blog/archive/2014/10/10.rss

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   4                 <title>Petter Reinholdtsen - Entries from October 2014</title>
   5                 <description>Entries from October 2014</description>
   6                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/</link>
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   9         <item>
  10                 <title>Debian Jessie, PXE and automatic firmware installation</title>
  11                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Jessie__PXE_and_automatic_firmware_installation.html</link>
  12                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Jessie__PXE_and_automatic_firmware_installation.html</guid>
  13                 <pubDate>Fri, 17 Oct 2014 14:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
  14                 <description>&lt;p&gt;When PXE installing laptops with Debian, I often run into the
  15 problem that the WiFi card require some firmware to work properly.
  16 And it has been a pain to fix this using preseeding in Debian.
  17 Normally something more is needed.  But thanks to
  18 &lt;a href=&quot;https://packages.qa.debian.org/i/isenkram.html&quot;&gt;my isenkram
  19 package&lt;/a&gt; and its recent tasksel extension, it has now become easy
  20 to do this using simple preseeding.&lt;/p&gt;
  21
  22 &lt;p&gt;The isenkram-cli package provide tasksel tasks which will install
  23 firmware for the hardware found in the machine (actually, requested by
  24 the kernel modules for the hardware).  (It can also install user space
  25 programs supporting the hardware detected, but that is not the focus
  26 of this story.)&lt;/p&gt;
  27
  28 &lt;p&gt;To get this working in the default installation, two preeseding
  29 values are needed.  First, the isenkram-cli package must be installed
  30 into the target chroot (aka the hard drive) before tasksel is executed
  31 in the pkgsel step of the debian-installer system.  This is done by
  32 preseeding the base-installer/includes debconf value to include the
  33 isenkram-cli package.  The package name is next passed to debootstrap
  34 for installation.  With the isenkram-cli package in place, tasksel
  35 will automatically use the isenkram tasks to detect hardware specific
  36 packages for the machine being installed and install them, because
  37 isenkram-cli contain tasksel tasks.&lt;/p&gt;
  38
  39 &lt;p&gt;Second, one need to enable the non-free APT repository, because
  40 most firmware unfortunately is non-free.  This is done by preseeding
  41 the apt-mirror-setup step.  This is unfortunate, but for a lot of
  42 hardware it is the only option in Debian.&lt;/p&gt;
  43
  44 &lt;p&gt;The end result is two lines needed in your preseeding file to get
  45 firmware installed automatically by the installer:&lt;/p&gt;
  46
  47 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
  48 base-installer base-installer/includes string isenkram-cli
  49 apt-mirror-setup apt-setup/non-free boolean true
  50 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  51
  52 &lt;p&gt;The current version of isenkram-cli in testing/jessie will install
  53 both firmware and user space packages when using this method.  It also
  54 do not work well, so use version 0.15 or later.  Installing both
  55 firmware and user space packages might give you a bit more than you
  56 want, so I decided to split the tasksel task in two, one for firmware
  57 and one for user space programs.  The firmware task is enabled by
  58 default, while the one for user space programs is not.  This split is
  59 implemented in the package currently in unstable.&lt;/p&gt;
  60
  61 &lt;p&gt;If you decide to give this a go, please let me know (via email) how
  62 this recipe work for you if you decide to give it a go. :)&lt;/p&gt;
  63
  64 &lt;p&gt;So, I bet you are wondering, how can this work.  First and
  65 foremost, it work because tasksel is modular, and driven by whatever
  66 files it find in /usr/lib/tasksel/ and /usr/share/tasksel/.  So the
  67 isenkram-cli package place two files for tasksel to find.  First there
  68 is the task description file (/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc):&lt;/p&gt;
  69
  70 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
  71 Task: isenkram-packages
  72 Section: hardware
  73 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
  74  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
  75  proposed.
  76 Test-new-install: show show
  77 Relevance: 8
  78 Packages: for-current-hardware
  79
  80 Task: isenkram-firmware
  81 Section: hardware
  82 Description: Hardware specific firmware packages (autodetected by isenkram)
  83  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific firmware
  84  packages are proposed.
  85 Test-new-install: mark show
  86 Relevance: 8
  87 Packages: for-current-hardware-firmware
  88 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  89
  90 &lt;p&gt;The key parts are Test-new-install which indicate how the task
  91 should be handled and the Packages line referencing to a script in
  92 /usr/lib/tasksel/packages/.  The scripts use other scripts to get a
  93 list of packages to install.  The for-current-hardware-firmware script
  94 look like this to list relevant firmware for the machine:
  95
  96 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
  97 #!/bin/sh
  98 #
  99 PATH=/usr/sbin:$PATH
 100 export PATH
 101 isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
 102 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 103
 104 &lt;p&gt;With those two pieces in place, the firmware is installed by
 105 tasksel during the normal d-i run. :)&lt;/p&gt;
 106
 107 &lt;p&gt;If you want to test what tasksel will install when isenkram-cli is
 108 installed, run &lt;tt&gt;DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical tasksel --test
 109 --new-install&lt;/tt&gt; to get the list of packages that tasksel would
 110 install.&lt;/p&gt;
 111
 112 &lt;p&gt;&lt;ahref=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu&lt;/a&gt; will be
 113 pilots in testing this feature, as isenkram is used to install
 114 firmware now.&lt;/p&gt;
 115 </description>
 116         </item>
 117
 118         <item>
 119                 <title>Ubuntu used to show the bread prizes at ICA Storo</title>
 120                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ubuntu_used_to_show_the_bread_prizes_at_ICA_Storo.html</link>
 121                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ubuntu_used_to_show_the_bread_prizes_at_ICA_Storo.html</guid>
 122                 <pubDate>Sat, 4 Oct 2014 15:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
 123                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Today I came across an unexpected Ubuntu boot screen.  Above the
 124 bread shelf on the ICA shop at Storo in Oslo, the grub menu of Ubuntu
 125 with Linux kernel 3.2.0-23 (ie probably version 12.04 LTS) was stuck
 126 on a screen normally showing the bread types and prizes:&lt;/p&gt;
 127
 128 &lt;p align=&quot;center&quot;&gt;&lt;img width=&quot;70%&quot; src=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2014-10-04-ubuntu-ica-storo-crop.jpeg&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 129
 130 &lt;p&gt;If it had booted as it was supposed to, I would never had known
 131 about this hidden Linux installation.  It is interesting what
 132 &lt;a href=&quot;http://revealingerrors.com/&quot;&gt;errors can reveal&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
 133 </description>
 134         </item>
 135
 136         <item>
 137                 <title>New lsdvd release version 0.17 is ready</title>
 138                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_lsdvd_release_version_0_17_is_ready.html</link>
 139                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_lsdvd_release_version_0_17_is_ready.html</guid>
 140                 <pubDate>Sat, 4 Oct 2014 08:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
 141                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/&quot;&gt;lsdvd project&lt;/a&gt;
 142 got a new set of developers a few weeks ago, after the original
 143 developer decided to step down and pass the project to fresh blood.
 144 This project is now maintained by Petter Reinholdtsen and Steve
 145 Dibb.&lt;/p&gt;
 146
 147 &lt;p&gt;I just wrapped up
 148 &lt;a href=&quot;https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/message/32896061/&quot;&gt;a
 149 new lsdvd release&lt;/a&gt;, available in git or from
 150 &lt;a href=&quot;https://sourceforge.net/projects/lsdvd/files/lsdvd/&quot;&gt;the
 151 download page&lt;/a&gt;.  This is the changelog dated 2014-10-03 for version
 152 0.17.&lt;/p&gt;
 153
 154 &lt;ul&gt;
 155
 156  &lt;li&gt;Ignore &#39;phantom&#39; audio, subtitle tracks&lt;/li&gt;
 157  &lt;li&gt;Check for garbage in the program chains, which indicate that a track is
 158    non-existant, to work around additional copy protection&lt;/li&gt;
 159  &lt;li&gt;Fix displaying content type for audio tracks, subtitles&lt;/li&gt;
 160  &lt;li&gt;Fix pallete display of first entry&lt;/li&gt;
 161  &lt;li&gt;Fix include orders&lt;/li&gt;
 162  &lt;li&gt;Ignore read errors in titles that would not be displayed anyway&lt;/li&gt;
 163  &lt;li&gt;Fix the chapter count&lt;/li&gt;
 164  &lt;li&gt;Make sure the array size and the array limit used when initialising
 165    the palette size is the same.&lt;/li&gt;
 166  &lt;li&gt;Fix array printing.&lt;/li&gt;
 167  &lt;li&gt;Correct subsecond calculations.&lt;/li&gt;
 168  &lt;li&gt;Add sector information to the output format.&lt;/li&gt;
 169  &lt;li&gt;Clean up code to be closer to ANSI C and compile without warnings
 170    with more GCC compiler warnings.&lt;/li&gt;
 171
 172 &lt;/ul&gt;
 173
 174 &lt;p&gt;This change bring together patches for lsdvd in use in various
 175 Linux and Unix distributions, as well as patches submitted to the
 176 project the last nine years.  Please check it out. :)&lt;/p&gt;
 177 </description>
 178         </item>
 179
 180         </channel>
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