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