is a digital
13869 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
13870 networks. It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
13871 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
13872 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions. The
13873 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets
2.9
13874 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
13875 line client builds just fine. Hopefully Jonas
13876 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/578157">will get the package into
13877 Debian
</a> soon.
</p>
13879 <p>Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
13880 There are
<a href=
"http://www.bitcoin.org/trade">companies accepting
13881 bitcoins
</a> when selling services and goods, and there are even
13882 currency "stock" markets where the exchange rate is decided. There
13883 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising. If you
13884 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
13886 <a href=
"https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/">some for free
</a> (
0.05
13887 bitcoin at the time of writing). Use
13888 <a href=
"http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/">BitcoinWatch
</a> to keep an eye
13889 on the current exchange rates.
</p>
13891 <p>As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
13892 machines. If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
13893 donations to the address
13894 <b>15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</b>. Thank you!
</p>
13900 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet
</a>.
13905 <div class=
"padding"></div>
13907 <div class=
"entry">
13908 <div class=
"title">
13909 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html">Why isn't Debian Edu using VLC?
</a>
13915 <p>In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
13916 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
13917 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
13918 to play a video file or stream. Only if VLC fail will I drag out
13919 gmplayer to see if it can do better. The reason is mostly the failure
13920 model and trust. When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
13921 reporting the problem. When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
13922 just hangs. The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.
<p>
13924 <p>But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
13925 mplayer in
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
13926 Edu/Skolelinux
</a>. The reason is simple. We need a good browser
13927 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
13928 not very good. For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
13929 is no way for the user to pause the video. Also, when I
13930 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">last
13931 tested the browser plugins
</a> available in Debian, the VLC plugin
13932 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked. If
13933 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
13934 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.
</P>
13936 <p>While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
13937 annoying. The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
13938 keyboard shortcuts. When the player is in full screen mode, its
13939 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
13940 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode. I
13941 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
13942 window mode. Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
13943 the current video. It is very nice when playing short videos from the
13944 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
13945 what is going on.
</p>
13951 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/video">video
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/web">web
</a>.
13956 <div class=
"padding"></div>
13958 <div class=
"entry">
13959 <div class=
"title">
13960 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades_of_the_Gnome_and_KDE_desktop__now_with_apt_get_autoremove.html">Lenny-
>Squeeze upgrades of the Gnome and KDE desktop, now with apt-get autoremove
</a>
13966 <p>Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
13967 upgrade testing of the
13968 <a href=
"https://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
13969 Gnome and KDE Desktop
</a> to do
<tt>apt-get autoremove
</tt> when using apt-get.
13970 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
13971 can now present the updated result from today:
</p>
13973 <p>This is for Gnome:
</p>
13975 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude
</p>
13982 browser-plugin-gnash
13989 freedesktop-sound-theme
13991 gconf-defaults-service
14004 gnome-codec-install
14006 gnome-desktop-environment
14010 gnome-session-canberra
14012 gnome-themes-extras
14015 gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
14016 gstreamer0.10-tools
14018 gtk2-engines-pixbuf
14019 gtk2-engines-smooth
14021 libapache2-mod-dnssd
14024 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
14027 libboost-date-time1.42
.0
14028 libboost-python1.42
.0
14029 libboost-thread1.42
.0
14031 libchamplain-gtk-
0.4-
0
14033 libclutter-gtk-
0.10-
0
14040 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
14053 libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
14055 libgnomepanel2.24-cil
14060 libgtksourceview2.0-common
14061 libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
14062 libmono-addins0.2-cil
14063 libmono-cairo2.0-cil
14064 libmono-corlib2.0-cil
14065 libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
14066 libmono-posix2.0-cil
14067 libmono-security2.0-cil
14068 libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
14069 libmono-system2.0-cil
14072 libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
14073 libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
14083 libtelepathy-farsight0
14092 nautilus-sendto-empathy
14096 python-aptdaemon-gtk
14098 python-beautifulsoup
14113 python-gtksourceview2
14124 python-pkg-resources
14131 python-twisted-conch
14132 python-twisted-core
14137 python-zope.interface
14139 remmina-plugin-data
14142 rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
14149 system-config-printer-udev
14151 telepathy-mission-control-
5
14158 transmission-common
14164 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
</p>
14170 epiphany-extensions
14172 fast-user-switch-applet
14191 libgtksourceview2.0-
0
14193 libsdl1.2debian-alsa
14199 system-config-printer
14206 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get
</p>
14209 gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
14212 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get
</p>
14218 <p>This is for KDE:
</p>
14220 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude
</p>
14226 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
</p>
14230 network-manager-kde
14233 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get
</p>
14249 kdeartwork-emoticons
14251 kdeartwork-theme-icon
14255 kdebase-workspace-bin
14256 kdebase-workspace-data
14268 konqueror-nsplugins
14270 kscreensaver-xsavers
14285 plasma-dataengines-workspace
14287 plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
14288 plasma-runners-addons
14289 plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
14290 plasma-scriptengine-python
14291 plasma-scriptengine-qedje
14292 plasma-scriptengine-ruby
14293 plasma-scriptengine-webkit
14294 plasma-scriptengines
14295 plasma-wallpapers-addons
14296 plasma-widget-folderview
14297 plasma-widget-networkmanagement
14300 update-notifier-kde
14301 xscreensaver-data-extra
14303 xscreensaver-gl-extra
14304 xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
14307 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get
</p>
14311 google-gadgets-common
14329 libggadget-qt-
1.0-
0b
14334 libkonqsidebarplugin4a
14338 libkunitconversion4
14343 libplasma-geolocation-interface4
14345 libplasmagenericshell4
14359 libsmokeknewstuff2-
3
14360 libsmokeknewstuff3-
3
14362 libsmokektexteditor3
14370 libsmokeqtnetwork4-
3
14371 libsmokeqtopengl4-
3
14372 libsmokeqtscript4-
3
14376 libsmokeqtuitools4-
3
14377 libsmokeqtwebkit4-
3
14388 plasma-dataengines-addons
14389 plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
14390 plasma-widget-lancelot
14391 plasma-widgets-addons
14392 plasma-widgets-workspace
14396 update-notifier-common
14399 <p>Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
14400 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
14401 differences. I have no idea what packages should be installed after
14402 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.
</p>
14408 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
14413 <div class=
"padding"></div>
14415 <div class=
"entry">
14416 <div class=
"title">
14417 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Migrating_Xen_virtual_machines_using_LVM_to_KVM_using_disk_images.html">Migrating Xen virtual machines using LVM to KVM using disk images
</a>
14423 <p>Most of the computers in use by the
14424 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux project
</a>
14425 are virtual machines. And they have been Xen machines running on a
14426 fairly old IBM eserver xseries
345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
14427 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge
2950 host machine. This was a
14428 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
14429 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
14430 know is not supported by KVM. So to migrate, we had to convert
14431 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.
</p>
14434 <a href=
"http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM">a
14435 nice recipe
</a> to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
14436 migration. It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
14437 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
14438 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data. I NFS mounted the
14439 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.
</p>
14445 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/
35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
14450 if [ -z "$
1" ] ; then
14451 echo "Usage: $
0 <hostname
>"
14457 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
14458 echo "error: unable to find LVM volume for $host"
14462 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs. not sure why.
14463 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk '{sum = sum + $
4} END { print int(sum *
1.05) }')
14464 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk '{sum = sum + $
4} END { print int(sum *
1.05) }')
14465 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
14468 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=
1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
14469 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
14471 parted $img mklabel msdos
14472 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap
0 $disksize
14473 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
14474 parted $img set
1 boot on
14477 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
14478 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
14480 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=
1M
14481 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
14482 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
14484 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
14485 losetup -d /dev/loop0
14488 <p>The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
14489 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.
</p>
14491 <p>After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
14492 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-
686 and
14493 set up grub to boot from the disk image. After this, the KVM machines
14494 seem to work just fine.
</p>
14500 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
14505 <div class=
"padding"></div>
14507 <div class=
"entry">
14508 <div class=
"title">
14509 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__apt_vs_aptitude_with_the_Gnome_and_KDE_desktop.html">Lenny-
>Squeeze upgrades, apt vs aptitude with the Gnome and KDE desktop
</a>
14515 <p>I'm still running upgrade testing of the
14516 <a href=
"https://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
14517 Gnome and KDE Desktop
</a>, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
14518 status. Here is a short update based on a test I ran
20101118.
</p>
14520 <p>I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
14521 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
14522 can see if anything should be changed.
</p>
14524 <p>This is for Gnome:
</p>
14526 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude
</p>
14529 apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
14530 browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-
4.3 cups-pk-helper
14531 dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
14532 freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
14533 gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
14534 geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
14535 gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
14536 gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
14537 gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
14538 gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
14539 gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
14540 gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
14541 gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
14542 libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
14543 libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-
0 libboost-date-time1.42
.0
14544 libboost-python1.42
.0 libboost-thread1.42
.0 libchamplain-
0.4-
0
14545 libchamplain-gtk-
0.4-
0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-
0.10-
0
14546 libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-
1.0-
2
14547 libepc-common libepc-ui-
1.0-
2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
14548 libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
14549 libgdl-
1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-
0 libgif4
14550 libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
14551 libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
14552 libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
14553 libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
14554 libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
14555 libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
14556 libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
14557 libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
14558 libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-
6
14559 libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6
.8
14560 libpolkit-gtk-
1-
0 libpt-
1.10.10-plugins-alsa
14561 libpt-
1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6
.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
14562 libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-
4
14563 libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-
0.99-
0
14564 libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
14565 mono-
2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
14566 nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
14567 openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-
4suite-xml
14568 python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
14569 python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
14570 python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
14571 python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
14572 python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
14573 python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
14574 python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
14575 python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
14576 python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
14577 python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
14578 python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
14579 python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
14580 python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
14581 remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
14582 rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
14583 software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
14584 telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-
5 telepathy-salut tomboy
14585 totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
14586 transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
14590 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
14593 arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
14594 epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
14595 fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
14596 gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
14597 gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
14598 gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
14599 guile-
1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
14600 libavahi-ui0 libbind9-
50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-
11 libcdio7
14601 libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-
1.0-
0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
14602 libedata-cal1.2-
6 libedataserver1.2-
9 libeel2-
2.20 libepc-
1.0-
1
14603 libepc-ui-
1.0-
1 libexchange-storage1.2-
3 libfaad0 libgadu3
14604 libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-
3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
14605 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-
0 libgksuui1.0-
1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-
2
14606 libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-
1 libgnomeprint2.2-
0
14607 libgnomeprintui2.2-
0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-
1.0-
0
14608 libgtkhtml2-
0 libgtksourceview1.0-
0 libgtksourceview2.0-
0
14609 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
14610 libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
14611 libmagick++
10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
14612 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
14613 libnm-util0 libopal-
2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-
10 libpisock9
14614 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-
1.10.10 libraw1394-
8
14615 libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-
8
14616 libspeexdsp1 libssh2-
1 libsuitesparse-
3.1.0 libsvga1
14617 libswfdec-
0.6-
90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
14618 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
14619 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
14620 sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
14621 totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
14624 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get
</p>
14627 gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
14630 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get
</p>
14636 <p>This is for KDE:
</p>
14638 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude
</p>
14641 autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-
4.3 dcoprss
14642 edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
14643 ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
14644 gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
14645 kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
14646 kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
14647 kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
14648 kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
14649 kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
14650 kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
14651 kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
14652 kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
14653 killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
14654 kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
14655 ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42
.0
14656 libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
14657 libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
14658 libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
14659 libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
14660 libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
14661 libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
14662 libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
14663 libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
14664 libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
14665 lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
14666 openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
14667 parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
14668 pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
14669 speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
14670 ttf-sazanami-gothic
14673 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
</p>
14676 amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
14677 dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
14678 kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
14679 kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
14680 keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
14681 kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
14682 kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
14683 klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
14684 kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
14685 kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
14686 kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
14687 ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
14688 ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
14689 kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
14690 kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
14691 libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
14692 libavahi-core5 libavc1394-
0 libbind9-
50 libbluetooth2
14693 libboost-python1.34
.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
14694 libdirectfb-
1.0-
0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
14695 libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-
0 libicu38
14696 libiec61883-
0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
14697 libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
14698 libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
14699 libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
14700 libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
14701 libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
14702 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
14703 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-
8 librss1 libsensors3
14704 libsmbios2 libssh2-
1 libsuitesparse-
3.1.0 libswfdec-
0.6-
90
14705 libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
14706 mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
14707 texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
14708 ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
14711 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get
</p>
14714 dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
14715 kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
14716 kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
14717 kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
14718 netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
14719 xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
14720 xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
14723 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get
</p>
14726 kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
14733 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
14738 <div class=
"padding"></div>
14740 <div class=
"entry">
14741 <div class=
"title">
14742 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html">Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd
</a>
14749 <a href=
"http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html">the
14750 call from the Gnash project
</a> for
14751 <a href=
"http://www.gnashdev.org:8010">buildbot
</a> slaves to test the
14752 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
14753 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
14754 Debian/Squeeze. I hope this can help the developers in getting new
14755 releases out more often.
</p>
14757 <p>As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
14758 I have considered setting up a
<a
14759 href=
"http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/">Debian/kfreebsd
</a>
14760 machine as well. I have also considered using the kfreebsd
14761 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the
5
14762 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video. Because of this, I
14763 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
14764 kfreebsd. Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
14765 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
14766 screen at random locations). Have not gotten very far with the
14767 testing. Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
14768 fatal problem. Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
14769 useful as a file server for NUUG. Will try to find time to set up a
14770 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.
</p>
14776 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
14781 <div class=
"padding"></div>
14783 <div class=
"entry">
14784 <div class=
"title">
14785 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html">Debian in
3D
</a>
14791 <p><img src=
"http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg"></p>
14793 <p>3D printing is just great. I just came across this Debian logo in
14795 <a href=
"http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/">the
14796 thingiverse blog
</a>.
</p>
14802 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
14807 <div class=
"padding"></div>
14809 <div class=
"entry">
14810 <div class=
"title">
14811 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html">Software updates
2010-
10-
24</a>
14817 <p>Some updates.
</p>
14819 <p>My
<a href=
"http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">gnash pledge
</a> to
14820 raise money for the project is going well. The lower limit of
10
14821 signers was reached in
24 hours, and so far
13 people have signed it.
14822 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
14823 how far we can get before the time limit of December
24 is reached.
14826 <p>On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
14827 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
14828 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
14830 <a href=
"http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html">kcov
</a>,
14831 and can be used using
<tt>kcov
<directory
> <binary
></tt>.
14832 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
14833 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
14834 libglib2.0-dev. Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
14835 solvable. I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.
</p>
14837 <p>Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for
<a
14838 href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html">a
14839 new alpha release of Debian Edu
</a>, and just published the second
14840 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
14841 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
</a>
14842 release. Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
14843 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
14844 client servers and diskless workstations. A nice touch added
14845 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
14846 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.
</p>
14852 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia
</a>.
14857 <div class=
"padding"></div>
14859 <div class=
"entry">
14860 <div class=
"title">
14861 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Some_notes_on_Flash_in_Debian_and_Debian_Edu.html">Some notes on Flash in Debian and Debian Edu
</a>
14867 <p>In the
<a href=
"http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote">Debian
14868 popularity-contest numbers
</a>, the adobe-flashplugin package the
14869 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian. The sixth
14870 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla. This is a clear indication that
14871 working flash is important for Debian users. Around
10 percent of the
14872 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
14875 <p>In the report written by Lars Risan in August
2008
14876 («
<a href=
"http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf">Skolelinux
14877 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
14878 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs
</a>»), one of the most important problems
14879 schools experienced with
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
14880 Edu/Skolelinux
</a> was the lack of working Flash. A lot of educational
14881 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
14882 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
14883 good reason to stay with Windows.
</p>
14885 <p>I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
14886 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
14887 everything you told him but could work fairly well. This was a
14888 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
14889 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
14890 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
14891 example Internet Explorer
6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
14892 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
14893 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
14894 pages they want to visit.
</p>
14896 <p>This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
14897 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
14898 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
14899 Video to working out of the box. For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
14900 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
14901 the new release
0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
14902 unstable. The new version work with more sites that version
0.8.7.
14903 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
14904 release team have not had time to reply to it yet. I hope they agree
14905 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
14906 accept the new package into Squeeze.
</p>
14912 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/video">video
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/web">web
</a>.
14917 <div class=
"padding"></div>
14919 <div class=
"entry">
14920 <div class=
"title">
14921 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html">Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery
</a>
14927 <p>I discovered this while doing
14928 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">automated
14929 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze
</a>. A few packages
14930 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
14931 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
14932 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.
</p>
14934 <p>An example is from todays
14935 <a href=
"https://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt">upgrade
14936 of KDE using aptitude
</a>. In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
14937 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade. The cause is simple. If a
14938 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
14939 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
14940 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
14941 because its dependencies are unavailable.
</p>
14943 <p>In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:
</p>
14946 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
14947 perl-modules depends on perl (
>=
5.10.1-
1); however:
14948 Version of perl on system is
5.10.0-
19lenny
2.
14949 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
14950 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
14951 </pre></blockquote>
14953 <p>The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
14954 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/527917">reported as a bug
</a>, and will
14955 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
14956 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
14957 failures. Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
14958 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
14959 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
14960 of dependency loops.
</p>
14963 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html">the
14964 tireless effort by Bill Allombert
</a>, the number of circular
14966 <a href=
"http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html">left in Debian
14967 is dropping
</a>, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)
</p>
14969 <p>Todays testing also exposed a bug in
14970 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/590605">update-notifier
</a> and
14971 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/590604">different behaviour
</a> between
14972 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
14973 dependency. Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
14980 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
14985 <div class=
"padding"></div>
14987 <div class=
"entry">
14988 <div class=
"title">
14989 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/What_are_they_searching_for___PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_in_LDAP.html">What are they searching for - PowerDNS and ISC DHCP in LDAP
</a>
14996 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">followup
</a>
14998 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Idea_for_a_change_to_LDAP_schemas_allowing_DNS_and_DHCP_info_to_be_combined_into_one_object.html">previous
15000 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">merging
15001 all
</a> the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.
</p>
15003 <p>As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
15004 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
15005 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server. The two
15006 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.
</p>
15008 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
15009 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
15010 on a Debian Edu main-server. Here is a summary.
15012 <p><strong>powerdns
</strong></p>
15014 <a href=
"http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend">Clues
15015 on how to
</a> set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
15018 <p>PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
15019 One "strict" mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
15020 using the same LDAP objects, and a "tree" mode where the forward and
15021 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
15022 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
15023 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.
</p>
15025 <p>In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
15026 base, and uses a "base" scoped search for the DNS name by adding
15027 "dc=tjener,dc=intern," to the base with a filter for
15028 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" for the forward entry and
15029 "dc=
2,dc=
2,dc=
0,dc=
10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa," with a filter for
15030 "(associateddomain=
2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)" for the reverse entry. For
15031 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
15032 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
15033 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
15034 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
15035 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
15036 spfrecord and modifytimestamp. For reverse entries it is looking for
15037 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
15038 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
15039 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp. The equivalent
15040 ldapsearch commands could look like this:
</p>
15043 ldapsearch -h ldap \
15044 -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
15045 -s base -x '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
15046 cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
15047 rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
15048 nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
15049 rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
15051 ldapsearch -h ldap \
15052 -b dc=
2,dc=
2,dc=
0,dc=
10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
15053 -s base -x '(associateddomain=
2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)'
15054 dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
15055 hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
15056 srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
15057 </pre></blockquote>
15059 <p>In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
15060 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
15061 example LDAP objects used there. In addition to these objects, the
15062 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
15066 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
15068 objectclass: dnsdomain
15069 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
15072 associateddomain: tjener.intern
15074 dn: dc=
2,dc=
2,dc=
0,dc=
10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
15076 objectclass: dnsdomain2
15077 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
15079 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
15080 associateddomain:
2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
15081 </pre></blockquote>
15083 <p>In strict mode, the server behaves differently. When looking for
15084 forward DNS entries, it is doing a "subtree" scoped search with the
15085 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
15086 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" and requests the attributes dnsttl,
15087 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
15088 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
15089 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp. For reverse entires it also do a
15090 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is "(arecord=
10.0.2.2)"
15091 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
15092 modifytimestamp. In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
15093 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
15096 <p>The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
15100 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
15101 '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
15102 cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
15103 rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
15104 nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
15105 rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
15107 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
15108 '(arecord=
10.0.2.2)' associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
15109 </pre></blockquote>
15111 <p>In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
15112 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
15113 reverse lookups.
</p>
15115 <p>A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
15116 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
15117 need to generate a DNS reply. This make it able to work with any
15118 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.
</p>
15120 <p>The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC
1274) and
15121 dnsdomain2 schemas. The latter is used for reverse entries like
15122 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.
</p>
15124 <p>In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
15125 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
15126 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain). The use
15127 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
15128 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.
</p>
15130 <p>There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
15131 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
15132 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
15133 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
15134 (zonename and relativedomainname).
</p>
15136 <p>My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
15137 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
15138 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
15139 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
15140 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
15141 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):
</p>
15144 objectclass ( some-oid NAME 'dnsDomainAux'
15147 MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
15148 DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
15149 TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
15150 NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
15151 A6Record $ DNAMERecord
15153 </pre></blockquote>
15155 <p>This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
15156 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
15157 all the attributes PowerDNS wants. I've sent an email to the PowerDNS
15158 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
15159 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
15160 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.
</p>
15162 <p><strong>ISC dhcp
</strong></p>
15164 <p>The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
15165 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want. This
15166 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
15167 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
15168 what is needed without having to read the source code.
</p>
15170 <p>In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
15171 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
15172 stored. These are the relevant entries from
15173 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:
</p>
15176 ldap-base-dn "dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no";
15177 ldap-dhcp-server-cn "dhcp";
15178 </pre></blockquote>
15180 <p>The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
15181 configuration it need. The cn "dhcp" is located using the given LDAP
15182 base and the filter "(&(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))". The
15183 search result is this entry:
</p>
15186 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
15189 objectClass: dhcpServer
15190 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
15191 </pre></blockquote>
15193 <p>The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
15194 subtree with DHCP configuration. The DHCP configuration subtree base
15195 is located using a base scope search with base "cn=DHCP
15196 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" and filter
15197 "(&(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))".
15198 The search result is this entry:
</p>
15201 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
15204 objectClass: dhcpService
15205 objectClass: dhcpOptions
15206 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
15207 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
15208 dhcpStatements: authoritative
15209 dhcpOption: smtp-server code
69 = array of ip-address
15210 dhcpOption: www-server code
72 = array of ip-address
15211 dhcpOption: wpad-url code
252 = text
15212 </pre></blockquote>
15214 <p>Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time. When
15215 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
15216 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
15217 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
15218 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost. These provide options
15219 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc. Leaving out the
15220 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
15221 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
15222 related computer objects.
</p>
15224 <p>When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
15225 of the client (
00:
00:
00:
00:
00:
00 in this example), using a subtree
15226 scoped search with "cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" as
15227 the base and "(&(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
15228 00:
00:
00:
00:
00:
00))" as the filter. This is what a host object look
15232 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
15235 objectClass: dhcpHost
15236 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet
00:
00:
00:
00:
00:
00
15237 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
15238 </pre></blockquote>
15240 <p>There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
15241 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
15242 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure. On the
15243 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
15244 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries. The latter should make
15245 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
15246 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
15247 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
15248 structural object class.
15250 <p><strong>Conclusion
</strong></p>
15252 <p>The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
15253 to which LDAP schemas to use. While its "tree" mode is rigid when it
15254 come to the the LDAP structure, the "strict" mode is very flexible,
15255 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
15256 in the configuration.
</p>
15258 <p>The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
15259 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
15260 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
15261 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
15262 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
15265 <p>Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
15266 this might work for Debian Edu:
</p>
15270 cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
15271 cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
15272 cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
15273 cn=
10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
15274 cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
15275 cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
15276 cn=
192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
15277 cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
15278 ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
15279 cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
15280 </pre></blockquote>
15282 <P>This is not tested yet. If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
15283 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
15284 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
15285 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.
</p>
15287 <p>The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
15291 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
15294 objectClass: dhcpHost
15295 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
15296 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
15297 associateddomain: hostname.intern
15298 arecord:
10.11.12.13
15299 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet
00:
00:
00:
00:
00:
00
15300 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
15301 </pre></blockquote>
15303 </p>One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
15304 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
15305 auxiliary object class.
</p>
15311 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
15316 <div class=
"padding"></div>
15318 <div class=
"entry">
15319 <div class=
"title">
15320 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects
</a>
15326 <p>For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
15327 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
15328 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
15329 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
15330 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.
</p>
15332 <p>I've looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
15333 information finally found a solution that seem to work.
</p>
15335 <p>The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
15336 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry. If
15337 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
15338 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
15339 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
15340 to a slave DNS server.
</p>
15342 <p>If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
15343 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
15344 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
15345 I've written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
15346 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup. It
15349 <p>With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
15350 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
15351 an earlier email. The combined LDAP object will look something like
15355 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
15357 objectClass: dhcphost
15358 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
15359 objectclass: dnsdomainaux
15360 associateddomain: hostname.intern
15361 arecord:
10.11.12.13
15362 dhcphwaddress: ethernet
00:
00:
00:
00:
00:
00
15363 dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
15365 </pre></blockquote>
15367 <p>The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
15368 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
15369 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress. LTSP will use
15370 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.
</p>
15372 <p>I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
15373 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
15374 outside the "DHCP Config" subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
15375 that. If I can't figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
15376 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
15377 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
15378 content. I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
15379 might be a good place to put it.
</p>
15381 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
15382 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
15388 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
15393 <div class=
"padding"></div>
15395 <div class=
"entry">
15396 <div class=
"title">
15397 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html">Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP
</a>
15403 <p>Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
15404 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
15405 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
15406 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.
</p>
15408 <p>Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
15409 to get configuration from LDAP. The idea is to look up the MAC
15410 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
15411 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
15414 <p>The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
15415 in a "computer" LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
15416 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.
</p>
15418 <p>This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
15419 this approach. A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
15420 need to be written. Comments, suggestions, etc?
</p>
15423 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
15425 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
15427 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
15428 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
15429 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
15431 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
15432 # existence of attribute names.
15434 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
15435 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
15436 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
15438 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
15439 # configuration settings. Something like this should work:
15441 # objectclass (
1.1.2.2 NAME 'ltspClientAux'
15444 # MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
15446 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
15447 if [ "$LDAPSERVER" ] ; then
15448 LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
15449 for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk '{print $
5}'|sort -u) ; do
15450 filter="(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))"
15451 ldapsearch -h "$LDAPSERVER" -b "$LDAPBASE" -v -x "$filter" | \
15452 grep '^ltspConfig' | while read attr value ; do
15453 # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
15454 attr=$(echo $attr | sed 's/^ltspConfig//i' | tr a-z A-Z)
15455 # bass value on to clients
15456 eval "$attr=$value; export $attr"
15460 </pre></blockquote>
15462 <p>I'm not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
15463 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
15464 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
15465 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
15466 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)
</p>
15468 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
15469 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
15471 <p>Update
2010-
07-
17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
15472 configuration in LDAP that was created around year
2000 by
15473 <a href=
"http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html">PC
15474 Xperience, Inc.,
2000</a>. I found its
15475 <a href=
"http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/">files
</a> on a
15476 personal home page over at redhat.com.
</p>
15482 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
15487 <div class=
"padding"></div>
15489 <div class=
"entry">
15490 <div class=
"title">
15491 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI
</a>
15498 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">my
15499 last post
</a> about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
15500 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma. The java application
15501 <a href=
"http://jxplorer.org/">jXplorer
</a> is claimed to be capable of
15502 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
15503 authenticate using Kerberos. I have only tested the Kerberos
15504 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
15505 LDAP with my test user yet. It is
15506 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html">available in
15507 Debian
</a> testing and unstable at the moment. The only problem I
15508 have with it is how it handle errors. If something go wrong, its
15509 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
15510 and remove the failing query. Nothing big, but very annoying.
</p>
15516 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
15521 <div class=
"padding"></div>
15523 <div class=
"entry">
15524 <div class=
"title">
15525 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__apt_vs_aptitude_with_the_Gnome_desktop.html">Lenny-
>Squeeze upgrades, apt vs aptitude with the Gnome desktop
</a>
15531 <p>Here is a short update on my
<a
15532 href=
"https://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">my
15533 Debian Lenny-
>Squeeze upgrade testing
</a>. Here is a summary of the
15534 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude. I'm
15535 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
15536 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
15537 (
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#
584861</a> and
15538 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/585716">#
585716</a>).
</p>
15540 <p>At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
15541 complete list of the installed packages. Based on this I see these
15542 differences when I did a test run today. As usual, I do not really
15543 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
15544 publish the difference.
</p>
15546 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude
</p>
15549 at-spi cpp-
4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
15550 libatspi1.0-
0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-
1-common
15551 libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
15552 libgtksourceview-common libpt-
1.10.10-plugins-alsa
15553 libpt-
1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
15554 libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
15555 python-
4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
15556 python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
15559 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
</p>
15562 bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
15563 gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
15564 libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-
50
15565 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-
11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
15566 libdirectfb-
1.0-
0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-
6 libedataserver1.2-
9
15567 libeel2-
2.20 libepc-
1.0-
1 libepc-ui-
1.0-
1 libexchange-storage1.2-
3
15568 libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-
3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
15569 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-
0 libgksuui1.0-
1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-
2
15570 libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-
1 libgnomeprint2.2-
0
15571 libgnomeprintui2.2-
0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-
0
15572 libgtksourceview1.0-
0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
15573 libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++
10
15574 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
15575 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-
2.2 libosp5
15576 libparted1.8-
10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
15577 libpt-
1.10.10 libraw1394-
8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-
8
15578 libssh2-
1 libsuitesparse-
3.1.0 libswfdec-
0.6-
90 libtalloc1
15579 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
15580 libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
15581 mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
15584 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get
</p>
15587 gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
15588 python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
15589 xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
15590 xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
15591 xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
15592 xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
15593 xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
15594 xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
15595 xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
15596 xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
15597 xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
15598 xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
15599 xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
15600 xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
15601 xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
15602 xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
15603 xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
15604 xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
15605 xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
15606 xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
15607 xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
15610 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get
</p>
15613 deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
15614 xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
15615 xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
15618 <p>I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
15619 <a href=
"http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120">changed
15620 in git
</a> today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
15621 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
15622 the difference somewhat.
15628 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
15633 <div class=
"padding"></div>
15635 <div class=
"entry">
15636 <div class=
"title">
15637 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI
</a>
15643 <p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
15644 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
15645 tool to browse the LDAP tree. The only one I was able to find in
15646 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
15647 <a href=
"http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA
</a>, which has proved to
15648 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
15649 populated by default in Skolelinux. Thanks to it, I have been able to
15650 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
15651 objects. It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze. If you
15652 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)
</p>
15654 <p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
15655 the BTS yet. There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
15656 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
15657 Debian submenu in KDE. I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
15660 <p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet. I would
15661 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
15662 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet. So in the mean time, I use
15663 <a href=
"http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi
</a> for that.
</p>
15665 <p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
15666 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
15668 <p>Update
2010-
06-
29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
15669 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq
</a> package as a
15670 useful GUI alternative. It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
15671 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze. Unless that
15672 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.
</p>
15678 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
15683 <div class=
"padding"></div>
15685 <div class=
"entry">
15686 <div class=
"title">
15687 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Idea_for_a_change_to_LDAP_schemas_allowing_DNS_and_DHCP_info_to_be_combined_into_one_object.html">Idea for a change to LDAP schemas allowing DNS and DHCP info to be combined into one object
</a>
15694 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
15695 about the fact
</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
15696 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
15697 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.
</p>
15699 <p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
15700 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
15701 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
15702 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.
</p>
15704 <p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
15705 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
15706 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
15709 <p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
15711 <a href=
"http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
15712 schema
</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
15713 available today from IETF.
</p>
15716 --- dhcp.schema (revision
65192)
15717 +++ dhcp.schema (working copy)
15718 @@ -
376,
7 +
376,
7 @@
15719 objectclass (
2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
15721 DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
15723 + SUP top AUXILIARY
15725 MAY (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
15726 X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
15729 <p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
15730 Edu/Squeeze. We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
15731 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.
</p>
15733 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
15734 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
15740 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
15745 <div class=
"padding"></div>
15747 <div class=
"entry">
15748 <div class=
"title">
15749 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Calling_tasksel_like_the_installer__while_still_getting_useful_output.html">Calling tasksel like the installer, while still getting useful output
</a>
15755 <p>A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
15756 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run. Until now,
15757 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
15758 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
15759 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
15763 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
15764 tasksel --new-install
15765 </pre></blockquote>
15767 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
15768 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
15769 any output what so ever.
15771 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
15772 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
15773 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
15774 happen. Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
15775 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
15776 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run. I ended up using
15780 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
15781 cmd="$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed 's/debconf-apt-progress -- //')"
15783 </pre></blockquote>
15785 <p>The content of $cmd is typically something like "
<tt>aptitude -q
15786 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
15787 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
15788 ~pimportant
</tt>", which will install the gnome desktop task, the
15789 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
15790 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
15793 <p>A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
15794 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
15801 Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian
">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/nuug
">nuug</a>.
15806 <div class="padding
"></div>
15808 <div class="entry
">
15809 <div class="title
">
15810 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__removals_by_apt_and_aptitude.html
">Lenny->Squeeze upgrades, removals by apt and aptitude</a>
15817 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html
">testing
15818 of Debian upgrades</a> from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I've
15819 finally made the upgrade logs available from
15820 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/
">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/</a>.
15821 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
15822 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting. This time
15823 I will only focus on their removal plans.</p>
15825 <p>After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
15826 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze. The
15827 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
15828 xserver-xorg-video* drivers. Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
15829 sure why. When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
15830 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
15831 longer needed. Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
15832 I do not know. Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?</p>
15834 <p>For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
15835 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
15836 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
15837 too surprising.</p>
15839 <p>I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
15840 and avoided, and perhaps others as well. Here are the complete list
15841 of planned removals. The complete logs is available from the URL
15842 above. Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
15843 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
15844 conffile questions. No idea why. I worked around it by using
15845 '<tt>echo >> /proc/<em>pidofdpkg</em>/fd/0</tt>' to tell dpkg to
15848 <p><b>apt-get gnome 72</b>
15849 <br>bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
15850 gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
15851 iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
15852 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
15853 nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
15854 serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
15855 xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
15856 xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
15857 xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
15858 xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
15859 xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
15860 xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
15861 xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
15862 xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
15863 xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
15864 xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
15865 xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
15866 xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
15867 xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
15868 xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
15869 xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
15870 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
15871 xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
15872 xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
15873 xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
15874 xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
15875 xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
15876 xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
15877 xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support</p>
15879 <p><b>aptitude gnome 129</b>
15881 <br>bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
15882 djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
15883 gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
15884 gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
15885 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
15886 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
15887 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
15888 libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
15889 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
15890 libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
15891 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
15892 libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
15893 libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
15894 libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
15895 libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
15896 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
15897 libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
15898 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
15899 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
15900 libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
15901 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
15902 libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
15903 libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
15904 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
15905 openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
15906 python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
15907 python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
15908 python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
15909 swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
15910 xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
15911 xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
15914 <p><b>apt-get kde 82</b>
15916 <br>cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
15917 kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
15918 kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
15919 kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
15920 kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
15921 libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
15922 xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
15923 xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
15924 xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
15925 xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
15926 xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
15927 xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
15928 xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
15929 xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
15930 xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
15931 xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
15932 xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
15933 xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
15934 xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
15935 xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
15936 xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
15937 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
15938 xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
15939 xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
15940 xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
15941 xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
15942 xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
15943 xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9</p>
15945 <p><b>aptitude kde 192</b>
15946 <br>bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
15947 djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
15948 ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
15949 kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
15950 kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
15951 kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
15952 kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
15953 kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
15954 kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
15955 kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
15956 kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
15957 klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
15958 kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
15959 krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
15960 ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
15961 kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
15962 kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
15963 libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
15964 libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
15965 libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
15966 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
15967 libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
15968 libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
15969 libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
15970 libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
15971 libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
15972 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
15973 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
15974 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
15975 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
15976 libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
15977 openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
15978 superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
15979 texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
15980 xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
15981 xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
15989 Tags: <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian
">debian</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian edu
">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>.
15994 <div class="padding
"></div>
15996 <div class="entry
">
15997 <div class="title
">
15998 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html
">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</a>
16004 <p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
16005 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly. A few bugs
16006 have been discovered and reported in the process
16007 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/
585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
16008 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/
584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
16009 enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/
584861">#584861</a> in
16010 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
16011 am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
16013 <p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
16014 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
16015 it. To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
16016 script is inserted. To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
16017 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
16018 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
16020 <p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
16021 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
16022 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
16023 is created. The bug report
16024 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/
566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
16025 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
16026 to make sure the upgrade go well. Testing on virtual and real
16027 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
16028 do the trick in such settings anyway. This is a
16029 <a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-
26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-
804130/
">known
16030 issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
16031 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
16032 working with old kernels or something like that. I really wish the
16033 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
16034 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
16035 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
16036 Debian Squeeze.</p>
16038 <p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades. This test
16039 script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
16055 exec
< /dev/null
16057 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
16058 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
16060 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
16061 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
16062 cat
> $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
<<EOF
16066 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
16068 umount $tmpdir/proc
16070 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
16071 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
16072 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
16074 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
16076 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger. It need the test scripts
16077 # to return the correct answers.
16078 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
16079 chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
16081 # Include the desktop and laptop task
16082 for test in desktop laptop ; do
16083 echo
> $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
<<EOF
16087 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
16090 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
16091 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
16092 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
16093 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
16095 echo deb $mirror $to main
> $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
16096 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
16097 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
16098 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
16100 </pre></blockquote>
16102 <p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
16103 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
16104 differently so far. I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
16105 regularly and post the result on the web. The Gnome upgrade currently
16106 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
16107 kdebase-workspace-data
</p>
16109 <p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
16110 (KDE
167 KiB, Gnome
516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
16111 post, so I will refrain from trying. I can report that for Gnome,
16112 aptitude report
760 packages upgraded,
448 newly installed,
129 to
16113 remove and
1 not upgraded and
1024MB need to be downloaded while for
16114 KDE the same numbers are
702 packages upgraded,
507 newly installed,
16115 193 to remove and
0 not upgraded and
1117MB need to be downloaded
</p>
16117 <p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
16118 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
16119 booting without a hitch. Was unsure if there were still bugs with
16120 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
16121 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
16128 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
16133 <div class=
"padding"></div>
16135 <div class=
"entry">
16136 <div class=
"title">
16137 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Upstart_or_sysvinit___as_init_d_scripts_see_it.html">Upstart or sysvinit - as init.d scripts see it
</a>
16143 <p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
16144 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
16145 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd. The packages with such
16146 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
16147 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart. Because of
16148 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
16149 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.
</p>
16151 <p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
16152 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
16161 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
16163 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
16164 </pre></blockquote>
16166 <p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
16170 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-
2.88
16175 </pre></blockquote>
16177 <p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
16178 sysvinit are not set by upstart. Not sure if it is intentional or not
16179 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.
</p>
16181 <p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
16182 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
16189 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
16194 <div class=
"padding"></div>
16196 <div class=
"entry">
16197 <div class=
"title">
16198 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...
</a>
16205 <a href=
"http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
16206 of Rob Weir
</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
16207 <a href=
"http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
16208 Standards Wars
</a> (PDF
25 pages). I recommend it for everyone
16209 following the standards wars of today.
</p>
16215 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/standard">standard
</a>.
16220 <div class=
"padding"></div>
16222 <div class=
"entry">
16223 <div class=
"title">
16224 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Sitesummary_tip__Listing_computer_hardware_models_used_at_site.html">Sitesummary tip: Listing computer hardware models used at site
</a>
16230 <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
16231 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
16232 information extracted from each machine. The script to do so is
16233 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
16234 the Skolelinux build servers:
</p>
16237 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
16239 Dell Computer Corporation
1
16242 eserver xSeries
345 -[
8670M1X]-
1
16246 </pre></blockquote>
16248 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
16249 provided in each machine. Here there are Intel machines without model
16250 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
16251 machines listed as [no-dmi-info]. One can add -l as a command line
16252 option to list the individual machines.
</p>
16254 <p>A larger list is
16255 <a href=
"http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
16256 city of Narvik
</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
16257 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly. In their report there
16258 are ~
1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
16259 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
16260 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
16267 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary
</a>.
16272 <div class=
"padding"></div>
16274 <div class=
"entry">
16275 <div class=
"title">
16276 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/KDM_fail_at_boot_with_NVidia_cards___and_no_one_try_to_fix_it_.html">KDM fail at boot with NVidia cards - and no one try to fix it?
</a>
16282 <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
16283 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled. The
16284 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
16285 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
16288 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
16289 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#
583312</a> initially filed
16290 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
16291 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
16292 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#
524751</a> initially filed against
16293 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.
</p>
16295 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
16296 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
16297 distribution work out of the box for these users. The nvidia driver
16298 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
16299 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
16300 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
16301 distribution that work for them. I have no idea what the solution is,
16302 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.
</p>
16304 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.
</p>
16310 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
16315 <div class=
"padding"></div>
16317 <div class=
"entry">
16318 <div class=
"title">
16319 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Parallellized_boot_seem_to_hold_up_well_in_Debian_testing.html">Parallellized boot seem to hold up well in Debian/testing
</a>
16325 <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
16326 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
16327 issues are known and should be solved:
16331 <li>The wicd package seen to
16332 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting
</a> and
16333 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup
</a> when
16334 parallel booting is enabled. No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
16335 seem to be on the case.
</li>
16337 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
16338 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition
</a>
16339 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect. The
16340 maintainer is on the case.
</li>
16342 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
16343 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
16344 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back
</a> to
16345 sysv-rc. One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
16346 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
16347 sysv-rc more robust. Will investigate some more and probably upload a
16348 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
16349 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.
</li>
16353 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
16354 solvable before Squeeze is released. In addition to these there are
16355 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
16356 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.
</p>
16358 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
16359 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
16360 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
16361 list of usertagged bugs related to this
</a>.
</p>
16363 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.
</p>
16369 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
16374 <div class=
"padding"></div>
16376 <div class=
"entry">
16377 <div class=
"title">
16378 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer
</a>
16384 <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
16385 found time today to return to the project. Having to spend less time
16386 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
16387 definitely helped freeing some time.
</p>
16389 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu. We
16390 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
16391 get disk and network controllers working. Without having these
16392 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
16393 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
16394 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
16395 an external medium is a support pain. Initially, I expected it to be
16396 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
16397 debian-installer to find and use them. This proved to be wrong.
16398 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
16399 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
16400 /cdrom/firmware/). This also proved to not work, and at this point I
16401 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
16404 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
16405 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
16406 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
16407 packages. It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
16408 "external" media devices. Today I changed it to also look in the
16409 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
16410 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu. I also changed it to
16411 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
16412 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
16413 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
16416 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
16417 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
16418 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
16419 run these before activating the firmware during installation. The
16420 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
16421 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.
</p>
16423 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
16424 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.
</p>
16430 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
16435 <div class=
"padding"></div>
16437 <div class=
"entry">
16438 <div class=
"title">
16439 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Parallellized_boot_is_now_the_default_in_Debian_unstable.html">Parallellized boot is now the default in Debian/unstable
</a>
16445 <p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
16446 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
16447 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
16448 expected, if I am to believe the
16449 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
16450 on debian-devel@
</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
16451 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
16452 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen. If serious problems are
16453 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
16454 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
16457 More information about
16458 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
16459 based boot sequencing
</a> is available from the Debian wiki. It is
16460 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
16461 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:
</p>
16465 </pre></blockquote>
16467 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
16468 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
16469 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
16470 list of usertagged bugs related to this
</a>.
</p>
16476 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
16481 <div class=
"padding"></div>
16483 <div class=
"entry">
16484 <div class=
"title">
16485 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Sitesummary_tip__Listing_MAC_address_of_all_clients.html">Sitesummary tip: Listing MAC address of all clients
</a>
16491 <p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
16492 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
16493 system
</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
16494 network. Each machine will automatically report its status to the
16495 central server after boot and once per night. The network setup is
16496 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
16497 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines. This is useful
16498 to update the DHCP configuration.
</p>
16500 <p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
16501 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary. Run
16502 this on the collector host:
</p>
16505 perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
16506 </pre></blockquote>
16508 <p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
16509 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.
</p>
16511 <p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
16512 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
16513 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
16514 tables in LDAP using this information. Such tool is unfortunately not
16521 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary
</a>.
16526 <div class=
"padding"></div>
16528 <div class=
"entry">
16529 <div class=
"title">
16530 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html">systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart
</a>
16536 <p>The last few days a new boot system called
16537 <a href=
"http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd
</a>
16539 <a href=
"http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">introduced
</a>
16541 to the free software world. I have not yet had time to play around
16542 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
16543 <a href=
"http://upstart.ubuntu.com/">upstart
</a>, and might prove to be
16544 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
16545 based boot system. Tollef is
16546 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/580814">in the process
</a> of getting
16547 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work. I
16548 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
16549 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
16550 at the moment do not.
</p>
16552 <p>Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
16553 platform support. It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
16554 some new kernel features enabled to function properly. This means
16555 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
16556 system. Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
16559 <p>In the mean time, based on the
16560 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
16561 on debian-devel@
</a> regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
16562 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
16563 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
16564 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies. A
16565 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
16566 already in experimental. If all go well, Squeeze will be released
16567 with parallel booting enabled by default.
</p>
16573 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
16578 <div class=
"padding"></div>
16580 <div class=
"entry">
16581 <div class=
"title">
16582 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Parallellizing_the_boot_in_Debian_Squeeze___ready_for_wider_testing.html">Parallellizing the boot in Debian Squeeze - ready for wider testing
</a>
16588 <p>These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
16589 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
16590 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies. If you want
16591 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
16592 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
16593 based boot sequencing
</a> is enabled, and add this line to
16594 /etc/default/rcS:
</p>
16597 CONCURRENCY=makefile
16598 </pre></blockquote>
16600 <p>That is it. It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
16601 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
16602 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
16603 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts. Startpar is configured
16604 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
16605 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
16606 make this happen.
</p>
16608 <p>Give it a try, and see if you like the result. If some services
16609 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
16610 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
16611 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies). Report bugs and get
16612 the package maintainers to fix it. :)
</p>
16614 <p>Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
16615 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct. I
16616 expect we will get there in Squeeze+
1, if we get manage to test and
16617 fix the remaining issues.
</p>
16619 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
16620 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
16621 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
16622 list of usertagged bugs related to this
</a>.
</p>
16628 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
16633 <div class=
"padding"></div>
16635 <div class=
"entry">
16636 <div class=
"title">
16637 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Debian_has_switched_to_dependency_based_boot_sequencing.html">Debian has switched to dependency based boot sequencing
</a>
16643 <p>Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version
2.87dsf-
2,
16644 and the upload of insserv version
1.12.0-
10 yesterday, Debian unstable
16645 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing. This
16646 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
16647 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
16648 installation. Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
16649 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.
</p>
16651 <p>The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
16652 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
16653 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.
</p>
16659 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
16664 <div class=
"padding"></div>
16666 <div class=
"entry">
16667 <div class=
"title">
16668 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html">Taking over sysvinit development
</a>
16674 <p>After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
16675 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
16676 take over the package and become the new upstream. The number of
16677 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
16678 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
16679 the package up to date.
</p>
16681 <p>On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
16682 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman. About
10 days ago, I made
16683 a new upstream tarball with version number
2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
16684 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
16685 distributions. We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
16686 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge. Since the
16687 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
16688 upstream project at
<a href=
"http://savannah.nongnu.org/">Savannah
</a>, and continue
16689 development there. The project is registered and currently waiting
16690 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
16691 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
16692 working on the future release.
</p>
16694 <p>It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
16695 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.
</p>
16701 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
16706 <div class=
"padding"></div>
16708 <div class=
"entry">
16709 <div class=
"title">
16710 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html">Debian boots quicker and quicker
</a>
16716 <p>I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
16717 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
16718 could find more ways to speed up the boot system. This was an Ubuntu
16720 <a href=
"https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint">developer
16721 gathering
</a>. It was quite productive. We also discussed the future
16722 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
16723 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
16724 asynchronous and event base. The Ubuntu approach using udev and
16725 upstart might be a good way forward. Time will show.
</p>
16727 <p>Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
16728 process in Debian. All of these should be applied to get a quick
16733 <li>Use dash as /bin/sh.
</li>
16735 <li>Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
16736 clock is in UTC.
</li>
16738 <li>Install and activate the insserv package to enable
16739 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
16740 based boot sequencing
</a>, and enable concurrent booting.
</li>
16744 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
16745 <a href=
"http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/">Carlos
16748 <p>Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
16749 unstable yesterday. When we tested it, we were able to cut
6 seconds
16750 from the boot sequence. It depend on very correct dependency
16751 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
16752 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
16755 <p>On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
16756 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
16757 startup speed as well. Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
16758 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
16759 possible to run a of them in the same process. A quick way to test
16760 this would be to enable insserv and run 'mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
16761 insserv'. Will need to test if that work. :)
</p>
16767 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
16772 <div class=
"padding"></div>
16774 <div class=
"entry">
16775 <div class=
"title">
16776 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/BSAs_p_stander_om_piratkopiering_m_ter_motstand.html">BSAs påstander om piratkopiering møter motstand
</a>
16782 <p>Hvert år de siste årene har BSA, lobbyfronten til de store
16783 programvareselskapene som Microsoft og Apple, publisert en rapport der
16784 de gjetter på hvor mye piratkopiering påfører i tapte inntekter i
16785 ulike land rundt om i verden. Resultatene er tendensiøse. For noen
16787 <a href=
"http://global.bsa.org/globalpiracy2008/studies/globalpiracy2008.pdf">siste
16788 rapport
</a>, og det er flere kritiske kommentarer publisert de siste
16789 dagene. Et spesielt interessant kommentar fra Sverige,
16790 <a href=
"http://www.idg.se/2.1085/1.229795/bsa-hoftade-sverigesiffror">BSA
16791 höftade Sverigesiffror
</a>, oppsummeres slik:
</p>
16794 I sin senaste rapport slår BSA fast att
25 procent av all mjukvara i
16795 Sverige är piratkopierad. Det utan att ha pratat med ett enda svenskt
16796 företag. "Man bör nog kanske inte se de här siffrorna som helt
16797 exakta", säger BSAs Sverigechef John Hugosson.
16800 <p>Mon tro om de er like metodiske når de gjetter på andelen piratkopiering i Norge? To andre kommentarer er
<a
16801 href=
"http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/comment/2242134/bsa-piracy-figures-shot-reality">BSA
16802 piracy figures need a shot of reality
</a> og
<a
16803 href=
"http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/3958/125/">Does The WIPO
16804 Copyright Treaty Work?
</a></p>
16806 <p>Fant lenkene via
<a
16807 href=
"http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/17/1632242">oppslag
16808 på Slashdot
</a>.
</p>
16814 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern
</a>.
16819 <div class=
"padding"></div>
16821 <div class=
"entry">
16822 <div class=
"title">
16823 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/IDG_mener_linux_i_servermarkedet_vil_vokse_med_21__i_2009.html">IDG mener linux i servermarkedet vil vokse med
21% i
2009</a>
16830 <a href=
"http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10216873-16.html">interessante
16831 tall
</a> fra IDG om utviklingen av linuxservermarkedet. Fikk meg til
16832 å tenke på antall tjenermaskiner ved Universitetet i Oslo der jeg
16833 jobber til daglig. En rask opptelling forteller meg at vi har
490
16834 (
61%) fysiske unix-tjener (mest linux men også noen solaris) og
196
16835 (
25%) windowstjenere, samt
112 (
14%) virtuelle unix-tjenere. Med den
16836 bakgrunnskunnskapen kan jeg godt tro at IDG er inne på noe.
</p>
16842 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
16847 <div class=
"padding"></div>
16849 <div class=
"entry">
16850 <div class=
"title">
16851 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Kryptert_harddisk___naturligvis.html">Kryptert harddisk - naturligvis
</a>
16857 <p><a href=
"http://www.dagensit.no/trender/article1658676.ece">Dagens
16858 IT melder
</a> at Intel hevder at det er dyrt å miste en datamaskin,
16859 når en tar tap av arbeidstid, fortrolige dokumenter,
16860 personopplysninger og alt annet det innebærer. Det er ingen tvil om
16861 at det er en kostbar affære å miste sin datamaskin, og det er årsaken
16862 til at jeg har kryptert harddisken på både kontormaskinen og min
16863 bærbare. Begge inneholder personopplysninger jeg ikke ønsker skal
16864 komme på avveie, den første informasjon relatert til jobben min ved
16865 Universitetet i Oslo, og den andre relatert til blant annet
16866 foreningsarbeide. Kryptering av diskene gjør at det er lite
16867 sannsynlig at dophoder som kan finne på å rappe maskinene får noe ut
16868 av dem. Maskinene låses automatisk etter noen minutter uten bruk,
16869 og en reboot vil gjøre at de ber om passord før de vil starte opp.
16870 Jeg bruker Debian på begge maskinene, og installasjonssystemet der
16871 gjør det trivielt å sette opp krypterte disker. Jeg har LVM på toppen
16872 av krypterte partisjoner, slik at alt av datapartisjoner er kryptert.
16873 Jeg anbefaler alle å kryptere diskene på sine bærbare. Kostnaden når
16874 det er gjort slik jeg gjør det er minimale, og gevinstene er
16875 betydelige. En bør dog passe på passordet. Hvis det går tapt, må
16876 maskinen reinstalleres og alt er tapt.
</p>
16878 <p>Krypteringen vil ikke stoppe kompetente angripere som f.eks. kjøler
16879 ned minnebrikkene før maskinen rebootes med programvare for å hente ut
16880 krypteringsnøklene. Kostnaden med å forsvare seg mot slike angripere
16881 er for min del høyere enn gevinsten. Jeg tror oddsene for at
16882 f.eks. etteretningsorganisasjoner har glede av å titte på mine
16883 maskiner er minimale, og ulempene jeg ville oppnå ved å forsøke å
16884 gjøre det vanskeligere for angripere med kompetanse og ressurser er
16891 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet
</a>.
16896 <div class=
"padding"></div>
16898 <div class=
"entry">
16899 <div class=
"title">
16900 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Two_projects_that_have_improved_the_quality_of_free_software_a_lot.html">Two projects that have improved the quality of free software a lot
</a>
16906 <p>There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
16907 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
16908 do not yet know them.
</p>
16910 <p>The first one is
<a href=
"http://valgrind.org/">valgrind
</a>, a
16911 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
16912 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run 'valgrind program',
16913 and it will report any problems on stdout. It is even better if the
16914 program include debug information. With debug information, it is able
16915 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
16916 occurs. It can report things like 'reading past memory block in file
16917 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M', and
16918 'using uninitialised value in control logic'. This tool has made it
16919 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
16920 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
16922 <p>The second one is
16923 <a href=
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity">Coverity
</a> which is
16924 a source code checker. It is able to process the source of a program
16925 and find problems in the logic without running the program. It
16926 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
16927 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel. It is now a commercial tool
16928 and the company behind it is running
16929 <a href=
"http://www.scan.coverity.com/">a community service
</a> for the
16930 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
16931 their source checked for free. Several thousand defects have been
16932 found and fixed so far. It can find errors like 'lock L taken in file
16933 X line N is never released if exiting in line M', or 'the code in file
16934 Y lines O to P can never be executed'. The projects included in the
16935 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
16936 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.
</p>
16938 <p>I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
16939 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
16940 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
16941 surrounded by today.
</p>
16947 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
16952 <div class=
"padding"></div>
16954 <div class=
"entry">
16955 <div class=
"title">
16956 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/No_patch_is_not_better_than_a_useless_patch.html">No patch is not better than a useless patch
</a>
16963 <a href=
"http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214">claim that no
16964 patch is better than a useless patch
</a>. I completely disagree, as a
16965 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
16966 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
16967 time on fixing it. No patch do not provide any of these positive
16974 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
16979 <div class=
"padding"></div>
16981 <div class=
"entry">
16982 <div class=
"title">
16983 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Standardize_on_protocols_and_formats__not_vendors_and_applications.html">Standardize on protocols and formats, not vendors and applications
</a>
16989 <p>Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
16990 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure. It is the
16991 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
16992 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
16993 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
16994 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
16995 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
16998 <p>This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
16999 independently of the server applications. One can even allow users to
17000 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
17001 protocol and format. In the normal case, only one client application
17002 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
17003 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
17004 blocked from doing so.
</p>
17006 <p>It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
17007 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
17008 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
17009 requirements change.
</p>
17011 <p>I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
17012 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
17013 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.
</p>
17019 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/standard">standard
</a>.
17024 <div class=
"padding"></div>
17026 <div class=
"entry">
17027 <div class=
"title">
17028 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html">Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering
</a>
17034 <p>I'm sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
17035 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering. I got a bit done tuning the
17036 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
17037 implementation avahi. It look like it could be useful for us. Almost
17038 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
17039 get to know the Skolelinux system. Walter Bender, involved in the
17040 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
17041 also helped me improve my OLPC installation. He also showed me that
17042 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
17043 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian. As a
17044 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu. We also
17045 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
17046 proved to be too hard for us. The application seem to need more work
17047 before it is ready for me. I look forward to getting home and relax
17054 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
17059 <div class=
"padding"></div>
17061 <div class=
"entry">
17062 <div class=
"title">
17063 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">Time for new LDAP schemas replacing RFC
2307?
</a>
17069 <p>The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
17070 optimal. There is RFC
2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
17071 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC
2307bis, with
17072 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory. The RFC
17073 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
17074 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.
</p>
17076 <p>In
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux
</a>,
17077 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
17078 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
17079 and LTSP configuration in LDAP. These objects have a lot in common,
17080 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
17081 object per entity. For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
17082 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
17083 DNS information and another with DHCP information. The schemas
17084 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
17085 object. In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
17086 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
17087 It just do not scale. I believe it is time for a few RFC
17088 specifications to cleam up this mess.
</p>
17090 <p>I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
17091 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
17092 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
17093 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.
</p>
17095 <p>I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
17096 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.
</p>
17098 <p>Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
17099 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up. Time to start a
17100 new IETF work group?
</p>
17106 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
17111 <div class=
"padding"></div>
17113 <div class=
"entry">
17114 <div class=
"title">
17115 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Endelig_er_Debian_Lenny_gitt_ut.html">Endelig er Debian Lenny gitt ut
</a>
17121 <p>Endelig er
<a href=
"http://www.debian.org/">Debian
</a>
17122 <a href=
"http://www.debian.org/News/2009/20090214">Lenny
</a> gitt ut.
17123 Et langt steg videre for Debian-prosjektet, og en rekke nye
17124 programpakker blir nå tilgjengelig for de av oss som bruker den
17125 stabile utgaven av Debian. Neste steg er nå å få
17126 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
</a> /
17127 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu
</a> ferdig
17128 oppdatert for den nye utgaven, slik at en oppdatert versjon kan
17129 slippes løs på skolene. Takk til alle debian-utviklerne som har
17130 gjort dette mulig. Endelig er f.eks. fungerende avhengighetsstyrt
17131 bootsekvens tilgjengelig i stabil utgave, vha pakken
17132 <tt>insserv
</tt>.
</p>
17138 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk
</a>.
17143 <div class=
"padding"></div>
17145 <div class=
"entry">
17146 <div class=
"title">
17147 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Devcamp_brought_us_closer_to_the_Lenny_based_Debian_Edu_release.html">Devcamp brought us closer to the Lenny based Debian Edu release
</a>
17153 <p>This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
17154 Oslo. Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
17155 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
17156 LTSP installation. LTSP now work out of the box on the
10-network.
17157 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
17158 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box. Was working on getting the
17159 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
17160 finish it before the weekend was up.
</p>
17162 <p>Did not find time to look at the
4 VGA cards in one box we got from
17163 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
17164 development gathering. Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
17165 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
17166 of these cards.
</p>
17172 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp
</a>.
17177 <div class=
"padding"></div>
17179 <div class=
"entry">
17180 <div class=
"title">
17181 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/The_sorry_state_of_multimedia_browser_plugins_in_Debian.html">The sorry state of multimedia browser plugins in Debian
</a>
17187 <p>Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
17188 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
17189 default in Debian Edu. We need an embedded video playing plugin with
17190 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
17191 all the multimedia content available on the web. The test results and
17192 notes are available on
17193 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">the
17194 Debian wiki
</a>. I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
17195 fill this need. My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
17196 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages. A lot of the MIME
17197 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
17198 video/ogg), just do not work. And simple formats like the
17199 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn't supported by the
17200 totem and vlc plugins. I hope the situation will improve soon. No
17201 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.
</p>
17203 <p>For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin. It seem to
17204 be the only one fitting our needs. :/
</p>
17210 Tags:
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/web">web
</a>.
17215 <div class=
"padding"></div>
17217 <p style=
"text-align: right;"><a href=
"debian.rss"><img src=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/xml.gif" alt=
"RSS Feed" width=
"36" height=
"14" /></a></p>
17228 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2025/01/">January (
4)
</a></li>
17235 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2024/01/">January (
1)
</a></li>
17237 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2024/02/">February (
1)
</a></li>
17239 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2024/03/">March (
2)
</a></li>
17241 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2024/04/">April (
3)
</a></li>
17243 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2024/05/">May (
1)
</a></li>
17245 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2024/06/">June (
1)
</a></li>
17247 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2024/07/">July (
2)
</a></li>
17249 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2024/12/">December (
1)
</a></li>
17256 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2023/01/">January (
3)
</a></li>
17258 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2023/02/">February (
1)
</a></li>
17260 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2023/04/">April (
2)
</a></li>
17262 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2023/05/">May (
3)
</a></li>
17264 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2023/06/">June (
1)
</a></li>
17266 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2023/08/">August (
1)
</a></li>
17268 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2023/09/">September (
1)
</a></li>
17270 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2023/10/">October (
1)
</a></li>
17272 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2023/11/">November (
4)
</a></li>
17274 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2023/12/">December (
1)
</a></li>
17281 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2022/02/">February (
1)
</a></li>
17283 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2022/03/">March (
3)
</a></li>
17285 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2022/04/">April (
2)
</a></li>
17287 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2022/06/">June (
2)
</a></li>
17289 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2022/07/">July (
1)
</a></li>
17291 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2022/09/">September (
1)
</a></li>
17293 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2022/10/">October (
1)
</a></li>
17295 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2022/12/">December (
1)
</a></li>
17302 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2021/01/">January (
2)
</a></li>
17304 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2021/02/">February (
1)
</a></li>
17306 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2021/05/">May (
1)
</a></li>
17308 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2021/06/">June (
1)
</a></li>
17310 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2021/07/">July (
3)
</a></li>
17312 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2021/08/">August (
1)
</a></li>
17314 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2021/09/">September (
1)
</a></li>
17316 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2021/10/">October (
1)
</a></li>
17318 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2021/12/">December (
1)
</a></li>
17325 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2020/02/">February (
2)
</a></li>
17327 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2020/03/">March (
2)
</a></li>
17329 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2020/04/">April (
2)
</a></li>
17331 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2020/05/">May (
3)
</a></li>
17333 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2020/06/">June (
2)
</a></li>
17335 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2020/07/">July (
1)
</a></li>
17337 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2020/09/">September (
1)
</a></li>
17339 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2020/10/">October (
1)
</a></li>
17341 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2020/11/">November (
1)
</a></li>
17348 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2019/01/">January (
4)
</a></li>
17350 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2019/02/">February (
3)
</a></li>
17352 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2019/03/">March (
3)
</a></li>
17354 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2019/05/">May (
2)
</a></li>
17356 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2019/06/">June (
5)
</a></li>
17358 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2019/07/">July (
2)
</a></li>
17360 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2019/08/">August (
1)
</a></li>
17362 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2019/09/">September (
1)
</a></li>
17364 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2019/11/">November (
1)
</a></li>
17366 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2019/12/">December (
4)
</a></li>
17373 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2018/01/">January (
1)
</a></li>
17375 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2018/02/">February (
5)
</a></li>
17377 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2018/03/">March (
5)
</a></li>
17379 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2018/04/">April (
3)
</a></li>
17381 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2018/06/">June (
2)
</a></li>
17383 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2018/07/">July (
5)
</a></li>
17385 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2018/08/">August (
3)
</a></li>
17387 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2018/09/">September (
3)
</a></li>
17389 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2018/10/">October (
5)
</a></li>
17391 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2018/11/">November (
2)
</a></li>
17393 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2018/12/">December (
4)
</a></li>
17400 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2017/01/">January (
4)
</a></li>
17402 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2017/02/">February (
3)
</a></li>
17404 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2017/03/">March (
5)
</a></li>
17406 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2017/04/">April (
2)
</a></li>
17408 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2017/06/">June (
5)
</a></li>
17410 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2017/07/">July (
1)
</a></li>
17412 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2017/08/">August (
1)
</a></li>
17414 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2017/09/">September (
3)
</a></li>
17416 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2017/10/">October (
5)
</a></li>
17418 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2017/11/">November (
3)
</a></li>
17420 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2017/12/">December (
4)
</a></li>
17427 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2016/01/">January (
3)
</a></li>
17429 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2016/02/">February (
2)
</a></li>
17431 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2016/03/">March (
3)
</a></li>
17433 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2016/04/">April (
8)
</a></li>
17435 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2016/05/">May (
8)
</a></li>
17437 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2016/06/">June (
2)
</a></li>
17439 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2016/07/">July (
2)
</a></li>
17441 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2016/08/">August (
5)
</a></li>
17443 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2016/09/">September (
2)
</a></li>
17445 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2016/10/">October (
3)
</a></li>
17447 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2016/11/">November (
8)
</a></li>
17449 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2016/12/">December (
5)
</a></li>
17456 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2015/01/">January (
7)
</a></li>
17458 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2015/02/">February (
6)
</a></li>
17460 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2015/03/">March (
1)
</a></li>
17462 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2015/04/">April (
4)
</a></li>
17464 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2015/05/">May (
3)
</a></li>
17466 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2015/06/">June (
4)
</a></li>
17468 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2015/07/">July (
6)
</a></li>
17470 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2015/08/">August (
2)
</a></li>
17472 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2015/09/">September (
2)
</a></li>
17474 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2015/10/">October (
9)
</a></li>
17476 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2015/11/">November (
6)
</a></li>
17478 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2015/12/">December (
3)
</a></li>
17485 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2014/01/">January (
2)
</a></li>
17487 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2014/02/">February (
3)
</a></li>
17489 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2014/03/">March (
8)
</a></li>
17491 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2014/04/">April (
7)
</a></li>
17493 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2014/05/">May (
1)
</a></li>
17495 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2014/06/">June (
2)
</a></li>
17497 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2014/07/">July (
2)
</a></li>
17499 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2014/08/">August (
2)
</a></li>
17501 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2014/09/">September (
5)
</a></li>
17503 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2014/10/">October (
6)
</a></li>
17505 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2014/11/">November (
3)
</a></li>
17507 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2014/12/">December (
5)
</a></li>
17514 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2013/01/">January (
11)
</a></li>
17516 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2013/02/">February (
9)
</a></li>
17518 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2013/03/">March (
9)
</a></li>
17520 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2013/04/">April (
6)
</a></li>
17522 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2013/05/">May (
9)
</a></li>
17524 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2013/06/">June (
10)
</a></li>
17526 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2013/07/">July (
7)
</a></li>
17528 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2013/08/">August (
3)
</a></li>
17530 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2013/09/">September (
5)
</a></li>
17532 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2013/10/">October (
7)
</a></li>
17534 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2013/11/">November (
9)
</a></li>
17536 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2013/12/">December (
3)
</a></li>
17543 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2012/01/">January (
7)
</a></li>
17545 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2012/02/">February (
10)
</a></li>
17547 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2012/03/">March (
17)
</a></li>
17549 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2012/04/">April (
12)
</a></li>
17551 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2012/05/">May (
12)
</a></li>
17553 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2012/06/">June (
20)
</a></li>
17555 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2012/07/">July (
17)
</a></li>
17557 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2012/08/">August (
6)
</a></li>
17559 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2012/09/">September (
9)
</a></li>
17561 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2012/10/">October (
17)
</a></li>
17563 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2012/11/">November (
10)
</a></li>
17565 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2012/12/">December (
7)
</a></li>
17572 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2011/01/">January (
16)
</a></li>
17574 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2011/02/">February (
6)
</a></li>
17576 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2011/03/">March (
6)
</a></li>
17578 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2011/04/">April (
7)
</a></li>
17580 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2011/05/">May (
3)
</a></li>
17582 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2011/06/">June (
2)
</a></li>
17584 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2011/07/">July (
7)
</a></li>
17586 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2011/08/">August (
6)
</a></li>
17588 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2011/09/">September (
4)
</a></li>
17590 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2011/10/">October (
2)
</a></li>
17592 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2011/11/">November (
3)
</a></li>
17594 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2011/12/">December (
1)
</a></li>
17601 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (
2)
</a></li>
17603 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2010/02/">February (
1)
</a></li>
17605 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2010/03/">March (
3)
</a></li>
17607 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2010/04/">April (
3)
</a></li>
17609 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2010/05/">May (
9)
</a></li>
17611 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (
14)
</a></li>
17613 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2010/07/">July (
12)
</a></li>
17615 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2010/08/">August (
13)
</a></li>
17617 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2010/09/">September (
7)
</a></li>
17619 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2010/10/">October (
9)
</a></li>
17621 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2010/11/">November (
13)
</a></li>
17623 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2010/12/">December (
12)
</a></li>
17630 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (
8)
</a></li>
17632 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (
8)
</a></li>
17634 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (
12)
</a></li>
17636 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (
10)
</a></li>
17638 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2009/05/">May (
9)
</a></li>
17640 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2009/06/">June (
3)
</a></li>
17642 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2009/07/">July (
4)
</a></li>
17644 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (
3)
</a></li>
17646 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (
1)
</a></li>
17648 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2009/10/">October (
2)
</a></li>
17650 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (
3)
</a></li>
17652 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (
3)
</a></li>
17659 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (
5)
</a></li>
17661 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (
7)
</a></li>
17672 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (
19)
</a></li>
17674 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (
1)
</a></li>
17676 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (
1)
</a></li>
17678 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/bankid">bankid (
4)
</a></li>
17680 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/betalkontant">betalkontant (
9)
</a></li>
17682 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin (
13)
</a></li>
17684 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (
17)
</a></li>
17686 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa (
2)
</a></li>
17688 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath (
3)
</a></li>
17690 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (
206)
</a></li>
17692 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (
159)
</a></li>
17694 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/debian-handbook">debian-handbook (
9)
</a></li>
17696 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan (
11)
</a></li>
17698 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/dld">dld (
18)
</a></li>
17700 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook (
33)
</a></li>
17702 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/drivstoffpriser">drivstoffpriser (
4)
</a></li>
17704 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/english">english (
468)
</a></li>
17706 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (
23)
</a></li>
17708 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (
14)
</a></li>
17710 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture (
34)
</a></li>
17712 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox (
9)
</a></li>
17714 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen (
20)
</a></li>
17716 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/h264">h264 (
20)
</a></li>
17718 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju (
43)
</a></li>
17720 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram (
20)
</a></li>
17722 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (
23)
</a></li>
17724 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/kodi">kodi (
6)
</a></li>
17726 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap (
9)
</a></li>
17728 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/lego">lego (
5)
</a></li>
17730 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (
8)
</a></li>
17732 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/linuxcnc">linuxcnc (
8)
</a></li>
17734 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd (
2)
</a></li>
17736 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (
1)
</a></li>
17738 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/madewithcc">madewithcc (
3)
</a></li>
17740 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network (
8)
</a></li>
17742 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (
46)
</a></li>
17744 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software (
15)
</a></li>
17746 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/noark5">noark5 (
26)
</a></li>
17748 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (
326)
</a></li>
17750 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (
200)
</a></li>
17752 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn (
42)
</a></li>
17754 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (
2)
</a></li>
17756 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/opensnitch">opensnitch (
4)
</a></li>
17758 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (
76)
</a></li>
17760 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (
114)
</a></li>
17762 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/raid">raid (
4)
</a></li>
17764 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/reactos">reactos (
1)
</a></li>
17766 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (
11)
</a></li>
17768 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (
3)
</a></li>
17770 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (
17)
</a></li>
17772 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (
1)
</a></li>
17774 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/ruter">ruter (
7)
</a></li>
17776 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/scraperwiki">scraperwiki (
2)
</a></li>
17778 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (
60)
</a></li>
17780 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (
4)
</a></li>
17782 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis (
5)
</a></li>
17784 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (
77)
</a></li>
17786 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (
7)
</a></li>
17788 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (
14)
</a></li>
17790 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (
65)
</a></li>
17792 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin (
5)
</a></li>
17794 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/usenix">usenix (
2)
</a></li>
17796 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (
9)
</a></li>
17798 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/verkidetfri">verkidetfri (
22)
</a></li>
17800 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/video">video (
80)
</a></li>
17802 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (
4)
</a></li>
17804 <li><a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/web">web (
42)
</a></li>
17810 <p style=
"text-align: right">
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