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                <title>Petter Reinholdtsen - Entries tagged debian</title>
                <description>Entries tagged debian</description>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/</link>

        
        <item>
                <title>The sorry state of multimedia browser plugins in Debian</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_sorry_state_of_multimedia_browser_plugins_in_Debian.html</link>        
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_sorry_state_of_multimedia_browser_plugins_in_Debian.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Tue, 25 Nov 2008 00:10:00 +0100</pubDate>
                <description>
&lt;p&gt;Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
default in Debian Edu.  We need an embedded video playing plugin with
control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
all the multimedia content available on the web.  The test results and
notes are available on
&lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia&quot;&gt;the
Debian wiki&lt;/a&gt;.  I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
fill this need.  My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages.  A lot of the MIME
types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
video/ogg), just do not work.  And simple formats like the
audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn&#39;t supported by the
totem and vlc plugins.  I hope the situation will improve soon.  No
wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin.  It seem to
be the only one fitting our needs. :/&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>Devcamp brought us closer to the Lenny based Debian Edu release</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Devcamp_brought_us_closer_to_the_Lenny_based_Debian_Edu_release.html</link>        
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Devcamp_brought_us_closer_to_the_Lenny_based_Debian_Edu_release.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Sun, 7 Dec 2008 12:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
                <description>
&lt;p&gt;This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
Oslo.  Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
LTSP installation.  LTSP now work out of the box on the 10-network.
Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
screen, mouse and keybard in a small box.  Was working on getting the
diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
finish it before the weekend was up.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Did not find time to look at the 4 VGA cards in one box we got from
the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
development gathering.  Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
of these cards.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>Endelig er Debian Lenny gitt ut</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Endelig_er_Debian_Lenny_gitt_ut.html</link>        
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Endelig_er_Debian_Lenny_gitt_ut.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Sun, 15 Feb 2009 11:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
                <description>
&lt;p&gt;Endelig er &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/&quot;&gt;Debian&lt;/a&gt;
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/News/2009/20090214&quot;&gt;Lenny&lt;/a&gt; gitt ut.
Et langt steg videre for Debian-prosjektet, og en rekke nye
programpakker blir nå tilgjengelig for de av oss som bruker den
stabile utgaven av Debian.  Neste steg er nå å få
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; /
&lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu&lt;/a&gt; ferdig
oppdatert for den nye utgaven, slik at en oppdatert versjon kan
slippes løs på skolene.  Takk til alle debian-utviklerne som har
gjort dette mulig.  Endelig er f.eks. fungerende avhengighetsstyrt
bootsekvens tilgjengelig i stabil utgave, vha pakken
&lt;tt&gt;insserv&lt;/tt&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>Time for new  LDAP schemas replacing RFC 2307?</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html</link>        
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Sun, 29 Mar 2009 20:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>
&lt;p&gt;The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
optimal.  There is RFC 2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC 2307bis, with
some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory.  The RFC
specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu/Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;,
we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
and LTSP configuration in LDAP.  These objects have a lot in common,
but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
object per entity.  For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
DNS information and another with DHCP information.  The schemas
provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
object.  In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
It just do not scale.  I believe it is time for a few RFC
specifications to cleam up this mess.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
(mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up.  Time to start a
new IETF work group?&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html</link>        
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Sun, 29 Mar 2009 21:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>
&lt;p&gt;I&#39;m sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
Edu/Skolelinux development gathering.  I got a bit done tuning the
desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
implementation avahi.  It look like it could be useful for us.  Almost
30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
get to know the Skolelinux system.  Walter Bender, involved in the
development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
also helped me improve my OLPC installation.  He also showed me that
his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian.  As a
standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu.  We also
tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
proved to be too hard for us.  The application seem to need more work
before it is ready for me.  I look forward to getting home and relax
now. :)&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>Standardize on protocols and formats, not vendors and applications</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Standardize_on_protocols_and_formats__not_vendors_and_applications.html</link>        
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Standardize_on_protocols_and_formats__not_vendors_and_applications.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Mon, 30 Mar 2009 11:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>
&lt;p&gt;Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure.  It is the
simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
application.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
independently of the server applications.  One can even allow users to
use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
protocol and format.  In the normal case, only one client application
is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
blocked from doing so.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
requirements change.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>No patch is not better than a useless patch</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/No_patch_is_not_better_than_a_useless_patch.html</link>        
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/No_patch_is_not_better_than_a_useless_patch.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Tue, 28 Apr 2009 09:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>
&lt;p&gt;Julien Blache
&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214&quot;&gt;claim that no
patch is better than a useless patch&lt;/a&gt;.  I completely disagree, as a
patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
time on fixing it.  No patch do not provide any of these positive
properties.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>Two projects that have improved the quality of free software a lot</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Two_projects_that_have_improved_the_quality_of_free_software_a_lot.html</link>        
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Two_projects_that_have_improved_the_quality_of_free_software_a_lot.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Sat, 2 May 2009 15:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>
&lt;p&gt;There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
do not yet know them.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The first one is &lt;a href=&quot;http://valgrind.org/&quot;&gt;valgrind&lt;/a&gt;, a
tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run &#39;valgrind program&#39;,
and it will report any problems on stdout.  It is even better if the
program include debug information.  With debug information, it is able
to report the source file name and line number where the problem
occurs.  It can report things like &#39;reading past memory block in file
X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M&#39;, and
&#39;using uninitialised value in control logic&#39;.  This tool has made it
trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.

&lt;p&gt;The second one is
&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity&quot;&gt;Coverity&lt;/a&gt; which is
a source code checker.  It is able to process the source of a program
and find problems in the logic without running the program.  It
started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
used to find bugs in the Linux kernel.  It is now a commercial tool
and the company behind it is running
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scan.coverity.com/&quot;&gt;a community service&lt;/a&gt; for the
free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
their source checked for free.  Several thousand defects have been
found and fixed so far.  It can find errors like &#39;lock L taken in file
X line N is never released if exiting in line M&#39;, or &#39;the code in file
Y lines O to P can never be executed&#39;.  The projects included in the
community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
reliability problems thanks to Coverity.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
surrounded by today.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>Kryptert harddisk - naturligvis</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kryptert_harddisk___naturligvis.html</link>        
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kryptert_harddisk___naturligvis.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Sat, 2 May 2009 15:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>
&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dagensit.no/trender/article1658676.ece&quot;&gt;Dagens
IT melder&lt;/a&gt; at Intel hevder at det er dyrt å miste en datamaskin,
når en tar tap av arbeidstid, fortrolige dokumenter,
personopplysninger og alt annet det innebærer.  Det er ingen tvil om
at det er en kostbar affære å miste sin datamaskin, og det er årsaken
til at jeg har kryptert harddisken på både kontormaskinen og min
bærbare.  Begge inneholder personopplysninger jeg ikke ønsker skal
komme på avveie, den første informasjon relatert til jobben min ved
Universitetet i Oslo, og den andre relatert til blant annet
foreningsarbeide.  Kryptering av diskene gjør at det er lite
sannsynlig at dophoder som kan finne på å rappe maskinene får noe ut
av dem.  Maskinene låses automatisk etter noen minutter uten bruk,
og en reboot vil gjøre at de ber om passord før de vil starte opp.
Jeg bruker Debian på begge maskinene, og installasjonssystemet der
gjør det trivielt å sette opp krypterte disker.  Jeg har LVM på toppen
av krypterte partisjoner, slik at alt av datapartisjoner er kryptert.
Jeg anbefaler alle å kryptere diskene på sine bærbare.  Kostnaden når
det er gjort slik jeg gjør det er minimale, og gevinstene er
betydelige.  En bør dog passe på passordet.  Hvis det går tapt, må
maskinen reinstalleres og alt er tapt.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Krypteringen vil ikke stoppe kompetente angripere som f.eks. kjøler
ned minnebrikkene før maskinen rebootes med programvare for å hente ut
krypteringsnøklene.  Kostnaden med å forsvare seg mot slike angripere
er for min del høyere enn gevinsten.  Jeg tror oddsene for at
f.eks. etteretningsorganisasjoner har glede av å titte på mine
maskiner er minimale, og ulempene jeg ville oppnå ved å forsøke å
gjøre det vanskeligere for angripere med kompetanse og ressurser er
betydelige.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>IDG mener linux i servermarkedet vil vokse med 21% i 2009</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IDG_mener_linux_i_servermarkedet_vil_vokse_med_21__i_2009.html</link>        
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IDG_mener_linux_i_servermarkedet_vil_vokse_med_21__i_2009.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Thu, 7 May 2009 22:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>
&lt;p&gt;Kom over
&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10216873-16.html&quot;&gt;interessante
tall&lt;/a&gt; fra IDG om utviklingen av linuxservermarkedet.  Fikk meg til
å tenke på antall tjenermaskiner ved Universitetet i Oslo der jeg
jobber til daglig.  En rask opptelling forteller meg at vi har 490
(61%) fysiske unix-tjener (mest linux men også noen solaris) og 196
(25%) windowstjenere, samt 112 (14%) virtuelle unix-tjenere.  Med den
bakgrunnskunnskapen kan jeg godt tro at IDG er inne på noe.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>BSAs påstander om piratkopiering møter motstand</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/BSAs_p__stander_om_piratkopiering_m__ter_motstand.html</link>        
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/BSAs_p__stander_om_piratkopiering_m__ter_motstand.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Sun, 17 May 2009 23:05:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>
&lt;p&gt;Hvert år de siste årene har BSA, lobbyfronten til de store
programvareselskapene som Microsoft og Apple, publisert en rapport der
de gjetter på hvor mye piratkopiering påfører i tapte inntekter i
ulike land rundt om i verden.  Resultatene er tendensiøse.  For noen
dager siden kom
&lt;a href=&quot;http://global.bsa.org/globalpiracy2008/studies/globalpiracy2008.pdf&quot;&gt;siste
rapport&lt;/a&gt;, og det er flere kritiske kommentarer publisert de siste
dagene.  Et spesielt interessant kommentar fra Sverige,
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.idg.se/2.1085/1.229795/bsa-hoftade-sverigesiffror&quot;&gt;BSA
höftade Sverigesiffror&lt;/a&gt;, oppsummeres slik:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;blockquote&gt;
I sin senaste rapport slår BSA fast att 25 procent av all mjukvara i
Sverige är piratkopierad. Det utan att ha pratat med ett enda svenskt
företag. &quot;Man bör nog kanske inte se de här siffrorna som helt
exakta&quot;, säger BSAs Sverigechef John Hugosson.
&lt;/blockquote&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Mon tro om de er like metodiske når de gjetter på andelen piratkopiering i Norge?  To andre kommentarer er &lt;a
href=&quot;http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/comment/2242134/bsa-piracy-figures-shot-reality&quot;&gt;BSA
piracy figures need a shot of reality&lt;/a&gt; og &lt;a
href=&quot;http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/3958/125/&quot;&gt;Does The WIPO
Copyright Treaty Work?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Fant lenkene via &lt;a
href=&quot;http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/17/1632242&quot;&gt;oppslag
på Slashdot&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>Debian boots quicker and quicker</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html</link>        
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Wed, 24 Jun 2009 21:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>
&lt;p&gt;I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
could find more ways to speed up the boot system.  This was an Ubuntu
funded
&lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint&quot;&gt;developer
gathering&lt;/a&gt;. It was quite productive.  We also discussed the future
of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
asynchronous and event base.  The Ubuntu approach using udev and
upstart might be a good way forward.  Time will show.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
process in Debian.  All of these should be applied to get a quick
boot:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;ul&gt;

&lt;li&gt;Use dash as /bin/sh.&lt;/li&gt;

&lt;li&gt;Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
   clock is in UTC.&lt;/li&gt;

&lt;li&gt;Install and activate the insserv package to enable
   &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot&quot;&gt;dependency
   based boot sequencing&lt;/a&gt;, and enable concurrent booting.&lt;/li&gt;

&lt;/ul&gt;

These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
&lt;a href=&quot;http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/&quot;&gt;Carlos
Villegas&lt;/a&gt;.

&lt;p&gt;Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
unstable yesterday.  When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
from the boot sequence.  It depend on very correct dependency
declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
using this.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
startup speed as well.  Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
possible to run a of them in the same process.  A quick way to test
this would be to enable insserv and run &#39;mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
insserv&#39;.  Will need to test if that work. :)&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>Taking over sysvinit development</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html</link>        
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Wed, 22 Jul 2009 23:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>
&lt;p&gt;After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
take over the package and become the new upstream.  The number of
patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
the package up to date.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman.  About 10 days ago, I made
a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
distributions.  We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge.  Since the
new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
upstream project at &lt;a href=&quot;http://savannah.nongnu.org/&quot;&gt;Savannah&lt;/a&gt;, and continue
development there.  The project is registered and currently waiting
for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
working on the future release.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>Debian has switched to dependency based boot sequencing</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_has_switched_to_dependency_based_boot_sequencing.html</link>        
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_has_switched_to_dependency_based_boot_sequencing.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Mon, 27 Jul 2009 23:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>
&lt;p&gt;Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing.  This
conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
installation.  Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
non-predictable kernel in the early boot.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>Parallellizing the boot in Debian Squeeze - ready for wider testing</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellizing_the_boot_in_Debian_Squeeze___ready_for_wider_testing.html</link>        
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellizing_the_boot_in_Debian_Squeeze___ready_for_wider_testing.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Thu, 6 May 2010 23:25:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>
&lt;p&gt;These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies.  If you want
to test your Squeeze system, make sure
&lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot&quot;&gt;dependency
based boot sequencing&lt;/a&gt; is enabled, and add this line to
/etc/default/rcS:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
CONCURRENCY=makefile
&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;

&lt;p&gt;That is it.  It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
/etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
/etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts.  Startpar is configured
to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
make this happen.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Give it a try, and see if you like the result.  If some services
fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies).  Report bugs and get
the package maintainers to fix it. :)&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct.  I
expect we will get there in Squeeze+1, if we get manage to test and
fix the remaining issues.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
&lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org&quot;&gt;the
list of usertagged bugs related to this&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html</link>        
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Thu, 13 May 2010 22:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>
&lt;p&gt;The last few days a new boot system called
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd&quot;&gt;systemd&lt;/a&gt;
has been
&lt;a href=&quot;http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html&quot;&gt;introduced&lt;/a&gt;

to the free software world.  I have not yet had time to play around
with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
&lt;a href=&quot;http://upstart.ubuntu.com/&quot;&gt;upstart&lt;/a&gt;, and might prove to be
a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
based boot system.  Tollef is
&lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/580814&quot;&gt;in the process&lt;/a&gt; of getting
systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work.  I
like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
at the moment do not.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
platform support.  It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
some new kernel features enabled to function properly.  This means
kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
system.  Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
way forward.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;In the mean time, based on the
&lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html&quot;&gt;input
on debian-devel@&lt;/a&gt; regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies.  A
new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
already in experimental.  If all go well, Squeeze will be released
with parallel booting enabled by default.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>Sitesummary tip: Listing MAC address of all clients</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sitesummary_tip__Listing_MAC_address_of_all_clients.html</link>        
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sitesummary_tip__Listing_MAC_address_of_all_clients.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Fri, 14 May 2010 21:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>
&lt;p&gt;In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
&lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary&quot;&gt;sitesummary
system&lt;/a&gt; is used to keep track of the machines in the school
network.  Each machine will automatically report its status to the
central server after boot and once per night.  The network setup is
also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines.  This is useful
to update the DHCP configuration.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary.  Run
this on the collector host:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
perl -MSiteSummary -e &#39;for_all_hosts(sub { print join(&quot; &quot;, get_macaddresses(shift)), &quot;\n&quot;; });&#39;
&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;

&lt;p&gt;This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
tables in LDAP using this information.  Such tool is unfortunately not
written yet.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>Parallellized boot is now the default in Debian/unstable</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellized_boot_is_now_the_default_in_Debian_unstable.html</link>        
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellized_boot_is_now_the_default_in_Debian_unstable.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Fri, 14 May 2010 22:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>
&lt;p&gt;Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
expected, if I am to believe the
&lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html&quot;&gt;input
on debian-devel@&lt;/a&gt;, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen.  If serious problems are
detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
version.&lt;/p&gt;

More information about
&lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot&quot;&gt;dependency
based boot sequencing&lt;/a&gt; is available from the Debian wiki.  It is
currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
CONCURRENCY=none
&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;

&lt;p&gt;If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
&lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org&quot;&gt;the
list of usertagged bugs related to this&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html</link>        
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Sat, 22 May 2010 21:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>
&lt;p&gt;After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
found time today to return to the project.  Having to spend less time
working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
definitely helped freeing some time.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu.  We
include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
get disk and network controllers working.  Without having these
firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
an external medium is a support pain.  Initially, I expected it to be
enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
debian-installer to find and use them.  This proved to be wrong.
Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
/cdrom/firmware/).  This also proved to not work, and at this point I
found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
going to work.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
packages.  It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
&quot;external&quot; media devices.  Today I changed it to also look in the
/cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu.  I also changed it to
look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
Edu.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
run these before activating the firmware during installation.  The
license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>Parallellized boot seem to hold up well in Debian/testing</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellized_boot_seem_to_hold_up_well_in_Debian_testing.html</link>        
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellized_boot_seem_to_hold_up_well_in_Debian_testing.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Thu, 27 May 2010 23:55:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>
&lt;p&gt;A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
issues are known and should be solved:

&lt;p&gt;&lt;ul&gt;

&lt;li&gt;The wicd package seen to
&lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/508289&quot;&gt;break NFS mounting&lt;/a&gt; and
&lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/581586&quot;&gt;network setup&lt;/a&gt; when
parallel booting is enabled.  No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
seem to be on the case.&lt;/li&gt;

&lt;li&gt;The nvidia X driver seem to
&lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/583312&quot;&gt;have a race condition&lt;/a&gt;
triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect.  The
maintainer is on the case.&lt;/li&gt;

&lt;li&gt;The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
&lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/575080&quot;&gt;try to switch back&lt;/a&gt; to
sysv-rc.  One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
/etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
sysv-rc more robust.  Will investigate some more and probably upload a
workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
sysv-rc get a working shutdown.&lt;/li&gt;

&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
solvable before Squeeze is released.  In addition to these there are
some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
&lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org&quot;&gt;the
list of usertagged bugs related to this&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>KDM fail at boot with NVidia cards - and no one try to fix it?</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/KDM_fail_at_boot_with_NVidia_cards___and_no_one_try_to_fix_it_.html</link>        
                <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>
                <pubDate>Tue, 1 Jun 2010 17:05:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>
&lt;p&gt;It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled.  The
problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
wait.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I came across two bugs related to this issue,
&lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/583312&quot;&gt;#583312&lt;/a&gt; initially filed
against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
&lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/524751&quot;&gt;#524751&lt;/a&gt; initially filed against
kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
distribution work out of the box for these users.  The nvidia driver
maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
distribution that work for them.  I have no idea what the solution is,
but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>Sitesummary tip: Listing computer hardware models used at site</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sitesummary_tip__Listing_computer_hardware_models_used_at_site.html</link>        
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sitesummary_tip__Listing_computer_hardware_models_used_at_site.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Thu, 3 Jun 2010 12:05:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>
&lt;p&gt;When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
information extracted from each machine.  The script to do so is
included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
the Skolelinux build servers:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
  vendor                    count
  Dell Computer Corporation     1
    PowerEdge 1750              1
  IBM                           1
    eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]-     1
  Intel                         2
  [no-dmi-info]                 3
maintainer:~#
&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
provided in each machine.  Here there are Intel machines without model
information listed with Intel as vendor and mo model, and virtual Xen
machines listed as [no-dmi-info].  One can add -l as a command line
option to list the individual machines.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;A larger list is
&lt;a href=&quot;http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/&quot;&gt;available from the the
city of Narvik&lt;/a&gt;, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
provide the basic sitesummary report publicly.  In their report there
are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
collector.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>A manual for standards wars...</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html</link>        
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Sun, 6 Jun 2010 14:15:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>
&lt;p&gt;Via the
&lt;a href=&quot;http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html&quot;&gt;blog
of Rob Weir&lt;/a&gt; I came across the very interesting essay named
&lt;a href=&quot;http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf&quot;&gt;The Art of
Standards Wars&lt;/a&gt; (PDF 25 pages).  I recommend it for everyone
following the standards wars of today.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>Upstart or sysvinit - as init.d scripts see it</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Upstart_or_sysvinit___as_init_d_scripts_see_it.html</link>        
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Upstart_or_sysvinit___as_init_d_scripts_see_it.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Sun, 6 Jun 2010 23:55:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>
&lt;p&gt;If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd.  The packages with such
needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart.  Because of
this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
script is running under upstart, and when it is not.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
COLUMNS):&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
previous=N
PREVLEVEL=
RUNLEVEL=
runlevel=S
UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
UPSTART_INSTANCE=
UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;

&lt;p&gt;With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
script.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
previous=N
PREVLEVEL=N
RUNLEVEL=S
runlevel=S
&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
sysvinit are not set by upstart.  Not sure if it is intentional or not
to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
choice.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        </channel>
</rss>