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  13  <h1>
  14      <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/">Petter Reinholdtsen</a>
  15
  16  </h1>
  17
  18 </div>
  19
  20
  21     <h3>Entries tagged "debian".</h3>
  22
  23     <div class="entry">
  24       <div class="title">
  25         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">Welcome to the world, Isenkram!</a>
  26       </div>
  27       <div class="date">
  28         22nd January 2013
  29       </div>
  30       <div class="body">
  31         <p>Yesterday, I
  32 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">asked
  33 for testers</a> for my prototype for making Debian better at handling
  34 pluggable hardware devices, which I
  35 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">set
  36 out to create</a> earlier this month.  Several valuable testers showed
  37 up, and caused me to really want to to open up the development to more
  38 people.  But before I did this, I want to come up with a sensible name
  39 for this project.  Today I finally decided on a new name, and I have
  40 renamed the project from hw-support-handler to this new name.  In the
  41 process, I moved the source to git and made it available as a
  42 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/isenkram.git">collab-maint</a>
  43 repository in Debian.  The new name?  It is <strong>Isenkram</strong>.
  44 To fetch and build the latest version of the source, use</p>
  45
  46 <pre>
  47 git clone git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/isenkram.git
  48 cd isenkram && git-buildpackage
  49 </pre>
  50
  51 <p>I have not yet adjusted all files to use the new name yet.  If you
  52 want to hack on the source or improve the package, please go ahead.
  53 But please talk to me first on IRC or via email before you do major
  54 changes, to make sure we do not step on each others toes. :)</p>
  55
  56 <p>If you wonder what 'isenkram' is, it is a Norwegian word for iron
  57 stuff, typically meaning tools, nails, screws, etc.  Typical hardware
  58 stuff, in other words.  I've been told it is the Norwegian variant of
  59 the German word eisenkram, for those that are familiar with that
  60 word.</p>
  61
  62       </div>
  63       <div class="tags">
  64
  65
  66         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
  67
  68
  69       </div>
  70     </div>
  71     <div class="padding"></div>
  72
  73     <div class="entry">
  74       <div class="title">
  75         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">First prototype ready making hardware easier to use in Debian</a>
  76       </div>
  77       <div class="date">
  78         21st January 2013
  79       </div>
  80       <div class="body">
  81         <p>Early this month I set out to try to
  82 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">improve
  83 the Debian support for pluggable hardware devices</a>.  Now my
  84 prototype is working, and it is ready for a larger audience.  To test
  85 it, fetch the
  86 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">source
  87 from the Debian Edu subversion repository</a>, build and install the
  88 package.  You might have to log out and in again activate the
  89 autostart script.</p>
  90
  91 <p>The design is simple:</p>
  92
  93 <ul>
  94
  95 <li>Add desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ causing a program
  96 hw-support-handlerd to start when the user log in.</li>
  97
  98 <li>This program listen for kernel events about new hardware (directly
  99 from the kernel like udev does), not using HAL dbus events as I
 100 initially did.</li>
 101
 102 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware modalias in
 103 the APT database, a database
 104 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=markup">available
 105 via HTTP</a> and a database available as part of the package.</li>
 106
 107 <li>If a package is mapped to the hardware in question, the package
 108 isn't installed yet and this is the first time the hardware was
 109 plugged in, show a desktop notification suggesting to install the
 110 package or packages.</li>
 111
 112 <li>If the user click on the 'install package now' button, ask
 113 aptdaemon via the PackageKit API to install the requrired package.</li>
 114
 115 <li>aptdaemon ask for root password or sudo password, and install the
 116 package while showing progress information in a window.</li>
 117
 118 </ul>
 119
 120 <p>I still need to come up with a better name for the system.  Here
 121 are some screen shots showing the prototype in action.  First the
 122 notification, then the password request, and finally the request to
 123 approve all the dependencies.  Sorry for the Norwegian Bokmål GUI.</p>
 124
 125 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-1-notification.png">
 126 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-2-password.png">
 127 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-3-dependencies.png">
 128 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-4-installing.png">
 129 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-5-installing-details.png" width="70%"></p>
 130
 131 <p>The prototype still need to be improved with longer timeouts, but
 132 is already useful.  The database of hardware to package mappings also
 133 need more work.  It is currently compatible with the Ubuntu way of
 134 storing such information in the package control file, but could be
 135 changed to use other formats instead or in addition to the current
 136 method.  I've dropped the use of discover for this mapping, as the
 137 modalias approach is more flexible and easier to use on Linux as long
 138 as the Linux kernel expose its modalias strings directly.</p>
 139
 140 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-21 16:50</strong>: Due to popular demand,
 141 here is the command required to check out and build the source: Use
 142 '<tt>svn checkout
 143 svn://svn.debian.org/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/; cd
 144 hw-support-handler; debuild</tt>'.  If you lack debuild, install the
 145 devscripts package.</p>
 146
 147 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-23 12:00</strong>: The project is now
 148 renamed to Isenkram and the source moved from the Debian Edu
 149 subversion repository to a Debian collab-maint git repository.  See
 150 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">build
 151 instructions</a> for details.</p>
 152
 153       </div>
 154       <div class="tags">
 155
 156
 157         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
 158
 159
 160       </div>
 161     </div>
 162     <div class="padding"></div>
 163
 164     <div class="entry">
 165       <div class="title">
 166         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">Thank you Thinkpad X41, for your long and trustworthy service</a>
 167       </div>
 168       <div class="date">
 169         19th January 2013
 170       </div>
 171       <div class="body">
 172         <p>This Christmas my trusty old laptop died.  It died quietly and
 173 suddenly in bed.  With a quiet whimper, it went completely quiet and
 174 black.  The power button was no longer able to turn it on.  It was a
 175 IBM Thinkpad X41, and the best laptop I ever had.  Better than both
 176 Thinkpads X30, X31, X40, X60, X61 and X61S.  Far better than the
 177 Compaq I had before that.  Now I need to find a replacement.  To keep
 178 going during Christmas, I moved the one year old SSD disk to my old
 179 X40 where it fitted (only one I had left that could use it), but it is
 180 not a durable solution.
 181
 182 <p>My laptop needs are fairly modest.  This is my wishlist from when I
 183 got a new one more than 10 years ago.  It still holds true.:)</p>
 184
 185 <ul>
 186
 187 <li>Lightweight (around 1 kg) and small volume (preferably smaller
 188   than A4).</li>
 189 <li>Robust, it will be in my backpack every day.</li>
 190 <li>Three button mouse and a mouse pin instead of touch pad.</li>
 191 <li>Long battery life time.  Preferable a week.</li>
 192 <li>Internal WIFI network card.</li>
 193 <li>Internal Twisted Pair network card.</li>
 194 <li>Some USB slots (2-3 is plenty)</li>
 195 <li>Good keyboard - similar to the Thinkpad.</li>
 196 <li>Video resolution at least 1024x768, with size around 12" (A4 paper
 197 size).</li>
 198 <li>Hardware supported by Debian Stable, ie the default kernel and
 199   X.org packages.</li>
 200 <li>Quiet, preferably fan free (or at least not using the fan most of
 201   the time).
 202
 203 </ul>
 204
 205 <p>You will notice that there are no RAM and CPU requirements in the
 206 list.  The reason is simply that the specifications on laptops the
 207 last 10-15 years have been sufficient for my needs, and I have to look
 208 at other features to choose my laptop.  But are there still made as
 209 robust laptops as my X41?  The Thinkpad X60/X61 proved to be less
 210 robust, and Thinkpads seem to be heading in the wrong direction since
 211 Lenovo took over.  But I've been told that X220 and X1 Carbon might
 212 still be useful.</p>
 213
 214 <p>Perhaps I should rethink my needs, and look for a pad with an
 215 external keyboard?  I'll have to check the
 216 <a href="http://www.linux-laptop.net/">Linux Laptops site</a> for
 217 well-supported laptops, or perhaps just buy one preinstalled from one
 218 of the vendors listed on the <a href="http://linuxpreloaded.com/">Linux
 219 Pre-loaded site</a>.</p>
 220
 221       </div>
 222       <div class="tags">
 223
 224
 225         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 226
 227
 228       </div>
 229     </div>
 230     <div class="padding"></div>
 231
 232     <div class="entry">
 233       <div class="title">
 234         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_find_a_browser_plugin_supporting_a_given_MIME_type.html">How to find a browser plugin supporting a given MIME type</a>
 235       </div>
 236       <div class="date">
 237         18th January 2013
 238       </div>
 239       <div class="body">
 240         <p>Some times I try to figure out which Iceweasel browser plugin to
 241 install to get support for a given MIME type.  Thanks to
 242 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Plugins">specifications
 243 done by Ubuntu</a> and Mozilla, it is possible to do this in Debian.
 244 Unfortunately, not very many packages provide the needed meta
 245 information, Anyway, here is a small script to look up all browser
 246 plugin packages announcing ther MIME support using this specification:</p>
 247
 248 <pre>
 249 #!/usr/bin/python
 250 import sys
 251 import apt
 252 def pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
 253     cache = apt.Cache()
 254     cache.open(None)
 255     thepkgs = []
 256     for pkg in cache:
 257         version = pkg.candidate
 258         if version is None:
 259             version = pkg.installed
 260         if version is None:
 261             continue
 262         record = version.record
 263         if not record.has_key('Npp-MimeType'):
 264             continue
 265         mime_types = record['Npp-MimeType'].split(',')
 266         for t in mime_types:
 267             t = t.rstrip().strip()
 268             if t == mimetype:
 269                 thepkgs.append(pkg.name)
 270     return thepkgs
 271 mimetype = "audio/ogg"
 272 if 1 < len(sys.argv):
 273     mimetype = sys.argv[1]
 274 print "Browser plugin packages supporting %s:" % mimetype
 275 for pkg in pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
 276     print "  %s" %pkg
 277 </pre>
 278
 279 <p>It can be used like this to look up a given MIME type:</p>
 280
 281 <pre>
 282 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype
 283 Browser plugin packages supporting audio/ogg:
 284   gecko-mediaplayer
 285 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype application/x-shockwave-flash
 286 Browser plugin packages supporting application/x-shockwave-flash:
 287   browser-plugin-gnash
 288 %
 289 </pre>
 290
 291 <p>In Ubuntu this mechanism is combined with support in the browser
 292 itself to query for plugins and propose to install the needed
 293 packages.  It would be great if Debian supported such feature too.  Is
 294 anyone working on adding it?</p>
 295
 296 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-18 14:20</strong>: The Debian BTS
 297 request for icweasel support for this feature is
 298 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/484010">#484010</a> from 2008 (and
 299 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698426">#698426</a> from today).  Lack
 300 of manpower and wish for a different design is the reason thus feature
 301 is not yet in iceweasel from Debian.</p>
 302
 303       </div>
 304       <div class="tags">
 305
 306
 307         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 308
 309
 310       </div>
 311     </div>
 312     <div class="padding"></div>
 313
 314     <div class="entry">
 315       <div class="title">
 316         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_most_supported_MIME_type_in_Debian_.html">What is the most supported MIME type in Debian?</a>
 317       </div>
 318       <div class="date">
 319         16th January 2013
 320       </div>
 321       <div class="body">
 322         <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/AppStreamDebianProposal">DEP-11
 323 proposal to add AppStream information to the Debian archive</a>, is a
 324 proposal to make it possible for a Desktop application to propose to
 325 the user some package to install to gain support for a given MIME
 326 type, font, library etc. that is currently missing.  With such
 327 mechanism in place, it would be possible for the desktop to
 328 automatically propose and install leocad if some LDraw file is
 329 downloaded by the browser.</p>
 330
 331 <p>To get some idea about the current content of the archive, I decided
 332 to write a simple program to extract all .desktop files from the
 333 Debian archive and look up the claimed MIME support there.  The result
 334 can be found on the
 335 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/pub/AppStreamTest">Skolelinux FTP
 336 site</a>.  Using the collected information, it become possible to
 337 answer the question in the title.  Here are the 20 most supported MIME
 338 types in Debian stable (Squeeze), testing (Wheezy) and unstable (Sid).
 339 The complete list is available from the link above.</p>
 340
 341 <p><strong>Debian Stable:</strong></p>
 342
 343 <pre>
 344   count MIME type
 345   ----- -----------------------
 346      32 text/plain
 347      30 audio/mpeg
 348      29 image/png
 349      28 image/jpeg
 350      27 application/ogg
 351      26 audio/x-mp3
 352      25 image/tiff
 353      25 image/gif
 354      22 image/bmp
 355      22 audio/x-wav
 356      20 audio/x-flac
 357      19 audio/x-mpegurl
 358      18 video/x-ms-asf
 359      18 audio/x-musepack
 360      18 audio/x-mpeg
 361      18 application/x-ogg
 362      17 video/mpeg
 363      17 audio/x-scpls
 364      17 audio/ogg
 365      16 video/x-ms-wmv
 366 </pre>
 367
 368 <p><strong>Debian Testing:</strong></p>
 369
 370 <pre>
 371   count MIME type
 372   ----- -----------------------
 373      33 text/plain
 374      32 image/png
 375      32 image/jpeg
 376      29 audio/mpeg
 377      27 image/gif
 378      26 image/tiff
 379      26 application/ogg
 380      25 audio/x-mp3
 381      22 image/bmp
 382      21 audio/x-wav
 383      19 audio/x-mpegurl
 384      19 audio/x-mpeg
 385      18 video/mpeg
 386      18 audio/x-scpls
 387      18 audio/x-flac
 388      18 application/x-ogg
 389      17 video/x-ms-asf
 390      17 text/html
 391      17 audio/x-musepack
 392      16 image/x-xbitmap
 393 </pre>
 394
 395 <p><strong>Debian Unstable:</strong></p>
 396
 397 <pre>
 398   count MIME type
 399   ----- -----------------------
 400      31 text/plain
 401      31 image/png
 402      31 image/jpeg
 403      29 audio/mpeg
 404      28 application/ogg
 405      27 image/gif
 406      26 image/tiff
 407      26 audio/x-mp3
 408      23 audio/x-wav
 409      22 image/bmp
 410      21 audio/x-flac
 411      20 audio/x-mpegurl
 412      19 audio/x-mpeg
 413      18 video/x-ms-asf
 414      18 video/mpeg
 415      18 audio/x-scpls
 416      18 application/x-ogg
 417      17 audio/x-musepack
 418      16 video/x-ms-wmv
 419      16 video/x-msvideo
 420 </pre>
 421
 422 <p>I am told that PackageKit can provide an API to access the kind of
 423 information mentioned in DEP-11.  I have not yet had time to look at
 424 it, but hope the PackageKit people in Debian are on top of these
 425 issues.</p>
 426
 427 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-16 13:35</strong>: Updated numbers after
 428 discovering a typo in my script.</p>
 429
 430       </div>
 431       <div class="tags">
 432
 433
 434         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 435
 436
 437       </div>
 438     </div>
 439     <div class="padding"></div>
 440
 441     <div class="entry">
 442       <div class="title">
 443         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_modalias_info_to_find_packages_handling_my_hardware.html">Using modalias info to find packages handling my hardware</a>
 444       </div>
 445       <div class="date">
 446         15th January 2013
 447       </div>
 448       <div class="body">
 449         <p>Yesterday, I wrote about the
 450 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">modalias
 451 values provided by the Linux kernel</a> following my hope for
 452 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">better
 453 dongle support in Debian</a>.  Using this knowledge, I have tested how
 454 modalias values attached to package names can be used to map packages
 455 to hardware.  This allow the system to look up and suggest relevant
 456 packages when I plug in some new hardware into my machine, and replace
 457 discover and discover-data as the database used to map hardware to
 458 packages.</p>
 459
 460 <p>I create a modaliases file with entries like the following,
 461 containing package name, kernel module name (if relevant, otherwise
 462 the package name) and globs matching the relevant hardware
 463 modalias.</p>
 464
 465 <p><blockquote>
 466 Package: package-name
 467 <br>Modaliases: module(modaliasglob, modaliasglob, modaliasglob)</p>
 468 </blockquote></p>
 469
 470 <p>It is fairly trivial to write code to find the relevant packages
 471 for a given modalias value using this file.</p>
 472
 473 <p>An entry like this would suggest the video and picture application
 474 cheese for many USB web cameras (interface bus class 0E01):</p>
 475
 476 <p><blockquote>
 477 Package: cheese
 478 <br>Modaliases: cheese(usb:v*p*d*dc*dsc*dp*ic0Eisc01ip*)</p>
 479 </blockquote></p>
 480
 481 <p>An entry like this would suggest the pcmciautils package when a
 482 CardBus bridge (bus class 0607) PCI device is present:</p>
 483
 484 <p><blockquote>
 485 Package: pcmciautils
 486 <br>Modaliases: pcmciautils(pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc06sc07i*)
 487 </blockquote></p>
 488
 489 <p>An entry like this would suggest the package colorhug-client when
 490 plugging in a ColorHug with USB IDs 04D8:F8DA:</p>
 491
 492 <p><blockquote>
 493 Package: colorhug-client
 494 <br>Modaliases: colorhug-client(usb:v04D8pF8DAd*)</p>
 495 </blockquote></p>
 496
 497 <p>I believe the format is compatible with the format of the Packages
 498 file in the Debian archive.  Ubuntu already uses their Packages file
 499 to store their mappings from packages to hardware.</p>
 500
 501 <p>By adding a XB-Modaliases: header in debian/control, any .deb can
 502 announce the hardware it support in a way my prototype understand.
 503 This allow those publishing packages in an APT source outside the
 504 Debian archive as well as those backporting packages to make sure the
 505 hardware mapping are included in the package meta information.  I've
 506 tested such header in the pymissile package, and its modalias mapping
 507 is working as it should with my prototype.  It even made it to Ubuntu
 508 Raring.</p>
 509
 510 <p>To test if it was possible to look up supported hardware using only
 511 the shell tools available in the Debian installer, I wrote a shell
 512 implementation of the lookup code.  The idea is to create files for
 513 each modalias and let the shell do the matching.  Please check out and
 514 try the
 515 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/hw-support-lookup?view=co">hw-support-lookup</a>
 516 shell script.  It run without any extra dependencies and fetch the
 517 hardware mappings from the Debian archive and the subversion
 518 repository where I currently work on my prototype.</p>
 519
 520 <p>When I use it on a machine with a yubikey inserted, it suggest to
 521 install yubikey-personalization:</p>
 522
 523 <p><blockquote>
 524 % ./hw-support-lookup
 525 <br>yubikey-personalization
 526 <br>%
 527 </blockquote></p>
 528
 529 <p>When I run it on my Thinkpad X40 with a PCMCIA/CardBus slot, it
 530 propose to install the pcmciautils package:</p>
 531
 532 <p><blockquote>
 533 % ./hw-support-lookup
 534 <br>pcmciautils
 535 <br>%
 536 </blockquote></p>
 537
 538 <p>If you know of any hardware-package mapping that should be added to
 539 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=co">my
 540 database</a>, please tell me about it.</p>
 541
 542 <p>It could be possible to generate several of the mappings between
 543 packages and hardware.  One source would be to look at packages with
 544 kernel modules, ie packages with *.ko files in /lib/modules/, and
 545 extract their modalias information.  Another would be to look at
 546 packages with udev rules, ie packages with files in
 547 /lib/udev/rules.d/, and extract their vendor/model information to
 548 generate a modalias matching rule.  I have not tested any of these to
 549 see if it work.</p>
 550
 551 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
 552 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
 553 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
 554 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
 555
 556       </div>
 557       <div class="tags">
 558
 559
 560         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
 561
 562
 563       </div>
 564     </div>
 565     <div class="padding"></div>
 566
 567     <div class="entry">
 568       <div class="title">
 569         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">Modalias strings - a practical way to map "stuff" to hardware</a>
 570       </div>
 571       <div class="date">
 572         14th January 2013
 573       </div>
 574       <div class="body">
 575         <p>While looking into how to look up Debian packages based on hardware
 576 information, to find the packages that support a given piece of
 577 hardware, I refreshed my memory regarding modalias values, and decided
 578 to document the details.  Here are my findings so far, also available
 579 in
 580 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
 581 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>:
 582
 583 <p><strong>Modalias decoded</strong></p>
 584
 585 <p>This document try to explain what the different types of modalias
 586 values stands for.  It is in part based on information from
 587 &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias">https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias</a> &gt;,
 588 &lt;URL: <a href="http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/26132/how-to-assign-usb-driver-to-device">http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/26132/how-to-assign-usb-driver-to-device</a> &gt;,
 589 &lt;URL: <a href="http://code.metager.de/source/history/linux/stable/scripts/mod/file2alias.c">http://code.metager.de/source/history/linux/stable/scripts/mod/file2alias.c</a> &gt; and
 590 &lt;URL: <a href="http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/dmidecode/dmidecode.c?root=dmidecode&view=markup">http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/dmidecode/dmidecode.c?root=dmidecode&view=markup</a> &gt;.
 591
 592 <p>The modalias entries for a given Linux machine can be found using
 593 this shell script:</p>
 594
 595 <pre>
 596 find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u
 597 </pre>
 598
 599 <p>The supported modalias globs for a given kernel module can be found
 600 using modinfo:</p>
 601
 602 <pre>
 603 % /sbin/modinfo psmouse | grep alias:
 604 alias:          serio:ty05pr*id*ex*
 605 alias:          serio:ty01pr*id*ex*
 606 %
 607 </pre>
 608
 609 <p><strong>PCI subtype</strong></p>
 610
 611 <p>A typical PCI entry can look like this.  This is an Intel Host
 612 Bridge memory controller:</p>
 613
 614 <p><blockquote>
 615 pci:v00008086d00002770sv00001028sd000001ADbc06sc00i00
 616 </blockquote></p>
 617
 618 <p>This represent these values:</p>
 619
 620 <pre>
 621  v   00008086  (vendor)
 622  d   00002770  (device)
 623  sv  00001028  (subvendor)
 624  sd  000001AD  (subdevice)
 625  bc  06        (bus class)
 626  sc  00        (bus subclass)
 627  i   00        (interface)
 628 </pre>
 629
 630 <p>The vendor/device values are the same values outputted from 'lspci
 631 -n' as 8086:2770.  The bus class/subclass is also shown by lspci as
 632 0600.  The 0600 class is a host bridge.  Other useful bus values are
 633 0300 (VGA compatible card) and 0200 (Ethernet controller).</p>
 634
 635 <p>Not sure how to figure out the interface value, nor what it
 636 means.</p>
 637
 638 <p><strong>USB subtype</strong></p>
 639
 640 <p>Some typical USB entries can look like this.  This is an internal
 641 USB hub in a laptop:</p>
 642
 643 <p><blockquote>
 644 usb:v1D6Bp0001d0206dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00
 645 </blockquote></p>
 646
 647 <p>Here is the values included in this alias:</p>
 648
 649 <pre>
 650  v    1D6B  (device vendor)
 651  p    0001  (device product)
 652  d    0206  (bcddevice)
 653  dc     09  (device class)
 654  dsc    00  (device subclass)
 655  dp     00  (device protocol)
 656  ic     09  (interface class)
 657  isc    00  (interface subclass)
 658  ip     00  (interface protocol)
 659 </pre>
 660
 661 <p>The 0900 device class/subclass means hub.  Some times the relevant
 662 class is in the interface class section.  For a simple USB web camera,
 663 these alias entries show up:</p>
 664
 665 <p><blockquote>
 666 usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc01ip00
 667 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc02ip00
 668 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc01ip00
 669 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc02ip00
 670 </blockquote></p>
 671
 672 <p>Interface class 0E01 is video control, 0E02 is video streaming (aka
 673 camera), 0101 is audio control device and 0102 is audio streaming (aka
 674 microphone).  Thus this is a camera with microphone included.</p>
 675
 676 <p><strong>ACPI subtype</strong></p>
 677
 678 <p>The ACPI type is used for several non-PCI/USB stuff.  This is an IR
 679 receiver in a Thinkpad X40:</p>
 680
 681 <p><blockquote>
 682 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
 683 </blockquote></p>
 684
 685 <p>The values between the colons are IDs.</p>
 686
 687 <p><strong>DMI subtype</strong></p>
 688
 689 <p>The DMI table contain lots of information about the computer case
 690 and model.  This is an entry for a IBM Thinkpad X40, fetched from
 691 /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/modalias:</p>
 692
 693 <p><blockquote>
 694 dmi:bvnIBM:bvr1UETB6WW(1.66):bd06/15/2005:svnIBM:pn2371H4G:pvrThinkPadX40:rvnIBM:rn2371H4G:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
 695 </blockquote></p>
 696
 697 <p>The values present are</p>
 698
 699 <pre>
 700  bvn  IBM            (BIOS vendor)
 701  bvr  1UETB6WW(1.66) (BIOS version)
 702  bd   06/15/2005     (BIOS date)
 703  svn  IBM            (system vendor)
 704  pn   2371H4G        (product name)
 705  pvr  ThinkPadX40    (product version)
 706  rvn  IBM            (board vendor)
 707  rn   2371H4G        (board name)
 708  rvr  NotAvailable   (board version)
 709  cvn  IBM            (chassis vendor)
 710  ct   10             (chassis type)
 711  cvr  NotAvailable   (chassis version)
 712 </pre>
 713
 714 <p>The chassis type 10 is Notebook.  Other interesting values can be
 715 found in the dmidecode source:</p>
 716
 717 <pre>
 718   3 Desktop
 719   4 Low Profile Desktop
 720   5 Pizza Box
 721   6 Mini Tower
 722   7 Tower
 723   8 Portable
 724   9 Laptop
 725  10 Notebook
 726  11 Hand Held
 727  12 Docking Station
 728  13 All In One
 729  14 Sub Notebook
 730  15 Space-saving
 731  16 Lunch Box
 732  17 Main Server Chassis
 733  18 Expansion Chassis
 734  19 Sub Chassis
 735  20 Bus Expansion Chassis
 736  21 Peripheral Chassis
 737  22 RAID Chassis
 738  23 Rack Mount Chassis
 739  24 Sealed-case PC
 740  25 Multi-system
 741  26 CompactPCI
 742  27 AdvancedTCA
 743  28 Blade
 744  29 Blade Enclosing
 745 </pre>
 746
 747 <p>The chassis type values are not always accurately set in the DMI
 748 table.  For example my home server is a tower, but the DMI modalias
 749 claim it is a desktop.</p>
 750
 751 <p><strong>SerIO subtype</strong></p>
 752
 753 <p>This type is used for PS/2 mouse plugs.  One example is from my
 754 test machine:</p>
 755
 756 <p><blockquote>
 757 serio:ty01pr00id00ex00
 758 </blockquote></p>
 759
 760 <p>The values present are</p>
 761
 762 <pre>
 763   ty  01  (type)
 764   pr  00  (prototype)
 765   id  00  (id)
 766   ex  00  (extra)
 767 </pre>
 768
 769 <p>This type is supported by the psmouse driver.  I am not sure what
 770 the valid values are.</p>
 771
 772 <p><strong>Other subtypes</strong></p>
 773
 774 <p>There are heaps of other modalias subtypes according to
 775 file2alias.c.  There is the rest of the list from that source: amba,
 776 ap, bcma, ccw, css, eisa, hid, i2c, ieee1394, input, ipack, isapnp,
 777 mdio, of, parisc, pcmcia, platform, scsi, sdio, spi, ssb, vio, virtio,
 778 vmbus, x86cpu and zorro.  I did not spend time documenting all of
 779 these, as they do not seem relevant for my intended use with mapping
 780 hardware to packages when new stuff is inserted during run time.</p>
 781
 782 <p><strong>Looking up kernel modules using modalias values</strong></p>
 783
 784 <p>To check which kernel modules provide support for a given modalias,
 785 one can use the following shell script:</p>
 786
 787 <pre>
 788   for id in $(find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u); do \
 789     echo "$id" ; \
 790     /sbin/modprobe --show-depends "$id"|sed 's/^/  /' ; \
 791   done
 792 </pre>
 793
 794 <p>The output can look like this (only the first few entries as the
 795 list is very long on my test machine):</p>
 796
 797 <pre>
 798   acpi:ACPI0003:
 799     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/acpi/ac.ko
 800   acpi:device:
 801   FATAL: Module acpi:device: not found.
 802   acpi:IBM0068:
 803     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/char/nvram.ko
 804     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/leds/led-class.ko
 805     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko
 806     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.ko
 807   acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
 808     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/lib/crc-ccitt.ko
 809     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/irda/irda.ko
 810     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/net/irda/nsc-ircc.ko
 811   [...]
 812 </pre>
 813
 814 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
 815 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
 816 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
 817 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
 818
 819 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-15:</strong> Rewrite "cat $(find ...)" to
 820 "find ... -print0 | xargs -0 cat" to make sure it handle directories
 821 in /sys/ with space in them.</p>
 822
 823       </div>
 824       <div class="tags">
 825
 826
 827         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
 828
 829
 830       </div>
 831     </div>
 832     <div class="padding"></div>
 833
 834     <div class="entry">
 835       <div class="title">
 836         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Moved_the_pymissile_Debian_packaging_to_collab_maint.html">Moved the pymissile Debian packaging to collab-maint</a>
 837       </div>
 838       <div class="date">
 839         10th January 2013
 840       </div>
 841       <div class="body">
 842         <p>As part of my investigation on how to improve the support in Debian
 843 for hardware dongles, I dug up my old Mark and Spencer USB Rocket
 844 Launcher and updated the Debian package
 845 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">pymissile</a> to make
 846 sure udev will fix the device permissions when it is plugged in.  I
 847 also added a "Modaliases" header to test it in the Debian archive and
 848 hopefully make the package be proposed by jockey in Ubuntu when a user
 849 plug in his rocket launcher.  In the process I moved the source to a
 850 git repository under collab-maint, to make it easier for any DD to
 851 contribute.  <a href="http://code.google.com/p/pymissile/">Upstream</a>
 852 is not very active, but the software still work for me even after five
 853 years of relative silence.  The new git repository is not listed in
 854 the uploaded package yet, because I want to test the other changes a
 855 bit more before I upload the new version.  If you want to check out
 856 the new version with a .desktop file included, visit the
 857 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/pymissile.git">gitweb
 858 view</a> or use "<tt>git clone
 859 git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/pymissile.git</tt>".</p>
 860
 861       </div>
 862       <div class="tags">
 863
 864
 865         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
 866
 867
 868       </div>
 869     </div>
 870     <div class="padding"></div>
 871
 872     <div class="entry">
 873       <div class="title">
 874         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">Lets make hardware dongles easier to use in Debian</a>
 875       </div>
 876       <div class="date">
 877          9th January 2013
 878       </div>
 879       <div class="body">
 880         <p>One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
 881 general, is that there is a great package management system with the
 882 ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
 883 from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
 884 install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
 885 machine.  Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
 886 Linux distribution.  When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
 887 suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
 888 I need to talk to it.  When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
 889 yubikey-personalization package.  The information required to do this
 890 is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.</p>
 891
 892 <p>Some years ago, I proposed to
 893 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg01206.html">use
 894 the discover subsystem to implement this</a>.  The idea is fairly
 895 simple:
 896
 897 <ul>
 898
 899 <li>Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
 900   starting when a user log in.</li>
 901
 902 <li>Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
 903   hardware is inserted into the computer.</li>
 904
 905 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
 906   database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
 907   packages.</li>
 908
 909 <li>Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
 910   package, and make it easy to install it.</li>
 911
 912 </ul>
 913
 914 <p>I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
 915 initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
 916 discover database to find packages and
 917 <a href="http://www.packagekit.org/">PackageKit</a> to install
 918 packages.</p>
 919
 920 <p>Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
 921 draft package is now checked into
 922 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
 923 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>.  In the process, I updated the
 924 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html">discover-data</a>
 925 package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
 926 the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
 927 2.2013.01.09 to unstable.  I also discovered that the current
 928 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html">discover</a>
 929 package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
 930 /proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present.  I ported it to use
 931 libusb as a fall back option to get it working.  The fixed package
 932 version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn't upload it to unstable
 933 because of the freeze).</p>
 934
 935 <p>With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
 936 desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
 937 inserted):</p>
 938
 939 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-09-hw-autoinstall.png"></p>
 940
 941 <p>For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
 942 install the proposed packages by pressing the "Please install
 943 program(s)" button should to be implemented.</p>
 944
 945 <p>If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
 946 happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
 947 from hardware to Debian packages.  Check if 'discover-pkginstall -l'
 948 list the package you would like to have installed when a given
 949 hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
 950 reportbug if it isn't.  Or, if you know of a better way to provide
 951 such mapping, please let me know.</p>
 952
 953 <p>This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
 954 should be considered before it is ready for production use.  Is dbus
 955 the correct way to detect new hardware?  At the moment I look for HAL
 956 dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
 957 on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop.  Are there better events to use?
 958 How should the user be notified?  Is the desktop notification
 959 mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
 960 popup instead?  How should packages be installed?  When should they
 961 not be installed?</p>
 962
 963 <p>If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
 964 please send me an email. :)</p>
 965
 966       </div>
 967       <div class="tags">
 968
 969
 970         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
 971
 972
 973       </div>
 974     </div>
 975     <div class="padding"></div>
 976
 977     <div class="entry">
 978       <div class="title">
 979         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">New IRC channel for LEGO designers using Debian</a>
 980       </div>
 981       <div class="date">
 982          2nd January 2013
 983       </div>
 984       <div class="body">
 985         <p>During Christmas, I have worked a bit on the Debian support for
 986 <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx">LEGO Mindstorm
 987 NXT</a>.  My son and I have played a bit with my NXT set, and I
 988 discovered I had to build all the tools myself because none were
 989 already in Debian Squeeze.  If Debian support for LEGO is something
 990 you care about, please join me on the IRC channel
 991 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego</a> (server
 992 irc.debian.org).  There is a lot that could be done to improve the
 993 Debian support for LEGO designers.  For example both CAD software
 994 and Mindstorm compilers are missing. :)</p>
 995
 996 <p>Update 2012-01-03: A
 997 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">project page</a>
 998 including links to Lego related packages is now available.</p>
 999
1000       </div>
1001       <div class="tags">
1002
1003
1004         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
1005
1006
1007       </div>
1008     </div>
1009     <div class="padding"></div>
1010
1011     <div class="entry">
1012       <div class="title">
1013         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">How to backport bitcoin-qt version 0.7.2-2 to Debian Squeeze</a>
1014       </div>
1015       <div class="date">
1016         25th December 2012
1017       </div>
1018       <div class="body">
1019         <p>Let me start by wishing you all marry Christmas and a happy new
1020 year!  I hope next year will prove to be a good year.</p>
1021
1022 <p><a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">Bitcoin</a>, the digital
1023 decentralised "currency" that allow people to transfer bitcoins
1024 between each other with minimal overhead, is a very interesting
1025 experiment.  And as I wrote a few days ago, the bitcoin situation in
1026 <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> is about to improve a bit.
1027 The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">new debian source
1028 package</a> (version 0.7.2-2) was uploaded yesterday, and is waiting
1029 in <a href="http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the NEW queue</A>
1030 for one of the ftpmasters to approve the new bitcoin-qt package
1031 name.</p>
1032
1033 <p>And thanks to the great work of Jonas and the rest of the bitcoin
1034 team in Debian, you can easily test the package in Debian Squeeze
1035 using the following steps to get a set of working packages:</p>
1036
1037 <blockquote><pre>
1038 git clone git://git.debian.org/git/collab-maint/bitcoin
1039 cd bitcoin
1040 DEB_MAINTAINER_MODE=1 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp fakeroot debian/rules clean
1041 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp git-buildpackage --git-ignore-new
1042 </pre></blockquote>
1043
1044 <p>You might have to install some build dependencies as well.  The
1045 list of commands should give you two packages, bitcoind and
1046 bitcoin-qt, ready for use in a Squeeze environment.  Note that the
1047 client will download the complete set of bitcoin "blocks", which need
1048 around 5.6 GiB of data on my machine at the moment.  Make sure your
1049 ~/.bitcoin/ directory have lots of spare room if you want to download
1050 all the blocks.  The client will warn if the disk is getting full, so
1051 there is not really a problem if you got too little room, but you will
1052 not be able to get all the features out of the client.</p>
1053
1054 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1055 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1056 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1057
1058       </div>
1059       <div class="tags">
1060
1061
1062         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1063
1064
1065       </div>
1066     </div>
1067     <div class="padding"></div>
1068
1069     <div class="entry">
1070       <div class="title">
1071         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html">A word on bitcoin support in Debian</a>
1072       </div>
1073       <div class="date">
1074         21st December 2012
1075       </div>
1076       <div class="body">
1077         <p>It has been a while since I wrote about
1078 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>, the decentralised
1079 peer-to-peer based crypto-currency, and the reason is simply that I
1080 have been busy elsewhere.  But two days ago, I started looking at the
1081 state of <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin in
1082 Debian</a> again to try to recover my old bitcoin wallet.  The package
1083 is now maintained by a
1084 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-bitcoin/">team of
1085 people</a>, and the grunt work had already been done by this team.  We
1086 owe a huge thank you to all these team members. :)
1087 But I was sad to discover that the bitcoin client is missing in
1088 Wheezy.  It is only available in Sid (and an outdated client from
1089 backports).  The client had several RC bugs registered in BTS blocking
1090 it from entering testing.  To try to help the team and improve the
1091 situation, I spent some time providing patches and triaging the bug
1092 reports.  I also had a look at the bitcoin package available from Matt
1093 Corallo in a
1094 <a href="https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin">PPA for
1095 Ubuntu</a>, and moved the useful pieces from that version into the
1096 Debian package.</p>
1097
1098 <p>After checking with the main package maintainer Jonas Smedegaard on
1099 IRC, I pushed several patches into the collab-maint git repository to
1100 improve the package.  It now contains fixes for the RC issues (not from
1101 me, but fixed by Scott Howard), build rules for a Qt GUI client
1102 package, konqueror support for the bitcoin: URI and bash completion
1103 setup.  As I work on Debian Squeeze, I also created
1104 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-bitcoin-devel/Week-of-Mon-20121217/000041.html">a
1105 patch to backport</a> the latest version.  Jonas is going to look at
1106 it and try to integrate it into the git repository before uploading a
1107 new version to unstable.
1108
1109 <p>I would very much like bitcoin to succeed, to get rid of the
1110 centralized control currently exercised in the monetary system.  I
1111 find it completely unacceptable that the USA government is collecting
1112 transaction data for almost all international money transfers (most are done in USD and transaction logs shipped to the spooks), and
1113 that the major credit card companies can block legal money
1114 transactions to Wikileaks.  But for bitcoin to succeed, more people
1115 need to use bitcoins, and more people need to accept bitcoins when
1116 they sell products and services.  Improving the bitcoin support in
1117 Debian is a small step in the right direction, but not enough.
1118 Unfortunately the user experience when browsing the web and wanting to
1119 pay with bitcoin is still not very good.  The bitcoin: URI is a step
1120 in the right direction, but need to work in most or every browser in
1121 use.  Also the bitcoin-qt client is too heavy to fire up to do a
1122 quick transaction.  I believe there are other clients available, but
1123 have not tested them.</p>
1124
1125 <p>My
1126 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">experiment
1127 with bitcoins</a> showed that at least some of my readers use bitcoin.
1128 I received 20.15 BTC so far on the address I provided in my blog two
1129 years ago, as can be
1130 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">seen
1131 on the blockexplorer service</a>.  Thank you everyone for your
1132 donation.  The blockexplorer service demonstrates quite well that
1133 bitcoin is not quite anonymous and untracked. :) I wonder if the
1134 number of users have gone up since then.  If you use bitcoin and want
1135 to show your support of my activity, please send Bitcoin donations to
1136 the same address as last time,
1137 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1138
1139       </div>
1140       <div class="tags">
1141
1142
1143         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1144
1145
1146       </div>
1147     </div>
1148     <div class="padding"></div>
1149
1150     <div class="entry">
1151       <div class="title">
1152         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Git_repository_for_song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Git repository for song book for Computer Scientists</a>
1153       </div>
1154       <div class="date">
1155          7th September 2012
1156       </div>
1157       <div class="body">
1158         <p>As I
1159 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">mentioned
1160 this summer</a>, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
1161 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
1162 <a href="https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook">Gitorious
1163 repository for the project</a>.</p>
1164
1165 <p>If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
1166 to the HTML version.  To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
1167 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
1168 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.</p>
1169
1170 <p>Want to sing?  You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
1171 PostScript formats at
1172 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's Computer
1173 Science Songbook</a>.</p>
1174
1175       </div>
1176       <div class="tags">
1177
1178
1179         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
1180
1181
1182       </div>
1183     </div>
1184     <div class="padding"></div>
1185
1186     <div class="entry">
1187       <div class="title">
1188         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gratulerer_med_19__rsdagen__Debian_.html">Gratulerer med 19-årsdagen, Debian!</a>
1189       </div>
1190       <div class="date">
1191         16th August 2012
1192       </div>
1193       <div class="body">
1194         <p>I dag fyller
1195 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120813">Debian-prosjektet 19
1196 år</a>.  Jeg har fulgt det de siste 12 årene, og er veldig glad for å kunne
1197 si gratulerer med dagen, Debian!</p>
1198
1199       </div>
1200       <div class="tags">
1201
1202
1203         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>.
1204
1205
1206       </div>
1207     </div>
1208     <div class="padding"></div>
1209
1210     <div class="entry">
1211       <div class="title">
1212         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Song book for Computer Scientists</a>
1213       </div>
1214       <div class="date">
1215         24th June 2012
1216       </div>
1217       <div class="body">
1218         <p>Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
1219 <a href="http://www.uit.no/">University of Tromsø</a>, I started
1220 collecting computer related songs for use at parties.  The original
1221 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
1222 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
1223 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format.  I have
1224 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
1225 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
1226 help me extend and update the book.  If anyone is volunteering to help
1227 me with this, send me an email.  Also let me know if there are songs
1228 missing in my book.</p>
1229
1230 <p>I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
1231 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
1232 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
1233 Especially now that <a href="http://debconf12.debconf.org/">Debconf
1234 12</a> is about to start (and I am not going).  Want to sing?  Check
1235 out <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's
1236 Computer Science Songbook</a>.
1237
1238       </div>
1239       <div class="tags">
1240
1241
1242         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
1243
1244
1245       </div>
1246     </div>
1247     <div class="padding"></div>
1248
1249     <div class="entry">
1250       <div class="title">
1251         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html">Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge</a>
1252       </div>
1253       <div class="date">
1254         21st November 2011
1255       </div>
1256       <div class="body">
1257         <p>At work we have heaps of servers.  I believe the total count is
1258 around 1000 at the moment.  To be able to get help from the vendors
1259 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
1260 up to date.  If the firmware isn't the latest and greatest, the
1261 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
1262 firmware is upgraded.  So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
1263 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
1264 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
1265 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
1266 the tools to do so.</p>
1267
1268 <p>To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
1269 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got.  Most of
1270 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
1271 so far.  This blog post is about the Dell part.</P>
1272
1273 <p>On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
1274 <a href="ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz">an XML file</a>
1275 with firmware information for all 11th generation servers, listing
1276 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
1277 site I can find it.  Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
1278 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
1279 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
1280 be activated on the first reboot.</p>
1281
1282 <p>This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
1283 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
1284 servers at a site?  Please get in touch and lets share resources.</p>
1285
1286 <p><pre>
1287 #!/usr/bin/perl
1288 use strict;
1289 use warnings;
1290 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
1291 BEGIN {
1292     # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
1293     my %rhelmodules = (
1294         'XML::Simple' => 'perl-XML-Simple',
1295         );
1296     for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
1297         eval "use $module;";
1298         if ($@) {
1299             my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
1300             system("yum install -y $pkg");
1301             eval "use $module;";
1302         }
1303     }
1304 }
1305 my $errorsto = 'pere@hungry.com';
1306
1307 upgrade_dell();
1308
1309 exit 0;
1310
1311 sub run_firmware_script {
1312     my ($opts, $script) = @_;
1313     unless ($script) {
1314         print STDERR "fail: missing script name\n";
1315         exit 1
1316     }
1317     print STDERR "Running $script\n\n";
1318
1319     if (0 == system("sh $script $opts")) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
1320         print STDERR "success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n";
1321     } else {
1322         print STDERR "fail: firmware script returned error\n";
1323     }
1324 }
1325
1326 sub run_firmware_scripts {
1327     my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
1328     # Run firmware packages
1329     for my $dir (@dirs) {
1330         print STDERR "info: Running scripts in $dir\n";
1331         opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die "Unable to open directory $dir: $!";
1332         while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
1333             next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
1334             run_firmware_script($opts, "$dir/$s");
1335         }
1336         closedir $dh;
1337     }
1338 }
1339
1340 sub download {
1341     my $url = shift;
1342     print STDERR "info: Downloading $url\n";
1343     system("wget --quiet \"$url\"");
1344 }
1345
1346 sub upgrade_dell {
1347     my @dirs;
1348     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
1349     chomp $product;
1350
1351     if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
1352
1353         # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
1354         system('yum install -y compat-libstdc++-33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail');
1355
1356         my $tmpdir = tempdir(
1357             CLEANUP => 1
1358             );
1359         chdir($tmpdir);
1360         fetch_dell_fw('catalog/Catalog.xml.gz');
1361         system('gunzip Catalog.xml.gz');
1362         my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list('Catalog.xml');
1363         # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
1364         my $fwopts = "-q";
1365         if (@paths) {
1366             for my $url (@paths) {
1367                 fetch_dell_fw($url);
1368             }
1369             run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
1370         } else {
1371             print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
1372             print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
1373         }
1374         chdir('/');
1375     } else {
1376         print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
1377         print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
1378     }
1379 }
1380
1381 sub fetch_dell_fw {
1382     my $path = shift;
1383     my $url = "ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path";
1384     download($url);
1385 }
1386
1387 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
1388 # firmware packages to download from Dell.  Only work for Linux
1389 # machines and 11th generation Dell servers.
1390 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
1391     my $filename = shift;
1392
1393     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
1394     chomp $product;
1395     my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
1396
1397     print STDERR "Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n";
1398
1399     my $xml = XMLin($filename);
1400     my @paths;
1401     for my $bundle (@{$xml->{SoftwareBundle}}) {
1402         my $brand = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Display}->{content};
1403         my $model = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Model}->{Display}->{content};
1404         my $oscode;
1405         if ("ARRAY" eq ref $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}) {
1406             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}[0]->{osCode};
1407         } else {
1408             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}->{osCode};
1409         }
1410         if ($mybrand eq $brand && $mymodel eq $model && "LIN" eq $oscode)
1411         {
1412             @paths = map { $_->{path} } @{$bundle->{Contents}->{Package}};
1413         }
1414     }
1415     for my $component (@{$xml->{SoftwareComponent}}) {
1416         my $componenttype = $component->{ComponentType}->{value};
1417
1418         # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
1419         next if 'APAC' eq $componenttype;
1420
1421         my $cpath = $component->{path};
1422         for my $path (@paths) {
1423             if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
1424                 push(@paths, $cpath);
1425             }
1426         }
1427     }
1428     return @paths;
1429 }
1430 </pre>
1431
1432 <p>The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
1433 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking.  Anyone know a
1434 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers?  At the
1435 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
1436 outdated.</p>
1437
1438       </div>
1439       <div class="tags">
1440
1441
1442         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1443
1444
1445       </div>
1446     </div>
1447     <div class="padding"></div>
1448
1449     <div class="entry">
1450       <div class="title">
1451         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_is_booting_into_runlevel_1_different_from_single_user_boots_.html">How is booting into runlevel 1 different from single user boots?</a>
1452       </div>
1453       <div class="date">
1454          4th August 2011
1455       </div>
1456       <div class="body">
1457         <p>Wouter Verhelst have some
1458 <a href="http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot">interesting
1459 comments and opinions</a> on my blog post on
1460 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">the
1461 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian</a> and my blog post about
1462 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">the
1463 default KDE desktop in Debian</a>.  I only have time to address one
1464 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
1465 misunderstanding he bring forward:</p>
1466
1467 <p><blockquote>
1468 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
1469 single-user system (by adding 'single' to the kernel command line;
1470 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
1471 </blockquote></p>
1472
1473 <p>This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
1474 and booting into runlevel 1 is the same.  I am not surprised he
1475 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
1476 thing to believe.  But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
1477 runlevel 1 do not work properly and it isn't the same as single user
1478 mode.  I'll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
1479 hard to explain.</p>
1480
1481 <p>Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
1482 "<tt>~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin</tt>".  This means the only thing that is
1483 executed in single user mode is sulogin.  Single user mode is a boot
1484 state "between" the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
1485 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
1486 enters the single user state.  When switching to runlevel 1, the state
1487 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
1488 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
1489 runs "init -t1 S" to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
1490 1.  It is confusing that the 'S' (single user) init mode is not the
1491 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
1492 mode).</p>
1493
1494 <p>This summary might make it clearer.  When booting for the first
1495 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
1496 "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  When booting into
1497 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc
1498 S; /etc/init.d/rc 1; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  A problem show up when
1499 trying to continue after visiting single user mode.  Not all services
1500 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
1501 unpredicatble state.  This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
1502 after visiting single user mode.</p>
1503
1504 <p>A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
1505 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/.  When switching from say runlevel 2
1506 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
1507 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
1508 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
1509 2-5.  I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
1510 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not <strong>required</strong> to get a
1511 functioning single user mode during boot.</p>
1512
1513 <p>I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
1514 and discovered this problem a few years ago.  I suspect it originates
1515 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.</p>
1516
1517       </div>
1518       <div class="tags">
1519
1520
1521         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1522
1523
1524       </div>
1525     </div>
1526     <div class="padding"></div>
1527
1528     <div class="entry">
1529       <div class="title">
1530         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">What should start from /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian? - almost nothing</a>
1531       </div>
1532       <div class="date">
1533         30th July 2011
1534       </div>
1535       <div class="body">
1536         <p>In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
1537 are started from /etc/rcS.d/.  In fact, there is a bite more of them
1538 than make sense, and this causes a few problems.  What kind of
1539 problems, you might ask.  There are at least two problems.  The first
1540 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
1541 runlevel 1.  One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
1542 the expected state.  The other is that single user boot will sometimes
1543 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
1544 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
1545 machine from a problem in that subsystem.  A minor additional point is
1546 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
1547 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
1548 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.</p>
1549
1550 <p>So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/.  In short, only the
1551 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
1552 presented during a single user boot should go there.  Everything else
1553 should go into the numeric runlevels.  This means things like
1554 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
1555 the numeric runlevels.  Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
1556 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
1557 out.  Do your package have one of them?  Please help us make single
1558 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.</p>
1559
1560 <p>Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
1561 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
1562 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
1563 is presented.</p>
1564
1565 <p>As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound.  To keep
1566 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
1567 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
1568 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
1569 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
1570 moved first.  This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
1571 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
1572 the system state correct.  This will require some coordination when it
1573 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
1574 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
1575 on them.  Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
1576 package, while others are still left to do.  I wish I had time to work
1577 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
1578 find time to push this forward.</p>
1579
1580       </div>
1581       <div class="tags">
1582
1583
1584         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1585
1586
1587       </div>
1588     </div>
1589     <div class="padding"></div>
1590
1591     <div class="entry">
1592       <div class="title">
1593         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">What is missing in the Debian desktop, or why my parents use Kubuntu</a>
1594       </div>
1595       <div class="date">
1596         29th July 2011
1597       </div>
1598       <div class="body">
1599         <p>While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
1600 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
1601 desktop to be useful for more people.  The use case for this is my
1602 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
1603 issues.</p>
1604
1605 <p>I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
1606 implement.  After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
1607 do this in Debian we would have a source.</p>
1608
1609 <ol>
1610
1611 <li><strong>Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.</strong> When there
1612 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
1613 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
1614 tool to handle it.  I have no problem guiding both of my parents
1615 through the process over the phone.  If a kernel reboot is required,
1616 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool.  Last
1617 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
1618 Debian.</li>
1619
1620 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
1621 plugins.</strong> When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
1622 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
1623 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
1624 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
1625 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
1626 Packages file in the APT archive).  If one or more packages are found,
1627 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
1628 type.  If the package require the user to accept some non-free
1629 license, this is explained to the user.  The entire process make it
1630 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
1631 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
1632 not the browser for any missing features.</li>
1633
1634 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
1635 handlers.</strong> When the media players encounter a format or codec
1636 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
1637 should search for a package that would add support for it.  This
1638 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264.  The selection
1639 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
1640 plugin handling.  This is as far as I know implemented using a
1641 gstreamer hook.  The end result is that the user easily get access to
1642 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
1643 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.</li>
1644
1645 <li><strong>Better browser handling of some MIME types.</strong> When
1646 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
1647 start emacs to show it.  If I remember correctly, when doing the same
1648 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser.  At least I
1649 know Opera will show text files within the browser.  I much prefer the
1650 latter behaviour.</li>
1651
1652 </ol>
1653
1654 <p>There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
1655 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
1656 it do not matter much.</p>
1657
1658 <p>I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
1659 Debian release.  It would require the coordinated effort of several
1660 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.</p>
1661
1662       </div>
1663       <div class="tags">
1664
1665
1666         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
1667
1668
1669       </div>
1670     </div>
1671     <div class="padding"></div>
1672
1673     <div class="entry">
1674       <div class="title">
1675         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Perl_modules_used_by_FixMyStreet_which_are_missing_in_Debian_Squeeze.html">Perl modules used by FixMyStreet which are missing in Debian/Squeeze</a>
1676       </div>
1677       <div class="date">
1678         26th July 2011
1679       </div>
1680       <div class="body">
1681         <p>The Norwegian <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</A>
1682 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
1683 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
1684 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
1685 security support for a few years.</p>
1686
1687 <p>The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
1688 that are missing in Debian at the moment.  It would be great if these
1689 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
1690 their own <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com">FixMyStreet</a> clone
1691 in their own country using only Debian packages.  The list of modules
1692 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn't very long, and I hope the perl group
1693 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
1694 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
1695 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
1696 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
1697 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
1698 easier in the future.</p>
1699
1700 <p>Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
1701 installed on my server was a simple call to 'cpan2deb Module::Name'
1702 and 'dpkg -i' to install the resulting package.  But this leave me
1703 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
1704 do not have time for.</p>
1705
1706       </div>
1707       <div class="tags">
1708
1709
1710         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>.
1711
1712
1713       </div>
1714     </div>
1715     <div class="padding"></div>
1716
1717     <div class="entry">
1718       <div class="title">
1719         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Norwegian_FixMyStreet_have_kept_me_busy_the_last_few_weeks.html">A Norwegian FixMyStreet have kept me busy the last few weeks</a>
1720       </div>
1721       <div class="date">
1722          3rd April 2011
1723       </div>
1724       <div class="body">
1725         <p>Here is a small update for my English readers.  Most of my blog
1726 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
1727 update in English.</p>
1728
1729 <p>The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
1730 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
1731 of the British service
1732 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> up and running,
1733 and it has been running for a month now.  The entire project has been
1734 organised by me and two others.  Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
1735 to fund the development work.  In January I drafted a contract with
1736 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a> on what to develop,
1737 and in February the development took place.  Most of it involved
1738 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
1739 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
1740 running in any country by now.  The Norwegian
1741 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is using
1742 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> as the map
1743 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
1744 support for this had to be added/fixed.</p>
1745
1746 <p>The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
1747 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th.  The system is
1748 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
1749 problem reports in a few weeks.  Soon we hope to announce the Android
1750 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
1751 public infrastructure.</p>
1752
1753 <p>Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
1754 such service?</p>
1755
1756       </div>
1757       <div class="tags">
1758
1759
1760         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart</a>.
1761
1762
1763       </div>
1764     </div>
1765     <div class="padding"></div>
1766
1767     <div class="entry">
1768       <div class="title">
1769         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_NVD_and_CPE_to_track_CVEs_in_locally_maintained_software.html">Using NVD and CPE to track CVEs in locally maintained software</a>
1770       </div>
1771       <div class="date">
1772         28th January 2011
1773       </div>
1774       <div class="body">
1775         <p>The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
1776 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo.  My idea is that
1777 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
1778 available on the Internet, and check our locally
1779 maintained/distributed software against this information.  It should
1780 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten.  The
1781 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
1782 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
1783 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
1784 out which security holes were present in our free software
1785 collection.</p>
1786
1787 <p>After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
1788 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
1789 consistent way across data sources.  I considered several ways to do
1790 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
1791 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
1792 existing naming scheme.  And it seem like I am not the first one to
1793 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
1794 solution.  Enter the <a href="http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html">Common
1795 Platform Enumeration</a> dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
1796 software, hardware and other platform components.  The CPE ids are
1797 mapped to CVEs in the <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/">National
1798 Vulnerability Database</a>, allowing me to look up know security
1799 issues for any CPE name.  With this in place, all I need to do is to
1800 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
1801 This is fairly trivial (I google for 'cve cpe $package' and check the
1802 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).</p>
1803
1804 <p>To give you an example.  The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
1805 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip.  If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
1806 check out, one could look up
1807 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/search?cpe=cpe%3A%2Fa%3Agnu%3Agzip:1.3.3">cpe:/a:gnu:gzip:1.3.3
1808 in NVD</a> and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
1809 The most recent one is
1810 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2010-0001">CVE-2010-0001</a>,
1811 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
1812 list of affected versions is provided.</p>
1813
1814 <p>The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
1815 for offline processing of issues.  Using this dump, I've written a
1816 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
1817 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs.  One give it CPEs
1818 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
1819 security issues out.</p>
1820
1821 <p>Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
1822 information need to be high.  For that to happen, I believe as many as
1823 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database.  I notice
1824 RHEL is providing
1825 <a href="https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt">a
1826 map from CVE to CPE</a>, indicating that they are using the CPE
1827 information.  I'm not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.</p>
1828
1829 <p>To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
1830 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
1831 the CVE database in NVD.  The result look fairly good, but there are
1832 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
1833 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
1834 Debian believe are affected by a CVE).  Hope to find time to improve
1835 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
1836 someone maintaining it.  So far my three emails with questions and
1837 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
1838 established soon.</p>
1839
1840 <p>An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
1841 mapping.  It would be useful to know which packages in for example
1842 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
1843 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
1844 for their packages.</p>
1845
1846       </div>
1847       <div class="tags">
1848
1849
1850         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
1851
1852
1853       </div>
1854     </div>
1855     <div class="padding"></div>
1856
1857     <div class="entry">
1858       <div class="title">
1859         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Which_module_is_loaded_for_a_given_PCI_and_USB_device_.html">Which module is loaded for a given PCI and USB device?</a>
1860       </div>
1861       <div class="date">
1862         23rd January 2011
1863       </div>
1864       <div class="body">
1865         <p>In the
1866 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data">discover-data</a>
1867 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
1868 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
1869 information.  One part of this script that I find very useful when
1870 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
1871 to the PCI device it claims.  It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
1872 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with.  To see
1873 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
1874 <tt>/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3>&1</tt>.  The relevant output on
1875 one of my machines like this:</p>
1876
1877 <pre>
1878 loaded modules:
1879 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
1880 10de:03f1 ohci_hcd
1881 10de:03f2 ehci_hcd
1882 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
1883 10de:03ec pata_amd
1884 10de:03f6 sata_nv
1885 1022:1103 k8temp
1886 109e:036e bttv
1887 109e:0878 snd_bt87x
1888 11ab:4364 sky2
1889 </pre>
1890
1891 <p>The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
1892 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:</p>
1893
1894 <pre>
1895 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
1896     echo loaded pci modules:
1897     (
1898         cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
1899         for address in * ; do
1900             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
1901                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
1902                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
1903                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
1904                     id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $3}'`
1905                     echo "$id $module"
1906                 fi
1907             fi
1908         done
1909     )
1910     echo
1911 fi
1912 </pre>
1913
1914 <p>Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
1915 mappings:</p>
1916
1917 <pre>
1918 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
1919     echo loaded usb modules:
1920     (
1921         cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
1922         for address in * ; do
1923             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
1924                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
1925                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
1926                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
1927                     id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $6}')
1928                     if [ "$id" ] ; then
1929                         echo "$id $module"
1930                     fi
1931                 fi
1932             fi
1933         done
1934     )
1935     echo
1936 fi
1937 </pre>
1938
1939 <p>This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
1940 well.</p>
1941
1942       </div>
1943       <div class="tags">
1944
1945
1946         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1947
1948
1949       </div>
1950     </div>
1951     <div class="padding"></div>
1952
1953     <div class="entry">
1954       <div class="title">
1955         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_test_if_a_laptop_is_working_with_Linux.html">How to test if a laptop is working with Linux</a>
1956       </div>
1957       <div class="date">
1958         22nd December 2010
1959       </div>
1960       <div class="body">
1961         <p>The last few days I have spent at work here at the <a
1962 href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> testing if the new
1963 batch of computers will work with Linux.  Every year for the last few
1964 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
1965 computers, and this year HP won the bid.  Two different desktops and
1966 five different laptops are on the list this year.  We in the UNIX
1967 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
1968 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
1969 university.</p>
1970
1971 <p>My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
1972 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well.  To test, I PXE
1973 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
1974 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware.  When
1975 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
1976 on.  If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
1977 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
1978 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.</p>
1979
1980 <p>Anyway, to get to the point of this post.  Here is the simple tests
1981 I perform on a new model.</p>
1982
1983 <ul>
1984
1985 <li>Is PXE installation working?  I'm testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
1986 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment.  If I feel like it, I also test with
1987 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.</li>
1988
1989 <li>Is X.org working?  If the graphical login screen show up after
1990 installation, X.org is working.</li>
1991
1992 <li>Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working?  Running glxgears (in
1993 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
1994 reported by the program.</li>
1995
1996 <li>Is sound working?  With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
1997 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful.  If there
1998 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
1999 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound.  I
2000 normally test this by playing
2001 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ ">a HTML5
2002 video</a> in Firefox/Iceweasel.</li>
2003
2004 <li>Is the USB subsystem working?  I test this by plugging in a USB
2005 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
2006
2007 <li>Is the CD/DVD player working?  I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
2008 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
2009
2010 <li>Is any built in camera working?  Test using cheese, and see if a
2011 picture from the v4l device show up.</li>
2012
2013 <li>Is bluetooth working?  Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
2014 any bluetooth devices are discovered.  In my office, I normally see a
2015 few.</li>
2016
2017 <li>For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working.  I have
2018 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
2019 notice this.</li>
2020
2021 <li>For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working?  I'm testing if the
2022 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
2023 resume.</li>
2024
2025 <li>For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
2026 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
2027 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc?  The set of buttons differ from
2028 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
2029 not.</li>
2030
2031 <li>Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
2032 acceleration sensors etc.  I rarely test these, as I do not know how
2033 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
2034 existence.</li>
2035
2036 </ul>
2037
2038 <p>By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
2039 for the HP machines I am testing.  I'm not done yet, so I will report
2040 the test results later.  For now I can report that HP 8100 Elite work
2041 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook 8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
2042 and audio fail on RHEL6.  Ubuntu Maverik worked with 8440p.  As you
2043 can see, I have most machines left to test.  One interesting
2044 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
2045 RHEL6 with glxgears.  No idea why.</p>
2046
2047       </div>
2048       <div class="tags">
2049
2050
2051         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2052
2053
2054       </div>
2055     </div>
2056     <div class="padding"></div>
2057
2058     <div class="entry">
2059       <div class="title">
2060         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html">Some thoughts on BitCoins</a>
2061       </div>
2062       <div class="date">
2063         11th December 2010
2064       </div>
2065       <div class="body">
2066         <p>As I continue to explore
2067 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>, I've starting to wonder
2068 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
2069 and regulations here in Norway.  Here are some random notes.</p>
2070
2071 <p>One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
2072 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
2073 is known to everyone.  This means that if a BitCoin address has been
2074 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
2075 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
2076 that address.  There is even a web service to look at the details for
2077 all transactions.  There I can see that my address
2078 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a>
2079 have received 16.06 Bitcoin, the
2080 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3">1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3</a>
2081 address of Simon Phipps have received 181.97 BitCoin and the address
2082 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt">1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt</A>
2083 of EFF have received 2447.38 BitCoins so far.  Thank you to each and
2084 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
2085 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
2086 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
2087 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction.  I'm told
2088 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
2089 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
2090 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.</p>
2091
2092 <p>In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
2093 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
2094 without declaring it.  There are money laundering, tax and accounting
2095 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
2096 If the Skolelinux foundation
2097 (<a href="http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">SLX
2098 Debian Labs</a>) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
2099 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
2100 Given that it is impossible to know if money can cross the border or
2101 not, should everything or nothing be declared?  What exchange rate
2102 should be used when calculating taxes?  Would receivers have to pay
2103 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
2104 BitCoin?  I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.</p>
2105
2106 <p>For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
2107 accepted by a lot of users.  It must be possible to get easy access to
2108 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
2109 easy to spend it.  At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
2110 access to, but there are very few places to spend it.  I am not really
2111 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
2112 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins.  I
2113 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
2114 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
2115 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
2116 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular.  I'm sure they
2117 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
2118 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
2119 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
2120 currencies.</p>
2121
2122 <p>The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
2123 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
2124 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
2125 to see which one get the next lump of cash).  The "winner" get 50
2126 BitCoin when this happen.  Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
2127 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
2128 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
2129 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the 50
2130 BitCoins.  Check out
2131 <a href="http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/">BitCoin Pool</a>
2132 if this sounds interesting.  I have not had time to try to set up a
2133 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
2134 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
2135 yet.</p>
2136
2137 <p>Update 2010-12-15: Found an <a
2138 href="http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi">interesting
2139 criticism</a> of bitcoin.  Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
2140 it was interesting to read.  The arguments presented seem to be
2141 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.</p>
2142
2143       </div>
2144       <div class="tags">
2145
2146
2147         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
2148
2149
2150       </div>
2151     </div>
2152     <div class="padding"></div>
2153
2154     <div class="entry">
2155       <div class="title">
2156         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">Now accepting bitcoins - anonymous and distributed p2p crypto-money</a>
2157       </div>
2158       <div class="date">
2159         10th December 2010
2160       </div>
2161       <div class="body">
2162         <p>With this weeks lawless
2163 <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html">governmental
2164 attacks</a> on Wikileak and
2165 <a href="http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech">free
2166 speech</a>, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
2167 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
2168 A blog post from
2169 <a href="http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/">Simon
2170 Phipps on bitcoin</a> reminded me about a project that a friend of
2171 mine mentioned earlier.  I decided to follow Simon's example, and get
2172 involved with <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>.  I got
2173 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
2174 some bitcoins to get started.  I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
2175 for helping me remember BitCoin.</p>
2176
2177 <p>So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder?  It is a digital
2178 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
2179 networks.  It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
2180 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
2181 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions.  The
2182 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets 2.9
2183 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
2184 line client builds just fine.  Hopefully Jonas
2185 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/578157">will get the package into
2186 Debian</a> soon.</p>
2187
2188 <p>Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
2189 There are <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/trade">companies accepting
2190 bitcoins</a> when selling services and goods, and there are even
2191 currency "stock" markets where the exchange rate is decided.  There
2192 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising.  If you
2193 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
2194 you can even get
2195 <a href="https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/">some for free</a> (0.05
2196 bitcoin at the time of writing).  Use
2197 <a href="http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/">BitcoinWatch</a> to keep an eye
2198 on the current exchange rates.</p>
2199
2200 <p>As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
2201 machines.  If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
2202 donations to the address
2203 <b>15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</b>.  Thank you!</p>
2204
2205       </div>
2206       <div class="tags">
2207
2208
2209         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
2210
2211
2212       </div>
2213     </div>
2214     <div class="padding"></div>
2215
2216     <div class="entry">
2217       <div class="title">
2218         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html">Why isn't Debian Edu using VLC?</a>
2219       </div>
2220       <div class="date">
2221         27th November 2010
2222       </div>
2223       <div class="body">
2224         <p>In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
2225 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
2226 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
2227 to play a video file or stream.  Only if VLC fail will I drag out
2228 gmplayer to see if it can do better.  The reason is mostly the failure
2229 model and trust.  When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
2230 reporting the problem.  When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
2231 just hangs.  The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.<p>
2232
2233 <p>But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
2234 mplayer in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
2235 Edu/Skolelinux</a>.  The reason is simple.  We need a good browser
2236 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
2237 not very good.  For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
2238 is no way for the user to pause the video.  Also, when I
2239 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">last
2240 tested the browser plugins</a> available in Debian, the VLC plugin
2241 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked.  If
2242 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
2243 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.</P>
2244
2245 <p>While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
2246 annoying.  The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
2247 keyboard shortcuts.  When the player is in full screen mode, its
2248 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
2249 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode.  I
2250 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
2251 window mode.  Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
2252 the current video.  It is very nice when playing short videos from the
2253 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
2254 what is going on.</p>
2255
2256       </div>
2257       <div class="tags">
2258
2259
2260         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
2261
2262
2263       </div>
2264     </div>
2265     <div class="padding"></div>
2266
2267     <div class="entry">
2268       <div class="title">
2269         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades_of_the_Gnome_and_KDE_desktop__now_with_apt_get_autoremove.html">Lenny->Squeeze upgrades of the Gnome and KDE desktop, now with apt-get autoremove</a>
2270       </div>
2271       <div class="date">
2272         22nd November 2010
2273       </div>
2274       <div class="body">
2275         <p>Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
2276 upgrade testing of the
2277 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
2278 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a> to do <tt>apt-get autoremove</tt> when using apt-get.
2279 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
2280 can now present the updated result from today:</p>
2281
2282 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
2283
2284 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
2285
2286 <blockquote><p>
2287   apache2.2-bin
2288   aptdaemon
2289   baobab
2290   binfmt-support
2291   browser-plugin-gnash
2292   cheese-common
2293   cli-common
2294   cups-pk-helper
2295   dmz-cursor-theme
2296   empathy
2297   empathy-common
2298   freedesktop-sound-theme
2299   freeglut3
2300   gconf-defaults-service
2301   gdm-themes
2302   gedit-plugins
2303   geoclue
2304   geoclue-hostip
2305   geoclue-localnet
2306   geoclue-manual
2307   geoclue-yahoo
2308   gnash
2309   gnash-common
2310   gnome
2311   gnome-backgrounds
2312   gnome-cards-data
2313   gnome-codec-install
2314   gnome-core
2315   gnome-desktop-environment
2316   gnome-disk-utility
2317   gnome-screenshot
2318   gnome-search-tool
2319   gnome-session-canberra
2320   gnome-system-log
2321   gnome-themes-extras
2322   gnome-themes-more
2323   gnome-user-share
2324   gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
2325   gstreamer0.10-tools
2326   gtk2-engines
2327   gtk2-engines-pixbuf
2328   gtk2-engines-smooth
2329   hamster-applet
2330   libapache2-mod-dnssd
2331   libapr1
2332   libaprutil1
2333   libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
2334   libaprutil1-ldap
2335   libart2.0-cil
2336   libboost-date-time1.42.0
2337   libboost-python1.42.0
2338   libboost-thread1.42.0
2339   libchamplain-0.4-0
2340   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0
2341   libcheese-gtk18
2342   libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
2343   libcryptui0
2344   libdiscid0
2345   libelf1
2346   libepc-1.0-2
2347   libepc-common
2348   libepc-ui-1.0-2
2349   libfreerdp-plugins-standard
2350   libfreerdp0
2351   libgconf2.0-cil
2352   libgdata-common
2353   libgdata7
2354   libgdu-gtk0
2355   libgee2
2356   libgeoclue0
2357   libgexiv2-0
2358   libgif4
2359   libglade2.0-cil
2360   libglib2.0-cil
2361   libgmime2.4-cil
2362   libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
2363   libgnome2.24-cil
2364   libgnomepanel2.24-cil
2365   libgpod-common
2366   libgpod4
2367   libgtk2.0-cil
2368   libgtkglext1
2369   libgtksourceview2.0-common
2370   libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
2371   libmono-addins0.2-cil
2372   libmono-cairo2.0-cil
2373   libmono-corlib2.0-cil
2374   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
2375   libmono-posix2.0-cil
2376   libmono-security2.0-cil
2377   libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
2378   libmono-system2.0-cil
2379   libmtp8
2380   libmusicbrainz3-6
2381   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
2382   libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
2383   libopal3.6.8
2384   libpolkit-gtk-1-0
2385   libpt2.6.7
2386   libpython2.6
2387   librpm1
2388   librpmio1
2389   libsdl1.2debian
2390   libsrtp0
2391   libssh-4
2392   libtelepathy-farsight0
2393   libtelepathy-glib0
2394   libtidy-0.99-0
2395   media-player-info
2396   mesa-utils
2397   mono-2.0-gac
2398   mono-gac
2399   mono-runtime
2400   nautilus-sendto
2401   nautilus-sendto-empathy
2402   p7zip-full
2403   pkg-config
2404   python-aptdaemon
2405   python-aptdaemon-gtk
2406   python-axiom
2407   python-beautifulsoup
2408   python-bugbuddy
2409   python-clientform
2410   python-coherence
2411   python-configobj
2412   python-crypto
2413   python-cupshelpers
2414   python-elementtree
2415   python-epsilon
2416   python-evolution
2417   python-feedparser
2418   python-gdata
2419   python-gdbm
2420   python-gst0.10
2421   python-gtkglext1
2422   python-gtksourceview2
2423   python-httplib2
2424   python-louie
2425   python-mako
2426   python-markupsafe
2427   python-mechanize
2428   python-nevow
2429   python-notify
2430   python-opengl
2431   python-openssl
2432   python-pam
2433   python-pkg-resources
2434   python-pyasn1
2435   python-pysqlite2
2436   python-rdflib
2437   python-serial
2438   python-tagpy
2439   python-twisted-bin
2440   python-twisted-conch
2441   python-twisted-core
2442   python-twisted-web
2443   python-utidylib
2444   python-webkit
2445   python-xdg
2446   python-zope.interface
2447   remmina
2448   remmina-plugin-data
2449   remmina-plugin-rdp
2450   remmina-plugin-vnc
2451   rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
2452   rhythmbox-plugins
2453   rpm-common
2454   rpm2cpio
2455   seahorse-plugins
2456   shotwell
2457   software-center
2458   system-config-printer-udev
2459   telepathy-gabble
2460   telepathy-mission-control-5
2461   telepathy-salut
2462   tomboy
2463   totem
2464   totem-coherence
2465   totem-mozilla
2466   totem-plugins
2467   transmission-common
2468   xdg-user-dirs
2469   xdg-user-dirs-gtk
2470   xserver-xephyr
2471 </p></blockquote>
2472
2473 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
2474
2475 <blockquote><p>
2476   cheese
2477   ekiga
2478   eog
2479   epiphany-extensions
2480   evolution-exchange
2481   fast-user-switch-applet
2482   file-roller
2483   gcalctool
2484   gconf-editor
2485   gdm
2486   gedit
2487   gedit-common
2488   gnome-games
2489   gnome-games-data
2490   gnome-nettool
2491   gnome-system-tools
2492   gnome-themes
2493   gnuchess
2494   gucharmap
2495   guile-1.8-libs
2496   libavahi-ui0
2497   libdmx1
2498   libgalago3
2499   libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
2500   libgtksourceview2.0-0
2501   liblircclient0
2502   libsdl1.2debian-alsa
2503   libspeexdsp1
2504   libsvga1
2505   rhythmbox
2506   seahorse
2507   sound-juicer
2508   system-config-printer
2509   totem-common
2510   transmission-gtk
2511   vinagre
2512   vino
2513 </p></blockquote>
2514
2515 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
2516
2517 <blockquote><p>
2518   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
2519 </p></blockquote>
2520
2521 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
2522
2523 <blockquote><p>
2524 [nothing]
2525 </p></blockquote>
2526
2527 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
2528
2529 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
2530
2531 <blockquote><p>
2532   ksmserver
2533 </p></blockquote>
2534
2535 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
2536
2537 <blockquote><p>
2538   kwin
2539   network-manager-kde
2540 </p></blockquote>
2541
2542 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
2543
2544 <blockquote><p>
2545   arts
2546   dolphin
2547   freespacenotifier
2548   google-gadgets-gst
2549   google-gadgets-xul
2550   kappfinder
2551   kcalc
2552   kcharselect
2553   kde-core
2554   kde-plasma-desktop
2555   kde-standard
2556   kde-window-manager
2557   kdeartwork
2558   kdeartwork-emoticons
2559   kdeartwork-style
2560   kdeartwork-theme-icon
2561   kdebase
2562   kdebase-apps
2563   kdebase-workspace
2564   kdebase-workspace-bin
2565   kdebase-workspace-data
2566   kdeeject
2567   kdelibs
2568   kdeplasma-addons
2569   kdeutils
2570   kdewallpapers
2571   kdf
2572   kfloppy
2573   kgpg
2574   khelpcenter4
2575   kinfocenter
2576   konq-plugins-l10n
2577   konqueror-nsplugins
2578   kscreensaver
2579   kscreensaver-xsavers
2580   ktimer
2581   kwrite
2582   libgle3
2583   libkde4-ruby1.8
2584   libkonq5
2585   libkonq5-templates
2586   libnetpbm10
2587   libplasma-ruby
2588   libplasma-ruby1.8
2589   libqt4-ruby1.8
2590   marble-data
2591   marble-plugins
2592   netpbm
2593   nuvola-icon-theme
2594   plasma-dataengines-workspace
2595   plasma-desktop
2596   plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
2597   plasma-runners-addons
2598   plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
2599   plasma-scriptengine-python
2600   plasma-scriptengine-qedje
2601   plasma-scriptengine-ruby
2602   plasma-scriptengine-webkit
2603   plasma-scriptengines
2604   plasma-wallpapers-addons
2605   plasma-widget-folderview
2606   plasma-widget-networkmanagement
2607   ruby
2608   sweeper
2609   update-notifier-kde
2610   xscreensaver-data-extra
2611   xscreensaver-gl
2612   xscreensaver-gl-extra
2613   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
2614 </p></blockquote>
2615
2616 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
2617
2618 <blockquote><p>
2619   ark
2620   google-gadgets-common
2621   google-gadgets-qt
2622   htdig
2623   kate
2624   kdebase-bin
2625   kdebase-data
2626   kdepasswd
2627   kfind
2628   klipper
2629   konq-plugins
2630   konqueror
2631   ksysguard
2632   ksysguardd
2633   libarchive1
2634   libcln6
2635   libeet1
2636   libeina-svn-06
2637   libggadget-1.0-0b
2638   libggadget-qt-1.0-0b
2639   libgps19
2640   libkdecorations4
2641   libkephal4
2642   libkonq4
2643   libkonqsidebarplugin4a
2644   libkscreensaver5
2645   libksgrd4
2646   libksignalplotter4
2647   libkunitconversion4
2648   libkwineffects1a
2649   libmarblewidget4
2650   libntrack-qt4-1
2651   libntrack0
2652   libplasma-geolocation-interface4
2653   libplasmaclock4a
2654   libplasmagenericshell4
2655   libprocesscore4a
2656   libprocessui4a
2657   libqalculate5
2658   libqedje0a
2659   libqtruby4shared2
2660   libqzion0a
2661   libruby1.8
2662   libscim8c2a
2663   libsmokekdecore4-3
2664   libsmokekdeui4-3
2665   libsmokekfile3
2666   libsmokekhtml3
2667   libsmokekio3
2668   libsmokeknewstuff2-3
2669   libsmokeknewstuff3-3
2670   libsmokekparts3
2671   libsmokektexteditor3
2672   libsmokekutils3
2673   libsmokenepomuk3
2674   libsmokephonon3
2675   libsmokeplasma3
2676   libsmokeqtcore4-3
2677   libsmokeqtdbus4-3
2678   libsmokeqtgui4-3
2679   libsmokeqtnetwork4-3
2680   libsmokeqtopengl4-3
2681   libsmokeqtscript4-3
2682   libsmokeqtsql4-3
2683   libsmokeqtsvg4-3
2684   libsmokeqttest4-3
2685   libsmokeqtuitools4-3
2686   libsmokeqtwebkit4-3
2687   libsmokeqtxml4-3
2688   libsmokesolid3
2689   libsmokesoprano3
2690   libtaskmanager4a
2691   libtidy-0.99-0
2692   libweather-ion4a
2693   libxklavier16
2694   libxxf86misc1
2695   okteta
2696   oxygencursors
2697   plasma-dataengines-addons
2698   plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
2699   plasma-widget-lancelot
2700   plasma-widgets-addons
2701   plasma-widgets-workspace
2702   polkit-kde-1
2703   ruby1.8
2704   systemsettings
2705   update-notifier-common
2706 </p></blockquote>
2707
2708 <p>Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
2709 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
2710 differences.  I have no idea what packages should be installed after
2711 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.</p>
2712
2713       </div>
2714       <div class="tags">
2715
2716
2717         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2718
2719
2720       </div>
2721     </div>
2722     <div class="padding"></div>
2723
2724     <div class="entry">
2725       <div class="title">
2726         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Migrating_Xen_virtual_machines_using_LVM_to_KVM_using_disk_images.html">Migrating Xen virtual machines using LVM to KVM using disk images</a>
2727       </div>
2728       <div class="date">
2729         22nd November 2010
2730       </div>
2731       <div class="body">
2732         <p>Most of the computers in use by the
2733 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux project</a>
2734 are virtual machines.  And they have been Xen machines running on a
2735 fairly old IBM eserver xseries 345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
2736 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge 2950 host machine.  This was a
2737 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
2738 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
2739 know is not supported by KVM.  So to migrate, we had to convert
2740 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.</p>
2741
2742 <p>I found
2743 <a href="http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM">a
2744 nice recipe</a> to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
2745 migration.  It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
2746 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
2747 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data.  I NFS mounted the
2748 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.</p>
2749
2750 <pre>
2751 #!/bin/sh
2752
2753 # Based on
2754 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
2755
2756 set -e
2757 set -x
2758
2759 if [ -z "$1" ] ; then
2760     echo "Usage: $0 &lt;hostname&gt;"
2761     exit 1
2762 else
2763     host="$1"
2764 fi
2765
2766 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
2767     echo "error: unable to find LVM volume for $host"
2768     exit 1
2769 fi
2770
2771 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs.  not sure why.
2772 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
2773 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
2774 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
2775
2776 img=$host.img
2777 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
2778 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
2779
2780 parted $img mklabel msdos
2781 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap 0 $disksize
2782 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
2783 parted $img set 1 boot on
2784
2785 modprobe dm-mod
2786 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
2787 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
2788
2789 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=1M
2790 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
2791 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
2792
2793 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
2794 losetup -d /dev/loop0
2795 </pre>
2796
2797 <p>The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
2798 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.</p>
2799
2800 <p>After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
2801 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-686 and
2802 set up grub to boot from the disk image.  After this, the KVM machines
2803 seem to work just fine.</p>
2804
2805       </div>
2806       <div class="tags">
2807
2808
2809         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2810
2811
2812       </div>
2813     </div>
2814     <div class="padding"></div>
2815
2816     <div class="entry">
2817       <div class="title">
2818         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__apt_vs_aptitude_with_the_Gnome_and_KDE_desktop.html">Lenny->Squeeze upgrades, apt vs aptitude with the Gnome and KDE desktop</a>
2819       </div>
2820       <div class="date">
2821         20th November 2010
2822       </div>
2823       <div class="body">
2824         <p>I'm still running upgrade testing of the
2825 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
2826 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a>, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
2827 status.  Here is a short update based on a test I ran 20101118.</p>
2828
2829 <p>I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
2830 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
2831 can see if anything should be changed.</p>
2832
2833 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
2834
2835 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
2836
2837 <blockquote><p>
2838   apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
2839   browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-4.3 cups-pk-helper
2840   dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
2841   freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
2842   gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
2843   geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
2844   gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
2845   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
2846   gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
2847   gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
2848   gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
2849   gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
2850   gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
2851   libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
2852   libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-0 libboost-date-time1.42.0
2853   libboost-python1.42.0 libboost-thread1.42.0 libchamplain-0.4-0
2854   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
2855   libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-1.0-2
2856   libepc-common libepc-ui-1.0-2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
2857   libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
2858   libgdl-1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-0 libgif4
2859   libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
2860   libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
2861   libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
2862   libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
2863   libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
2864   libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
2865   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
2866   libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
2867   libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-6
2868   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6.8
2869   libpolkit-gtk-1-0 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
2870   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
2871   libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-4
2872   libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-0.99-0
2873   libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
2874   mono-2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
2875   nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
2876   openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-4suite-xml
2877   python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
2878   python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
2879   python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
2880   python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
2881   python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
2882   python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
2883   python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
2884   python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
2885   python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
2886   python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
2887   python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
2888   python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
2889   python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
2890   remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
2891   rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
2892   software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
2893   telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut tomboy
2894   totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
2895   transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
2896   zip
2897 </p></blockquote>
2898
2899 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
2900
2901 <blockquote><p>
2902   arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
2903   epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
2904   fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
2905   gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
2906   gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
2907   gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
2908   guile-1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
2909   libavahi-ui0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7
2910   libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
2911   libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1
2912   libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3 libfaad0 libgadu3
2913   libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
2914   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
2915   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
2916   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
2917   libgtkhtml2-0 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgtksourceview2.0-0
2918   libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
2919   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
2920   libmagick++10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
2921   libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
2922   libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9
2923   libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8
2924   libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
2925   libspeexdsp1 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libsvga1
2926   libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
2927   libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
2928   libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
2929   sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
2930   totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
2931 </p></blockquote>
2932
2933 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
2934
2935 <blockquote><p>
2936   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
2937 </p></blockquote>
2938
2939 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
2940
2941 <blockquote><p>
2942 [nothing]
2943 </p></blockquote>
2944
2945 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
2946
2947 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
2948
2949 <blockquote><p>
2950   autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-4.3 dcoprss
2951   edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
2952   ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
2953   gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
2954   kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
2955   kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
2956   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
2957   kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
2958   kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
2959   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
2960   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
2961   kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
2962   killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
2963   kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
2964   ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42.0
2965   libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
2966   libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
2967   libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
2968   libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
2969   libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
2970   libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
2971   libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
2972   libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
2973   libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
2974   lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
2975   openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
2976   parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
2977   pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
2978   speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
2979   ttf-sazanami-gothic
2980 </p></blockquote>
2981
2982 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
2983
2984 <blockquote><p>
2985   amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
2986   dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
2987   kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
2988   kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
2989   keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
2990   kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
2991   kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
2992   klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
2993   kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
2994   kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
2995   kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
2996   ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
2997   ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
2998   kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
2999   kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
3000   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
3001   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2
3002   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
3003   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
3004   libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0 libicu38
3005   libiec61883-0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
3006   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
3007   libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
3008   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
3009   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
3010   libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
3011   libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
3012   libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 librss1 libsensors3
3013   libsmbios2 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90
3014   libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
3015   mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
3016   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
3017   ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
3018 </p></blockquote>
3019
3020 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
3021
3022 <blockquote><p>
3023   dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
3024   kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
3025   kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
3026   kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
3027   netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
3028   xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
3029   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
3030 </p></blockquote>
3031
3032 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
3033
3034 <blockquote><p>
3035   kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
3036 </p></blockquote>
3037
3038       </div>
3039       <div class="tags">
3040
3041
3042         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3043
3044
3045       </div>
3046     </div>
3047     <div class="padding"></div>
3048
3049     <div class="entry">
3050       <div class="title">
3051         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html">Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd</a>
3052       </div>
3053       <div class="date">
3054         20th November 2010
3055       </div>
3056       <div class="body">
3057         <p>Answering
3058 <a href="http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html">the
3059 call from the Gnash project</a> for
3060 <a href="http://www.gnashdev.org:8010">buildbot</a> slaves to test the
3061 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
3062 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
3063 Debian/Squeeze.  I hope this can help the developers in getting new
3064 releases out more often.</p>
3065
3066 <p>As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
3067 I have considered setting up a <a
3068 href="http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/">Debian/kfreebsd</a>
3069 machine as well.  I have also considered using the kfreebsd
3070 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the 5
3071 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video.  Because of this, I
3072 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
3073 kfreebsd.  Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
3074 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
3075 screen at random locations).  Have not gotten very far with the
3076 testing.  Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
3077 fatal problem.  Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
3078 useful as a file server for NUUG.  Will try to find time to set up a
3079 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.</p>
3080
3081       </div>
3082       <div class="tags">
3083
3084
3085         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
3086
3087
3088       </div>
3089     </div>
3090     <div class="padding"></div>
3091
3092     <div class="entry">
3093       <div class="title">
3094         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html">Debian in 3D</a>
3095       </div>
3096       <div class="date">
3097          9th November 2010
3098       </div>
3099       <div class="body">
3100         <p><img src="http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg"></p>
3101
3102 <p>3D printing is just great.  I just came across this Debian logo in
3103 3D linked in from
3104 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/">the
3105 thingiverse blog</a>.</p>
3106
3107       </div>
3108       <div class="tags">
3109
3110
3111         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3112
3113
3114       </div>
3115     </div>
3116     <div class="padding"></div>
3117
3118     <div class="entry">
3119       <div class="title">
3120         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html">Software updates 2010-10-24</a>
3121       </div>
3122       <div class="date">
3123         24th October 2010
3124       </div>
3125       <div class="body">
3126         <p>Some updates.</p>
3127
3128 <p>My <a href="http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">gnash pledge</a> to
3129 raise money for the project is going well.  The lower limit of 10
3130 signers was reached in 24 hours, and so far 13 people have signed it.
3131 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
3132 how far we can get before the time limit of December 24 is reached.
3133 :)</p>
3134
3135 <p>On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
3136 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
3137 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
3138 It is called
3139 <a href="http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html">kcov</a>,
3140 and can be used using <tt>kcov &lt;directory&gt; &lt;binary&gt;</tt>.
3141 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
3142 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
3143 libglib2.0-dev.  Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
3144 solvable.  I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.</p>
3145
3146 <p>Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for <a
3147 href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html">a
3148 new alpha release of Debian Edu</a>, and just published the second
3149 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
3150 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>
3151 release.  Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
3152 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
3153 client servers and diskless workstations.  A nice touch added
3154 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
3155 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.</p>
3156
3157       </div>
3158       <div class="tags">
3159
3160
3161         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
3162
3163
3164       </div>
3165     </div>
3166     <div class="padding"></div>
3167
3168     <div class="entry">
3169       <div class="title">
3170         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_notes_on_Flash_in_Debian_and_Debian_Edu.html">Some notes on Flash in Debian and Debian Edu</a>
3171       </div>
3172       <div class="date">
3173          4th September 2010
3174       </div>
3175       <div class="body">
3176         <p>In the <a href="http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote">Debian
3177 popularity-contest numbers</a>, the adobe-flashplugin package the
3178 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian.  The sixth
3179 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla.  This is a clear indication that
3180 working flash is important for Debian users.  Around 10 percent of the
3181 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
3182 installed.</p>
3183
3184 <p>In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
3185 («<a href="http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf">Skolelinux
3186 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
3187 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs</a>»), one of the most important problems
3188 schools experienced with <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
3189 Edu/Skolelinux</a> was the lack of working Flash.  A lot of educational
3190 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
3191 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
3192 good reason to stay with Windows.</p>
3193
3194 <p>I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
3195 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
3196 everything you told him but could work fairly well.  This was a
3197 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
3198 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
3199 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
3200 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
3201 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
3202 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
3203 pages they want to visit.</p>
3204
3205 <p>This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
3206 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
3207 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
3208 Video to working out of the box.  For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
3209 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
3210 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
3211 unstable.  The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
3212 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
3213 release team have not had time to reply to it yet.  I hope they agree
3214 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
3215 accept the new package into Squeeze.</p>
3216
3217       </div>
3218       <div class="tags">
3219
3220
3221         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
3222
3223
3224       </div>
3225     </div>
3226     <div class="padding"></div>
3227
3228     <div class="entry">
3229       <div class="title">
3230         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html">Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery</a>
3231       </div>
3232       <div class="date">
3233         27th July 2010
3234       </div>
3235       <div class="body">
3236         <p>I discovered this while doing
3237 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">automated
3238 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze</a>.  A few packages
3239 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
3240 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
3241 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.</p>
3242
3243 <p>An example is from todays
3244 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt">upgrade
3245 of KDE using aptitude</a>.  In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
3246 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade.  The cause is simple.  If a
3247 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
3248 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
3249 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
3250 because its dependencies are unavailable.</p>
3251
3252 <p>In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:</p>
3253
3254 <blockquote><pre>
3255 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
3256  perl-modules depends on perl (>= 5.10.1-1); however:
3257   Version of perl on system is 5.10.0-19lenny2.
3258 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
3259  dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
3260 </pre></blockquote>
3261
3262 <p>The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
3263 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/527917">reported as a bug</a>, and will
3264 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
3265 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
3266 failures.  Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
3267 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
3268 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
3269 of dependency loops.</p>
3270
3271 <p>Thanks to
3272 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html">the
3273 tireless effort by Bill Allombert</a>, the number of circular
3274 dependencies
3275 <a href="http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html">left in Debian
3276 is dropping</a>, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)</p>
3277
3278 <p>Todays testing also exposed a bug in
3279 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590605">update-notifier</a> and
3280 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590604">different behaviour</a> between
3281 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
3282 dependency.  Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
3283 it.</p>
3284
3285       </div>
3286       <div class="tags">
3287
3288
3289         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
3290
3291
3292       </div>
3293     </div>
3294     <div class="padding"></div>
3295
3296     <div class="entry">
3297       <div class="title">
3298         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_are_they_searching_for___PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_in_LDAP.html">What are they searching for - PowerDNS and ISC DHCP in LDAP</a>
3299       </div>
3300       <div class="date">
3301         17th July 2010
3302       </div>
3303       <div class="body">
3304         <p>This is a
3305 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">followup</a>
3306 on my
3307 <a href="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">previous
3308 work</a> on
3309 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">merging
3310 all</a> the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.</p>
3311
3312 <p>As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
3313 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
3314 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server.  The two
3315 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.</p>
3316
3317 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
3318 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
3319 on a Debian Edu main-server.  Here is a summary.
3320
3321 <p><strong>powerdns</strong></p>
3322
3323 <a href="http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend">Clues
3324 on how to</a> set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
3325 the web.
3326
3327 <p>PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
3328 One "strict" mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
3329 using the same LDAP objects, and a "tree" mode where the forward and
3330 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
3331 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
3332 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.</p>
3333
3334 <p>In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
3335 base, and uses a "base" scoped search for the DNS name by adding
3336 "dc=tjener,dc=intern," to the base with a filter for
3337 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" for the forward entry and
3338 "dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa," with a filter for
3339 "(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)" for the reverse entry.  For
3340 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
3341 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
3342 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
3343 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
3344 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
3345 spfrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entries it is looking for
3346 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
3347 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
3348 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  The equivalent
3349 ldapsearch commands could look like this:</p>
3350
3351 <blockquote><pre>
3352 ldapsearch -h ldap \
3353   -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
3354   -s base -x '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
3355   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
3356   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
3357   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
3358   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
3359
3360 ldapsearch -h ldap \
3361   -b dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
3362   -s base -x '(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)'
3363   dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
3364   hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
3365   srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
3366 </pre></blockquote>
3367
3368 <p>In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
3369 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
3370 example LDAP objects used there.  In addition to these objects, the
3371 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3372 also exist.</p>
3373
3374 <blockquote><pre>
3375 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3376 objectclass: top
3377 objectclass: dnsdomain
3378 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
3379 dc: tjener
3380 arecord: 10.0.2.2
3381 associateddomain: tjener.intern
3382
3383 dn: dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3384 objectclass: top
3385 objectclass: dnsdomain2
3386 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
3387 dc: 2
3388 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
3389 associateddomain: 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
3390 </pre></blockquote>
3391
3392 <p>In strict mode, the server behaves differently.  When looking for
3393 forward DNS entries, it is doing a "subtree" scoped search with the
3394 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
3395 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" and requests the attributes dnsttl,
3396 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
3397 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
3398 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entires it also do a
3399 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is "(arecord=10.0.2.2)"
3400 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
3401 modifytimestamp.  In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
3402 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
3403 instead.</p>
3404
3405 <p>The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
3406 like this:</p>
3407
3408 <blockquote><pre>
3409 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
3410   '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
3411   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
3412   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
3413   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
3414   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
3415
3416 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
3417   '(arecord=10.0.2.2)' associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
3418 </pre></blockquote>
3419
3420 <p>In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
3421 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
3422 reverse lookups.</p>
3423
3424 <p>A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
3425 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
3426 need to generate a DNS reply.  This make it able to work with any
3427 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.</p>
3428
3429 <p>The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC 1274) and
3430 dnsdomain2 schemas.  The latter is used for reverse entries like
3431 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.</p>
3432
3433 <p>In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
3434 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
3435 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain).  The use
3436 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
3437 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.</p>
3438
3439 <p>There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
3440 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
3441 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
3442 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
3443 (zonename and relativedomainname).</p>
3444
3445 <p>My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
3446 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
3447 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
3448 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
3449 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
3450 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):</p>
3451
3452 <blockquote><pre>
3453 objectclass ( some-oid NAME 'dnsDomainAux'
3454     SUP top
3455     AUXILIARY
3456     MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
3457           DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
3458           TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
3459           NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
3460           A6Record $ DNAMERecord
3461     ))
3462 </pre></blockquote>
3463
3464 <p>This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
3465 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
3466 all the attributes PowerDNS wants.  I've sent an email to the PowerDNS
3467 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
3468 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
3469 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.</p>
3470
3471 <p><strong>ISC dhcp</strong></p>
3472
3473 <p>The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
3474 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want.  This
3475 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
3476 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
3477 what is needed without having to read the source code.</p>
3478
3479 <p>In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
3480 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
3481 stored.  These are the relevant entries from
3482 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:</p>
3483
3484 <blockquote><pre>
3485 ldap-base-dn "dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no";
3486 ldap-dhcp-server-cn "dhcp";
3487 </pre></blockquote>
3488
3489 <p>The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
3490 configuration it need.  The cn "dhcp" is located using the given LDAP
3491 base and the filter "(&(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))".  The
3492 search result is this entry:</p>
3493
3494 <blockquote><pre>
3495 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3496 cn: dhcp
3497 objectClass: top
3498 objectClass: dhcpServer
3499 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3500 </pre></blockquote>
3501
3502 <p>The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
3503 subtree with DHCP configuration.  The DHCP configuration subtree base
3504 is located using a base scope search with base "cn=DHCP
3505 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" and filter
3506 "(&(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))".
3507 The search result is this entry:</p>
3508
3509 <blockquote><pre>
3510 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3511 cn: DHCP Config
3512 objectClass: top
3513 objectClass: dhcpService
3514 objectClass: dhcpOptions
3515 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3516 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
3517 dhcpStatements: authoritative
3518 dhcpOption: smtp-server code 69 = array of ip-address
3519 dhcpOption: www-server code 72 = array of ip-address
3520 dhcpOption: wpad-url code 252 = text
3521 </pre></blockquote>
3522
3523 <p>Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time.  When
3524 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
3525 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
3526 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
3527 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost.  These provide options
3528 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc.  Leaving out the
3529 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
3530 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
3531 related computer objects.</p>
3532
3533 <p>When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
3534 of the client (00:00:00:00:00:00 in this example), using a subtree
3535 scoped search with "cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" as
3536 the base and "(&(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
3537 00:00:00:00:00:00))" as the filter.  This is what a host object look
3538 like:</p>
3539
3540 <blockquote><pre>
3541 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3542 cn: hostname
3543 objectClass: top
3544 objectClass: dhcpHost
3545 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
3546 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
3547 </pre></blockquote>
3548
3549 <p>There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
3550 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
3551 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure.  On the
3552 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
3553 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries.  The latter should make
3554 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
3555 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
3556 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
3557 structural object class.
3558
3559 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
3560
3561 <p>The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
3562 to which LDAP schemas to use.  While its "tree" mode is rigid when it
3563 come to the the LDAP structure, the "strict" mode is very flexible,
3564 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
3565 in the configuration.</p>
3566
3567 <p>The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
3568 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
3569 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
3570 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
3571 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
3572 structure.</p>
3573
3574 <p>Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
3575 this might work for Debian Edu:</p>
3576
3577 <blockquote><pre>
3578 ou=services
3579   cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
3580     cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
3581     cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
3582       cn=10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
3583         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
3584     cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
3585       cn=192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
3586         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
3587     ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
3588       cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
3589 </pre></blockquote>
3590
3591 <P>This is not tested yet.  If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
3592 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
3593 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
3594 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.</p>
3595
3596 <p>The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
3597 like this:</p>
3598
3599 <blockquote><pre>
3600 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3601 dc: hostname
3602 objectClass: top
3603 objectClass: dhcpHost
3604 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
3605 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
3606 associateddomain: hostname.intern
3607 arecord: 10.11.12.13
3608 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
3609 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
3610 </pre></blockquote>
3611
3612 </p>One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
3613 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
3614 auxiliary object class.</p>
3615
3616       </div>
3617       <div class="tags">
3618
3619
3620         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
3621
3622
3623       </div>
3624     </div>
3625     <div class="padding"></div>
3626
3627     <div class="entry">
3628       <div class="title">
3629         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects</a>
3630       </div>
3631       <div class="date">
3632         14th July 2010
3633       </div>
3634       <div class="body">
3635         <p>For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
3636 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
3637 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
3638 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
3639 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.</p>
3640
3641 <p>I've looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
3642 information finally found a solution that seem to work.</p>
3643
3644 <p>The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
3645 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry.  If
3646 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
3647 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
3648 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
3649 to a slave DNS server.</p>
3650
3651 <p>If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
3652 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
3653 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
3654 I've written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
3655 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup.  It
3656 seem to work.</p>
3657
3658 <p>With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
3659 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
3660 an earlier email.  The combined LDAP object will look something like
3661 this:</p>
3662
3663 <blockquote><pre>
3664   dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3665   cn: hostname
3666   objectClass: dhcphost
3667   objectclass: domainrelatedobject
3668   objectclass: dnsdomainaux
3669   associateddomain: hostname.intern
3670   arecord: 10.11.12.13
3671   dhcphwaddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
3672   dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
3673   ldapconfigsound: Y
3674 </pre></blockquote>
3675
3676 <p>The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
3677 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
3678 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress.  LTSP will use
3679 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.</p>
3680
3681 <p>I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
3682 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
3683 outside the "DHCP Config" subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
3684 that.  If I can't figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
3685 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
3686 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
3687 content.  I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
3688 might be a good place to put it.</p>
3689
3690 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
3691 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
3692
3693       </div>
3694       <div class="tags">
3695
3696
3697         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
3698
3699
3700       </div>
3701     </div>
3702     <div class="padding"></div>
3703
3704     <div class="entry">
3705       <div class="title">
3706         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html">Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP</a>
3707       </div>
3708       <div class="date">
3709         11th July 2010
3710       </div>
3711       <div class="body">
3712         <p>Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
3713 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
3714 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
3715 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.</p>
3716
3717 <p>Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
3718 to get configuration from LDAP.  The idea is to look up the MAC
3719 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
3720 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
3721 LTSP clients.</p>
3722
3723 <p>The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
3724 in a "computer" LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
3725 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.</p>
3726
3727 <p>This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
3728 this approach.  A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
3729 need to be written.  Comments, suggestions, etc?</p>
3730
3731 <blockquote><pre>
3732 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
3733 #
3734 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
3735 #
3736 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
3737 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
3738 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
3739 #
3740 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
3741 # existence of attribute names.
3742 #
3743 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
3744 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
3745 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
3746 #
3747 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
3748 # configuration settings.  Something like this should work:
3749 #
3750 # objectclass ( 1.1.2.2 NAME 'ltspClientAux'
3751 #     SUP top
3752 #     AUXILIARY
3753 #     MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
3754
3755 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
3756 if [ "$LDAPSERVER" ] ; then
3757     LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
3758     for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk '{print $5}'|sort -u) ; do
3759         filter="(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))"
3760         ldapsearch -h "$LDAPSERVER" -b "$LDAPBASE" -v -x "$filter" | \
3761             grep '^ltspConfig' | while read attr value ; do
3762             # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
3763             attr=$(echo $attr | sed 's/^ltspConfig//i' | tr a-z A-Z)
3764             # bass value on to clients
3765             eval "$attr=$value; export $attr"
3766         done
3767     done
3768 fi
3769 </pre></blockquote>
3770
3771 <p>I'm not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
3772 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
3773 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
3774 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
3775 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)</p>
3776
3777 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
3778 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
3779
3780 <p>Update 2010-07-17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
3781 configuration in LDAP that was created around year 2000 by
3782 <a href="http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html">PC
3783 Xperience, Inc., 2000</a>.  I found its
3784 <a href="http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/">files</a> on a
3785 personal home page over at redhat.com.</p>
3786
3787       </div>
3788       <div class="tags">
3789
3790
3791         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
3792
3793
3794       </div>
3795     </div>
3796     <div class="padding"></div>
3797
3798     <div class="entry">
3799       <div class="title">
3800         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
3801       </div>
3802       <div class="date">
3803          9th July 2010
3804       </div>
3805       <div class="body">
3806         <p>Since
3807 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">my
3808 last post</a> about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
3809 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma.  The java application
3810 <a href="http://jxplorer.org/">jXplorer</a> is claimed to be capable of
3811 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
3812 authenticate using Kerberos.  I have only tested the Kerberos
3813 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
3814 LDAP with my test user yet.  It is
3815 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html">available in
3816 Debian</a> testing and unstable at the moment.  The only problem I
3817 have with it is how it handle errors.  If something go wrong, its
3818 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
3819 and remove the failing query.  Nothing big, but very annoying.</p>
3820
3821       </div>
3822       <div class="tags">
3823
3824
3825         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
3826
3827
3828       </div>
3829     </div>
3830     <div class="padding"></div>
3831
3832     <div class="entry">
3833       <div class="title">
3834         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__apt_vs_aptitude_with_the_Gnome_desktop.html">Lenny->Squeeze upgrades, apt vs aptitude with the Gnome desktop</a>
3835       </div>
3836       <div class="date">
3837          3rd July 2010
3838       </div>
3839       <div class="body">
3840         <p>Here is a short update on my <a
3841 href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">my
3842 Debian Lenny->Squeeze upgrade testing</a>.  Here is a summary of the
3843 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude.  I'm
3844 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
3845 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
3846 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> and
3847 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585716">#585716</a>).</p>
3848
3849 <p>At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
3850 complete list of the installed packages.  Based on this I see these
3851 differences when I did a test run today.  As usual, I do not really
3852 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
3853 publish the difference.</p>
3854
3855 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
3856
3857 <blockquote><p>
3858   at-spi cpp-4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
3859   libatspi1.0-0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-1-common
3860   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
3861   libgtksourceview-common libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
3862   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
3863   libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
3864   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
3865   python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
3866 </p></blockquote>
3867
3868 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
3869
3870 <blockquote><p>
3871   bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
3872   gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
3873   libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-50
3874   libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
3875   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9
3876   libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3
3877   libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
3878   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
3879   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
3880   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
3881   libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
3882   libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++10
3883   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
3884   libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5
3885   libparted1.8-10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
3886   libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
3887   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1
3888   libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
3889   libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
3890   mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
3891 </p></blockquote>
3892
3893 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
3894
3895 <blockquote><p>
3896   gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
3897   python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
3898   xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
3899   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
3900   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
3901   xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
3902   xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
3903   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
3904   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
3905   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
3906   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
3907   xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
3908   xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
3909   xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
3910   xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
3911   xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
3912   xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
3913   xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
3914   xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
3915   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
3916   xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
3917 </p></blockquote>
3918
3919 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
3920
3921 <blockquote><p>
3922   deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
3923   xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
3924   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
3925 </p></blockquote>
3926
3927 <p>I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
3928 <a href="http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120">changed
3929 in git</a> today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
3930 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
3931 the difference somewhat.
3932
3933       </div>
3934       <div class="tags">
3935
3936
3937         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3938
3939
3940       </div>
3941     </div>
3942     <div class="padding"></div>
3943
3944     <div class="entry">
3945       <div class="title">
3946         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
3947       </div>
3948       <div class="date">
3949         28th June 2010
3950       </div>
3951       <div class="body">
3952         <p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
3953 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
3954 tool to browse the LDAP tree.  The only one I was able to find in
3955 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
3956 <a href="http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA</a>, which has proved to
3957 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
3958 populated by default in Skolelinux.  Thanks to it, I have been able to
3959 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
3960 objects.  It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze.  If you
3961 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)</p>
3962
3963 <p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
3964 the BTS yet.  There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
3965 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
3966 Debian submenu in KDE.  I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
3967 released.</p>
3968
3969 <p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet.  I would
3970 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
3971 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet.  So in the mean time, I use
3972 <a href="http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi</a> for that.</p>
3973
3974 <p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
3975 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
3976
3977 <p>Update 2010-06-29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
3978 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq</a> package as a
3979 useful GUI alternative.  It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
3980 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze.  Unless that
3981 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.</p>
3982
3983       </div>
3984       <div class="tags">
3985
3986
3987         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
3988
3989
3990       </div>
3991     </div>
3992     <div class="padding"></div>
3993
3994     <div class="entry">
3995       <div class="title">
3996         <a href="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">Idea for a change to LDAP schemas allowing DNS and DHCP info to be combined into one object</a>
3997       </div>
3998       <div class="date">
3999         24th June 2010
4000       </div>
4001       <div class="body">
4002         <p>A while back, I
4003 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
4004 about the fact</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
4005 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
4006 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.</p>
4007
4008 <p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
4009 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
4010 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
4011 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.</p>
4012
4013 <p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
4014 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
4015 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
4016 Debian Edu.</p>
4017
4018 <p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
4019 the
4020 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
4021 schema</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
4022 available today from IETF.</p>
4023
4024 <pre>
4025 --- dhcp.schema    (revision 65192)
4026 +++ dhcp.schema    (working copy)
4027 @@ -376,7 +376,7 @@
4028  objectclass ( 2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
4029         NAME 'dhcpHost'
4030         DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
4031 -       SUP top
4032 +       SUP top AUXILIARY
4033         MUST cn
4034         MAY  (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
4035         X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
4036 </pre>
4037
4038 <p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
4039 Edu/Squeeze.  We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
4040 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.</p>
4041
4042 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
4043 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
4044
4045       </div>
4046       <div class="tags">
4047
4048
4049         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
4050
4051
4052       </div>
4053     </div>
4054     <div class="padding"></div>
4055
4056     <div class="entry">
4057       <div class="title">
4058         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Calling_tasksel_like_the_installer__while_still_getting_useful_output.html">Calling tasksel like the installer, while still getting useful output</a>
4059       </div>
4060       <div class="date">
4061         16th June 2010
4062       </div>
4063       <div class="body">
4064         <p>A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
4065 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run.  Until now,
4066 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
4067 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
4068 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
4069 this:
4070
4071 <blockquote><pre>
4072 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
4073 tasksel --new-install
4074 </pre></blockquote>
4075
4076 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
4077 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
4078 any output what so ever.
4079
4080 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
4081 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
4082 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
4083 happen.  Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
4084 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
4085 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run.  I ended up using
4086 code like this:
4087
4088 <blockquote><pre>
4089 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
4090 cmd="$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed 's/debconf-apt-progress -- //')"
4091 $cmd
4092 </pre></blockquote>
4093
4094 <p>The content of $cmd is typically something like "<tt>aptitude -q
4095 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
4096 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
4097 ~pimportant</tt>", which will install the gnome desktop task, the
4098 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
4099 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
4100 installation.</p>
4101
4102 <p>A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
4103 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
4104 like this.</p>
4105
4106       </div>
4107       <div class="tags">
4108
4109
4110         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
4111
4112
4113       </div>
4114     </div>
4115     <div class="padding"></div>
4116
4117     <div class="entry">
4118       <div class="title">
4119         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__removals_by_apt_and_aptitude.html">Lenny->Squeeze upgrades, removals by apt and aptitude</a>
4120       </div>
4121       <div class="date">
4122         13th June 2010
4123       </div>
4124       <div class="body">
4125         <p>My
4126 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">testing
4127 of Debian upgrades</a> from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I've
4128 finally made the upgrade logs available from
4129 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/</a>.
4130 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
4131 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting.  This time
4132 I will only focus on their removal plans.</p>
4133
4134 <p>After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
4135 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze.  The
4136 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
4137 xserver-xorg-video* drivers.  Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
4138 sure why.  When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
4139 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
4140 longer needed.  Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
4141 I do not know.  Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?</p>
4142
4143 <p>For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
4144 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
4145 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
4146 too surprising.</p>
4147
4148 <p>I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
4149 and avoided, and perhaps others as well.  Here are the complete list
4150 of planned removals.  The complete logs is available from the URL
4151 above.  Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
4152 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
4153 conffile questions.  No idea why.  I worked around it by using
4154 '<tt>echo >> /proc/<em>pidofdpkg</em>/fd/0</tt>' to tell dpkg to
4155 continue.</p>
4156
4157 <p><b>apt-get gnome 72</b>
4158 <br>bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
4159   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
4160   iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
4161   libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
4162   nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
4163   serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
4164   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
4165   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
4166   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
4167   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
4168   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
4169   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
4170   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
4171   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
4172   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
4173   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
4174   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
4175   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
4176   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
4177   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
4178   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
4179   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
4180   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
4181   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
4182   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
4183   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
4184   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
4185   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
4186   xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support</p>
4187
4188 <p><b>aptitude gnome 129</b>
4189
4190 <br>bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
4191   djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
4192   gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
4193   gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
4194   libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
4195   libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
4196   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
4197   libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
4198   libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
4199   libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
4200   libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
4201   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
4202   libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
4203   libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
4204   libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
4205   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
4206   libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
4207   libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
4208   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
4209   libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
4210   libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
4211   libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
4212   libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
4213   libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
4214   openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
4215   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
4216   python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
4217   python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
4218   swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
4219   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
4220   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
4221   zip</p>
4222
4223 <p><b>apt-get kde 82</b>
4224
4225 <br>cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
4226   kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
4227   kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
4228   kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
4229   kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
4230   libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
4231   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
4232   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
4233   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
4234   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
4235   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
4236   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
4237   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
4238   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
4239   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
4240   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
4241   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
4242   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
4243   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
4244   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
4245   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
4246   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
4247   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
4248   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
4249   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
4250   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
4251   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
4252   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9</p>
4253
4254 <p><b>aptitude kde 192</b>
4255 <br>bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
4256   djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
4257   ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
4258   kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
4259   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
4260   kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
4261   kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
4262   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
4263   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
4264   kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
4265   kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
4266   klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
4267   kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
4268   krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
4269   ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
4270   kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
4271   kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
4272   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
4273   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
4274   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
4275   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
4276   libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
4277   libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
4278   libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
4279   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
4280   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
4281   libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
4282   libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
4283   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
4284   libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
4285   libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
4286   openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
4287   superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
4288   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
4289   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
4290   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
4291   xulrunner-1.9</p>
4292
4293
4294       </div>
4295       <div class="tags">
4296
4297
4298         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4299
4300
4301       </div>
4302     </div>
4303     <div class="padding"></div>
4304
4305     <div class="entry">
4306       <div class="title">
4307         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</a>
4308       </div>
4309       <div class="date">
4310         11th June 2010
4311       </div>
4312       <div class="body">
4313         <p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
4314 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly.  A few bugs
4315 have been discovered and reported in the process
4316 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
4317 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
4318 enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> in
4319 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
4320 am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
4321
4322 <p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
4323 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
4324 it.  To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
4325 script is inserted.  To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
4326 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
4327 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
4328
4329 <p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
4330 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
4331 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
4332 is created.  The bug report
4333 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
4334 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
4335 to make sure the upgrade go well.  Testing on virtual and real
4336 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
4337 do the trick in such settings anyway.  This is a
4338 <a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/">known
4339 issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
4340 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
4341 working with old kernels or something like that.  I really wish the
4342 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
4343 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
4344 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
4345 Debian Squeeze.</p>
4346
4347 <p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades.  This test
4348 script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
4349 trick:</p>
4350
4351 <blockquote><pre>
4352 #!/bin/sh
4353 set -ex
4354
4355 if [ "$1" ] ; then
4356     desktop=$1
4357 else
4358     desktop=gnome
4359 fi
4360
4361 from=lenny
4362 to=squeeze
4363
4364 exec &lt; /dev/null
4365 unset LANG
4366 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
4367 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
4368 fuser -mv .
4369 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
4370 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
4371 cat > $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d &lt;&lt;EOF
4372 #!/bin/sh
4373 exit 101
4374 EOF
4375 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
4376 exit_cleanup() {
4377     umount $tmpdir/proc
4378 }
4379 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
4380 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
4381 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
4382
4383 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
4384
4385 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger.  It need the test scripts
4386 # to return the correct answers.
4387 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
4388     chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
4389
4390 # Include the desktop and laptop task
4391 for test in desktop laptop ; do
4392     echo > $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test &lt;&lt;EOF
4393 #!/bin/sh
4394 exit 2
4395 EOF
4396     chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
4397 done
4398
4399 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
4400 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
4401 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
4402 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
4403
4404 echo deb $mirror $to main > $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
4405 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
4406 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
4407 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
4408 fuser -mv
4409 </pre></blockquote>
4410
4411 <p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
4412 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
4413 differently so far.  I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
4414 regularly and post the result on the web.  The Gnome upgrade currently
4415 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
4416 kdebase-workspace-data</p>
4417
4418 <p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
4419 (KDE 167 KiB, Gnome 516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
4420 post, so I will refrain from trying.  I can report that for Gnome,
4421 aptitude report 760 packages upgraded, 448 newly installed, 129 to
4422 remove and 1 not upgraded and 1024MB need to be downloaded while for
4423 KDE the same numbers are 702 packages upgraded, 507 newly installed,
4424 193 to remove and 0 not upgraded and 1117MB need to be downloaded</p>
4425
4426 <p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
4427 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
4428 booting without a hitch.  Was unsure if there were still bugs with
4429 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
4430 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
4431 packages.</p>
4432
4433       </div>
4434       <div class="tags">
4435
4436
4437         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4438
4439
4440       </div>
4441     </div>
4442     <div class="padding"></div>
4443
4444     <div class="entry">
4445       <div class="title">
4446         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Upstart_or_sysvinit___as_init_d_scripts_see_it.html">Upstart or sysvinit - as init.d scripts see it</a>
4447       </div>
4448       <div class="date">
4449          6th June 2010
4450       </div>
4451       <div class="body">
4452         <p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
4453 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
4454 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd.  The packages with such
4455 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
4456 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart.  Because of
4457 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
4458 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.</p>
4459
4460 <p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
4461 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
4462 COLUMNS):</p>
4463
4464 <blockquote><pre>
4465 DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
4466 previous=N
4467 PREVLEVEL=
4468 RUNLEVEL=
4469 runlevel=S
4470 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
4471 UPSTART_INSTANCE=
4472 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
4473 </pre></blockquote>
4474
4475 <p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
4476 script.</p>
4477
4478 <blockquote><pre>
4479 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
4480 previous=N
4481 PREVLEVEL=N
4482 RUNLEVEL=S
4483 runlevel=S
4484 </pre></blockquote>
4485
4486 <p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
4487 sysvinit are not set by upstart.  Not sure if it is intentional or not
4488 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.</p>
4489
4490 <p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
4491 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
4492 choice.</p>
4493
4494       </div>
4495       <div class="tags">
4496
4497
4498         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4499
4500
4501       </div>
4502     </div>
4503     <div class="padding"></div>
4504
4505     <div class="entry">
4506       <div class="title">
4507         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...</a>
4508       </div>
4509       <div class="date">
4510          6th June 2010
4511       </div>
4512       <div class="body">
4513         <p>Via the
4514 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
4515 of Rob Weir</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
4516 <a href="http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
4517 Standards Wars</a> (PDF 25 pages).  I recommend it for everyone
4518 following the standards wars of today.</p>
4519
4520       </div>
4521       <div class="tags">
4522
4523
4524         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
4525
4526
4527       </div>
4528     </div>
4529     <div class="padding"></div>
4530
4531     <div class="entry">
4532       <div class="title">
4533         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sitesummary_tip__Listing_computer_hardware_models_used_at_site.html">Sitesummary tip: Listing computer hardware models used at site</a>
4534       </div>
4535       <div class="date">
4536          3rd June 2010
4537       </div>
4538       <div class="body">
4539         <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
4540 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
4541 information extracted from each machine.  The script to do so is
4542 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
4543 the Skolelinux build servers:</p>
4544
4545 <blockquote><pre>
4546 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
4547   vendor                    count
4548   Dell Computer Corporation     1
4549     PowerEdge 1750              1
4550   IBM                           1
4551     eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]-     1
4552   Intel                         2
4553   [no-dmi-info]                 3
4554 maintainer:~#
4555 </pre></blockquote>
4556
4557 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
4558 provided in each machine.  Here there are Intel machines without model
4559 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
4560 machines listed as [no-dmi-info].  One can add -l as a command line
4561 option to list the individual machines.</p>
4562
4563 <p>A larger list is
4564 <a href="http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
4565 city of Narvik</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
4566 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly.  In their report there
4567 are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
4568 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
4569 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
4570 collector.</p>
4571
4572       </div>
4573       <div class="tags">
4574
4575
4576         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary</a>.
4577
4578
4579       </div>
4580     </div>
4581     <div class="padding"></div>
4582
4583     <div class="entry">
4584       <div class="title">
4585         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/KDM_fail_at_boot_with_NVidia_cards___and_no_one_try_to_fix_it_.html">KDM fail at boot with NVidia cards - and no one try to fix it?</a>
4586       </div>
4587       <div class="date">
4588          1st June 2010
4589       </div>
4590       <div class="body">
4591         <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
4592 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled.  The
4593 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
4594 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
4595 wait.</p>
4596
4597 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
4598 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#583312</a> initially filed
4599 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
4600 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
4601 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#524751</a> initially filed against
4602 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.</p>
4603
4604 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
4605 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
4606 distribution work out of the box for these users.  The nvidia driver
4607 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
4608 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
4609 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
4610 distribution that work for them.  I have no idea what the solution is,
4611 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.</p>
4612
4613 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.</p>
4614
4615       </div>
4616       <div class="tags">
4617
4618
4619         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4620
4621
4622       </div>
4623     </div>
4624     <div class="padding"></div>
4625
4626     <div class="entry">
4627       <div class="title">
4628         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellized_boot_seem_to_hold_up_well_in_Debian_testing.html">Parallellized boot seem to hold up well in Debian/testing</a>
4629       </div>
4630       <div class="date">
4631         27th May 2010
4632       </div>
4633       <div class="body">
4634         <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
4635 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
4636 issues are known and should be solved:
4637
4638 <p><ul>
4639
4640 <li>The wicd package seen to
4641 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting</a> and
4642 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup</a> when
4643 parallel booting is enabled.  No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
4644 seem to be on the case.</li>
4645
4646 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
4647 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition</a>
4648 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect.  The
4649 maintainer is on the case.</li>
4650
4651 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
4652 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
4653 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back</a> to
4654 sysv-rc.  One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
4655 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
4656 sysv-rc more robust.  Will investigate some more and probably upload a
4657 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
4658 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.</li>
4659
4660 </ul></p>
4661
4662 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
4663 solvable before Squeeze is released.  In addition to these there are
4664 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
4665 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.</p>
4666
4667 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
4668 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
4669 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
4670 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
4671
4672 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.</p>
4673
4674       </div>
4675       <div class="tags">
4676
4677
4678         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4679
4680
4681       </div>
4682     </div>
4683     <div class="padding"></div>
4684
4685     <div class="entry">
4686       <div class="title">
4687         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</a>
4688       </div>
4689       <div class="date">
4690         22nd May 2010
4691       </div>
4692       <div class="body">
4693         <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
4694 found time today to return to the project.  Having to spend less time
4695 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
4696 definitely helped freeing some time.</p>
4697
4698 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu.  We
4699 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
4700 get disk and network controllers working.  Without having these
4701 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
4702 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
4703 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
4704 an external medium is a support pain.  Initially, I expected it to be
4705 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
4706 debian-installer to find and use them.  This proved to be wrong.
4707 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
4708 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
4709 /cdrom/firmware/).  This also proved to not work, and at this point I
4710 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
4711 going to work.</p>
4712
4713 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
4714 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
4715 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
4716 packages.  It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
4717 "external" media devices.  Today I changed it to also look in the
4718 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
4719 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu.  I also changed it to
4720 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
4721 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
4722 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
4723 Edu.</p>
4724
4725 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
4726 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
4727 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
4728 run these before activating the firmware during installation.  The
4729 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
4730 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.</p>
4731
4732 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
4733 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.</p>
4734
4735       </div>
4736       <div class="tags">
4737
4738
4739         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4740
4741
4742       </div>
4743     </div>
4744     <div class="padding"></div>
4745
4746     <div class="entry">
4747       <div class="title">
4748         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellized_boot_is_now_the_default_in_Debian_unstable.html">Parallellized boot is now the default in Debian/unstable</a>
4749       </div>
4750       <div class="date">
4751         14th May 2010
4752       </div>
4753       <div class="body">
4754         <p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
4755 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
4756 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
4757 expected, if I am to believe the
4758 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
4759 on debian-devel@</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
4760 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
4761 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen.  If serious problems are
4762 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
4763 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
4764 version.</p>
4765
4766 More information about
4767 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
4768 based boot sequencing</a> is available from the Debian wiki.  It is
4769 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
4770 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:</p>
4771
4772 <blockquote><pre>
4773 CONCURRENCY=none
4774 </pre></blockquote>
4775
4776 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
4777 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
4778 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
4779 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
4780
4781       </div>
4782       <div class="tags">
4783
4784
4785         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4786
4787
4788       </div>
4789     </div>
4790     <div class="padding"></div>
4791
4792     <div class="entry">
4793       <div class="title">
4794         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sitesummary_tip__Listing_MAC_address_of_all_clients.html">Sitesummary tip: Listing MAC address of all clients</a>
4795       </div>
4796       <div class="date">
4797         14th May 2010
4798       </div>
4799       <div class="body">
4800         <p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
4801 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
4802 system</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
4803 network.  Each machine will automatically report its status to the
4804 central server after boot and once per night.  The network setup is
4805 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
4806 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines.  This is useful
4807 to update the DHCP configuration.</p>
4808
4809 <p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
4810 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary.  Run
4811 this on the collector host:</p>
4812
4813 <blockquote><pre>
4814 perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
4815 </pre></blockquote>
4816
4817 <p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
4818 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.</p>
4819
4820 <p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
4821 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
4822 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
4823 tables in LDAP using this information.  Such tool is unfortunately not
4824 written yet.</p>
4825
4826       </div>
4827       <div class="tags">
4828
4829
4830         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary</a>.
4831
4832
4833       </div>
4834     </div>
4835     <div class="padding"></div>
4836
4837     <div class="entry">
4838       <div class="title">
4839         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html">systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart</a>
4840       </div>
4841       <div class="date">
4842         13th May 2010
4843       </div>
4844       <div class="body">
4845         <p>The last few days a new boot system called
4846 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd</a>
4847 has been
4848 <a href="http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">introduced</a>
4849
4850 to the free software world.  I have not yet had time to play around
4851 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
4852 <a href="http://upstart.ubuntu.com/">upstart</a>, and might prove to be
4853 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
4854 based boot system.  Tollef is
4855 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/580814">in the process</a> of getting
4856 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work.  I
4857 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
4858 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
4859 at the moment do not.</p>
4860
4861 <p>Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
4862 platform support.  It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
4863 some new kernel features enabled to function properly.  This means
4864 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
4865 system.  Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
4866 way forward.</p>
4867
4868 <p>In the mean time, based on the
4869 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
4870 on debian-devel@</a> regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
4871 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
4872 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
4873 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies.  A
4874 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
4875 already in experimental.  If all go well, Squeeze will be released
4876 with parallel booting enabled by default.</p>
4877
4878       </div>
4879       <div class="tags">
4880
4881
4882         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
4883
4884
4885       </div>
4886     </div>
4887     <div class="padding"></div>
4888
4889     <div class="entry">
4890       <div class="title">
4891         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellizing_the_boot_in_Debian_Squeeze___ready_for_wider_testing.html">Parallellizing the boot in Debian Squeeze - ready for wider testing</a>
4892       </div>
4893       <div class="date">
4894          6th May 2010
4895       </div>
4896       <div class="body">
4897         <p>These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
4898 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
4899 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies.  If you want
4900 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
4901 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
4902 based boot sequencing</a> is enabled, and add this line to
4903 /etc/default/rcS:</p>
4904
4905 <blockquote><pre>
4906 CONCURRENCY=makefile
4907 </pre></blockquote>
4908
4909 <p>That is it.  It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
4910 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
4911 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
4912 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts.  Startpar is configured
4913 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
4914 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
4915 make this happen.</p>
4916
4917 <p>Give it a try, and see if you like the result.  If some services
4918 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
4919 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
4920 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies).  Report bugs and get
4921 the package maintainers to fix it. :)</p>
4922
4923 <p>Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
4924 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct.  I
4925 expect we will get there in Squeeze+1, if we get manage to test and
4926 fix the remaining issues.</p>
4927
4928 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
4929 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
4930 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
4931 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
4932
4933       </div>
4934       <div class="tags">
4935
4936
4937         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4938
4939
4940       </div>
4941     </div>
4942     <div class="padding"></div>
4943
4944     <div class="entry">
4945       <div class="title">
4946         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_has_switched_to_dependency_based_boot_sequencing.html">Debian has switched to dependency based boot sequencing</a>
4947       </div>
4948       <div class="date">
4949         27th July 2009
4950       </div>
4951       <div class="body">
4952         <p>Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
4953 and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
4954 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing.  This
4955 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
4956 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
4957 installation.  Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
4958 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.</p>
4959
4960 <p>The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
4961 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
4962 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.</p>
4963
4964       </div>
4965       <div class="tags">
4966
4967
4968         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
4969
4970
4971       </div>
4972     </div>
4973     <div class="padding"></div>
4974
4975     <div class="entry">
4976       <div class="title">
4977         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html">Taking over sysvinit development</a>
4978       </div>
4979       <div class="date">
4980         22nd July 2009
4981       </div>
4982       <div class="body">
4983         <p>After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
4984 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
4985 take over the package and become the new upstream.  The number of
4986 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
4987 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
4988 the package up to date.</p>
4989
4990 <p>On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
4991 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman.  About 10 days ago, I made
4992 a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
4993 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
4994 distributions.  We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
4995 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge.  Since the
4996 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
4997 upstream project at <a href="http://savannah.nongnu.org/">Savannah</a>, and continue
4998 development there.  The project is registered and currently waiting
4999 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
5000 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
5001 working on the future release.</p>
5002
5003 <p>It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
5004 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.</p>
5005
5006       </div>
5007       <div class="tags">
5008
5009
5010         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
5011
5012
5013       </div>
5014     </div>
5015     <div class="padding"></div>
5016
5017     <div class="entry">
5018       <div class="title">
5019         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html">Debian boots quicker and quicker</a>
5020       </div>
5021       <div class="date">
5022         24th June 2009
5023       </div>
5024       <div class="body">
5025         <p>I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
5026 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
5027 could find more ways to speed up the boot system.  This was an Ubuntu
5028 funded
5029 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint">developer
5030 gathering</a>. It was quite productive.  We also discussed the future
5031 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
5032 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
5033 asynchronous and event base.  The Ubuntu approach using udev and
5034 upstart might be a good way forward.  Time will show.</p>
5035
5036 <p>Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
5037 process in Debian.  All of these should be applied to get a quick
5038 boot:</p>
5039
5040 <ul>
5041
5042 <li>Use dash as /bin/sh.</li>
5043
5044 <li>Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
5045    clock is in UTC.</li>
5046
5047 <li>Install and activate the insserv package to enable
5048    <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
5049    based boot sequencing</a>, and enable concurrent booting.</li>
5050
5051 </ul>
5052
5053 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
5054 <a href="http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/">Carlos
5055 Villegas</a>.
5056
5057 <p>Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
5058 unstable yesterday.  When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
5059 from the boot sequence.  It depend on very correct dependency
5060 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
5061 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
5062 using this.</p>
5063
5064 <p>On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
5065 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
5066 startup speed as well.  Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
5067 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
5068 possible to run a of them in the same process.  A quick way to test
5069 this would be to enable insserv and run 'mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
5070 insserv'.  Will need to test if that work. :)</p>
5071
5072       </div>
5073       <div class="tags">
5074
5075
5076         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5077
5078
5079       </div>
5080     </div>
5081     <div class="padding"></div>
5082
5083     <div class="entry">
5084       <div class="title">
5085         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/BSAs_p_stander_om_piratkopiering_m_ter_motstand.html">BSAs påstander om piratkopiering møter motstand</a>
5086       </div>
5087       <div class="date">
5088         17th May 2009
5089       </div>
5090       <div class="body">
5091         <p>Hvert år de siste årene har BSA, lobbyfronten til de store
5092 programvareselskapene som Microsoft og Apple, publisert en rapport der
5093 de gjetter på hvor mye piratkopiering påfører i tapte inntekter i
5094 ulike land rundt om i verden.  Resultatene er tendensiøse.  For noen
5095 dager siden kom
5096 <a href="http://global.bsa.org/globalpiracy2008/studies/globalpiracy2008.pdf">siste
5097 rapport</a>, og det er flere kritiske kommentarer publisert de siste
5098 dagene.  Et spesielt interessant kommentar fra Sverige,
5099 <a href="http://www.idg.se/2.1085/1.229795/bsa-hoftade-sverigesiffror">BSA
5100 höftade Sverigesiffror</a>, oppsummeres slik:</p>
5101
5102 <blockquote>
5103 I sin senaste rapport slår BSA fast att 25 procent av all mjukvara i
5104 Sverige är piratkopierad. Det utan att ha pratat med ett enda svenskt
5105 företag. "Man bör nog kanske inte se de här siffrorna som helt
5106 exakta", säger BSAs Sverigechef John Hugosson.
5107 </blockquote>
5108
5109 <p>Mon tro om de er like metodiske når de gjetter på andelen piratkopiering i Norge?  To andre kommentarer er <a
5110 href="http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/comment/2242134/bsa-piracy-figures-shot-reality">BSA
5111 piracy figures need a shot of reality</a> og <a
5112 href="http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/3958/125/">Does The WIPO
5113 Copyright Treaty Work?</a></p>
5114
5115 <p>Fant lenkene via <a
5116 href="http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/17/1632242">oppslag
5117 på Slashdot</a>.</p>
5118
5119       </div>
5120       <div class="tags">
5121
5122
5123         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>.
5124
5125
5126       </div>
5127     </div>
5128     <div class="padding"></div>
5129
5130     <div class="entry">
5131       <div class="title">
5132         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IDG_mener_linux_i_servermarkedet_vil_vokse_med_21__i_2009.html">IDG mener linux i servermarkedet vil vokse med 21% i 2009</a>
5133       </div>
5134       <div class="date">
5135          7th May 2009
5136       </div>
5137       <div class="body">
5138         <p>Kom over
5139 <a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10216873-16.html">interessante
5140 tall</a> fra IDG om utviklingen av linuxservermarkedet.  Fikk meg til
5141 å tenke på antall tjenermaskiner ved Universitetet i Oslo der jeg
5142 jobber til daglig.  En rask opptelling forteller meg at vi har 490
5143 (61%) fysiske unix-tjener (mest linux men også noen solaris) og 196
5144 (25%) windowstjenere, samt 112 (14%) virtuelle unix-tjenere.  Med den
5145 bakgrunnskunnskapen kan jeg godt tro at IDG er inne på noe.</p>
5146
5147       </div>
5148       <div class="tags">
5149
5150
5151         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
5152
5153
5154       </div>
5155     </div>
5156     <div class="padding"></div>
5157
5158     <div class="entry">
5159       <div class="title">
5160         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kryptert_harddisk___naturligvis.html">Kryptert harddisk - naturligvis</a>
5161       </div>
5162       <div class="date">
5163          2nd May 2009
5164       </div>
5165       <div class="body">
5166         <p><a href="http://www.dagensit.no/trender/article1658676.ece">Dagens
5167 IT melder</a> at Intel hevder at det er dyrt å miste en datamaskin,
5168 når en tar tap av arbeidstid, fortrolige dokumenter,
5169 personopplysninger og alt annet det innebærer.  Det er ingen tvil om
5170 at det er en kostbar affære å miste sin datamaskin, og det er årsaken
5171 til at jeg har kryptert harddisken på både kontormaskinen og min
5172 bærbare.  Begge inneholder personopplysninger jeg ikke ønsker skal
5173 komme på avveie, den første informasjon relatert til jobben min ved
5174 Universitetet i Oslo, og den andre relatert til blant annet
5175 foreningsarbeide.  Kryptering av diskene gjør at det er lite
5176 sannsynlig at dophoder som kan finne på å rappe maskinene får noe ut
5177 av dem.  Maskinene låses automatisk etter noen minutter uten bruk,
5178 og en reboot vil gjøre at de ber om passord før de vil starte opp.
5179 Jeg bruker Debian på begge maskinene, og installasjonssystemet der
5180 gjør det trivielt å sette opp krypterte disker.  Jeg har LVM på toppen
5181 av krypterte partisjoner, slik at alt av datapartisjoner er kryptert.
5182 Jeg anbefaler alle å kryptere diskene på sine bærbare.  Kostnaden når
5183 det er gjort slik jeg gjør det er minimale, og gevinstene er
5184 betydelige.  En bør dog passe på passordet.  Hvis det går tapt, må
5185 maskinen reinstalleres og alt er tapt.</p>
5186
5187 <p>Krypteringen vil ikke stoppe kompetente angripere som f.eks. kjøler
5188 ned minnebrikkene før maskinen rebootes med programvare for å hente ut
5189 krypteringsnøklene.  Kostnaden med å forsvare seg mot slike angripere
5190 er for min del høyere enn gevinsten.  Jeg tror oddsene for at
5191 f.eks. etteretningsorganisasjoner har glede av å titte på mine
5192 maskiner er minimale, og ulempene jeg ville oppnå ved å forsøke å
5193 gjøre det vanskeligere for angripere med kompetanse og ressurser er
5194 betydelige.</p>
5195
5196       </div>
5197       <div class="tags">
5198
5199
5200         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
5201
5202
5203       </div>
5204     </div>
5205     <div class="padding"></div>
5206
5207     <div class="entry">
5208       <div class="title">
5209         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Two_projects_that_have_improved_the_quality_of_free_software_a_lot.html">Two projects that have improved the quality of free software a lot</a>
5210       </div>
5211       <div class="date">
5212          2nd May 2009
5213       </div>
5214       <div class="body">
5215         <p>There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
5216 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
5217 do not yet know them.</p>
5218
5219 <p>The first one is <a href="http://valgrind.org/">valgrind</a>, a
5220 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
5221 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run 'valgrind program',
5222 and it will report any problems on stdout.  It is even better if the
5223 program include debug information.  With debug information, it is able
5224 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
5225 occurs.  It can report things like 'reading past memory block in file
5226 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M', and
5227 'using uninitialised value in control logic'.  This tool has made it
5228 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
5229 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
5230
5231 <p>The second one is
5232 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity">Coverity</a> which is
5233 a source code checker.  It is able to process the source of a program
5234 and find problems in the logic without running the program.  It
5235 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
5236 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel.  It is now a commercial tool
5237 and the company behind it is running
5238 <a href="http://www.scan.coverity.com/">a community service</a> for the
5239 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
5240 their source checked for free.  Several thousand defects have been
5241 found and fixed so far.  It can find errors like 'lock L taken in file
5242 X line N is never released if exiting in line M', or 'the code in file
5243 Y lines O to P can never be executed'.  The projects included in the
5244 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
5245 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.</p>
5246
5247 <p>I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
5248 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
5249 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
5250 surrounded by today.</p>
5251
5252       </div>
5253       <div class="tags">
5254
5255
5256         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5257
5258
5259       </div>
5260     </div>
5261     <div class="padding"></div>
5262
5263     <div class="entry">
5264       <div class="title">
5265         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/No_patch_is_not_better_than_a_useless_patch.html">No patch is not better than a useless patch</a>
5266       </div>
5267       <div class="date">
5268         28th April 2009
5269       </div>
5270       <div class="body">
5271         <p>Julien Blache
5272 <a href="http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214">claim that no
5273 patch is better than a useless patch</a>.  I completely disagree, as a
5274 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
5275 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
5276 time on fixing it.  No patch do not provide any of these positive
5277 properties.</p>
5278
5279       </div>
5280       <div class="tags">
5281
5282
5283         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
5284
5285
5286       </div>
5287     </div>
5288     <div class="padding"></div>
5289
5290     <div class="entry">
5291       <div class="title">
5292         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Standardize_on_protocols_and_formats__not_vendors_and_applications.html">Standardize on protocols and formats, not vendors and applications</a>
5293       </div>
5294       <div class="date">
5295         30th March 2009
5296       </div>
5297       <div class="body">
5298         <p>Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
5299 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure.  It is the
5300 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
5301 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
5302 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
5303 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
5304 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
5305 application.</p>
5306
5307 <p>This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
5308 independently of the server applications.  One can even allow users to
5309 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
5310 protocol and format.  In the normal case, only one client application
5311 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
5312 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
5313 blocked from doing so.</p>
5314
5315 <p>It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
5316 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
5317 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
5318 requirements change.</p>
5319
5320 <p>I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
5321 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
5322 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.</p>
5323
5324       </div>
5325       <div class="tags">
5326
5327
5328         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
5329
5330
5331       </div>
5332     </div>
5333     <div class="padding"></div>
5334
5335     <div class="entry">
5336       <div class="title">
5337         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html">Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering</a>
5338       </div>
5339       <div class="date">
5340         29th March 2009
5341       </div>
5342       <div class="body">
5343         <p>I'm sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
5344 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering.  I got a bit done tuning the
5345 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
5346 implementation avahi.  It look like it could be useful for us.  Almost
5347 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
5348 get to know the Skolelinux system.  Walter Bender, involved in the
5349 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
5350 also helped me improve my OLPC installation.  He also showed me that
5351 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
5352 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian.  As a
5353 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu.  We also
5354 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
5355 proved to be too hard for us.  The application seem to need more work
5356 before it is ready for me.  I look forward to getting home and relax
5357 now. :)</p>
5358
5359       </div>
5360       <div class="tags">
5361
5362
5363         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
5364
5365
5366       </div>
5367     </div>
5368     <div class="padding"></div>
5369
5370     <div class="entry">
5371       <div class="title">
5372         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">Time for new  LDAP schemas replacing RFC 2307?</a>
5373       </div>
5374       <div class="date">
5375         29th March 2009
5376       </div>
5377       <div class="body">
5378         <p>The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
5379 optimal.  There is RFC 2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
5380 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC 2307bis, with
5381 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory.  The RFC
5382 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
5383 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.</p>
5384
5385 <p>In <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux</a>,
5386 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
5387 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
5388 and LTSP configuration in LDAP.  These objects have a lot in common,
5389 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
5390 object per entity.  For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
5391 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
5392 DNS information and another with DHCP information.  The schemas
5393 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
5394 object.  In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
5395 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
5396 It just do not scale.  I believe it is time for a few RFC
5397 specifications to cleam up this mess.</p>
5398
5399 <p>I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
5400 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
5401 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
5402 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.</p>
5403
5404 <p>I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
5405 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.</p>
5406
5407 <p>Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
5408 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up.  Time to start a
5409 new IETF work group?</p>
5410
5411       </div>
5412       <div class="tags">
5413
5414
5415         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
5416
5417
5418       </div>
5419     </div>
5420     <div class="padding"></div>
5421
5422     <div class="entry">
5423       <div class="title">
5424         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Endelig_er_Debian_Lenny_gitt_ut.html">Endelig er Debian Lenny gitt ut</a>
5425       </div>
5426       <div class="date">
5427         15th February 2009
5428       </div>
5429       <div class="body">
5430         <p>Endelig er <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>
5431 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2009/20090214">Lenny</a> gitt ut.
5432 Et langt steg videre for Debian-prosjektet, og en rekke nye
5433 programpakker blir nå tilgjengelig for de av oss som bruker den
5434 stabile utgaven av Debian.  Neste steg er nå å få
5435 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> /
5436 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu</a> ferdig
5437 oppdatert for den nye utgaven, slik at en oppdatert versjon kan
5438 slippes løs på skolene.  Takk til alle debian-utviklerne som har
5439 gjort dette mulig.  Endelig er f.eks. fungerende avhengighetsstyrt
5440 bootsekvens tilgjengelig i stabil utgave, vha pakken
5441 <tt>insserv</tt>.</p>
5442
5443       </div>
5444       <div class="tags">
5445
5446
5447         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>.
5448
5449
5450       </div>
5451     </div>
5452     <div class="padding"></div>
5453
5454     <div class="entry">
5455       <div class="title">
5456         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Devcamp_brought_us_closer_to_the_Lenny_based_Debian_Edu_release.html">Devcamp brought us closer to the Lenny based Debian Edu release</a>
5457       </div>
5458       <div class="date">
5459          7th December 2008
5460       </div>
5461       <div class="body">
5462         <p>This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
5463 Oslo.  Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
5464 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
5465 LTSP installation.  LTSP now work out of the box on the 10-network.
5466 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
5467 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box.  Was working on getting the
5468 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
5469 finish it before the weekend was up.</p>
5470
5471 <p>Did not find time to look at the 4 VGA cards in one box we got from
5472 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
5473 development gathering.  Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
5474 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
5475 of these cards.</p>
5476
5477       </div>
5478       <div class="tags">
5479
5480
5481         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp</a>.
5482
5483
5484       </div>
5485     </div>
5486     <div class="padding"></div>
5487
5488     <div class="entry">
5489       <div class="title">
5490         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_sorry_state_of_multimedia_browser_plugins_in_Debian.html">The sorry state of multimedia browser plugins in Debian</a>
5491       </div>
5492       <div class="date">
5493         25th November 2008
5494       </div>
5495       <div class="body">
5496         <p>Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
5497 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
5498 default in Debian Edu.  We need an embedded video playing plugin with
5499 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
5500 all the multimedia content available on the web.  The test results and
5501 notes are available on
5502 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">the
5503 Debian wiki</a>.  I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
5504 fill this need.  My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
5505 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages.  A lot of the MIME
5506 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
5507 video/ogg), just do not work.  And simple formats like the
5508 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn't supported by the
5509 totem and vlc plugins.  I hope the situation will improve soon.  No
5510 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.</p>
5511
5512 <p>For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin.  It seem to
5513 be the only one fitting our needs. :/</p>
5514
5515       </div>
5516       <div class="tags">
5517
5518
5519         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
5520
5521
5522       </div>
5523     </div>
5524     <div class="padding"></div>
5525
5526     <p style="text-align: right;"><a href="debian.rss"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/xml.gif" alt="RSS Feed" width="36" height="14" /></a></p>
5527     <div id="sidebar">
5528
5529
5530
5531 <h2>Archive</h2>
5532 <ul>
5533
5534 <li>2013
5535 <ul>
5536
5537 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/01/">January (11)</a></li>
5538
5539 </ul></li>
5540
5541 <li>2012
5542 <ul>
5543
5544 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/01/">January (7)</a></li>
5545
5546 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/02/">February (10)</a></li>
5547
5548 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/03/">March (17)</a></li>
5549
5550 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/04/">April (12)</a></li>
5551
5552 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/05/">May (12)</a></li>
5553
5554 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/06/">June (20)</a></li>
5555
5556 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/07/">July (17)</a></li>
5557
5558 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/08/">August (6)</a></li>
5559
5560 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/09/">September (9)</a></li>
5561
5562 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/10/">October (17)</a></li>
5563
5564 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/11/">November (10)</a></li>
5565
5566 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/12/">December (7)</a></li>
5567
5568 </ul></li>
5569
5570 <li>2011
5571 <ul>
5572
5573 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/01/">January (16)</a></li>
5574
5575 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/02/">February (6)</a></li>
5576
5577 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/03/">March (6)</a></li>
5578
5579 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/04/">April (7)</a></li>
5580
5581 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/05/">May (3)</a></li>
5582
5583 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/06/">June (2)</a></li>
5584
5585 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/07/">July (7)</a></li>
5586
5587 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/08/">August (6)</a></li>
5588
5589 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/09/">September (4)</a></li>
5590
5591 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/10/">October (2)</a></li>
5592
5593 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/11/">November (3)</a></li>
5594
5595 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/12/">December (1)</a></li>
5596
5597 </ul></li>
5598
5599 <li>2010
5600 <ul>
5601
5602 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (2)</a></li>
5603
5604 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/02/">February (1)</a></li>
5605
5606 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/03/">March (3)</a></li>
5607
5608 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/04/">April (3)</a></li>
5609
5610 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/05/">May (9)</a></li>
5611
5612 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (14)</a></li>
5613
5614 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/07/">July (12)</a></li>
5615
5616 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/08/">August (13)</a></li>
5617
5618 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/09/">September (7)</a></li>
5619
5620 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/10/">October (9)</a></li>
5621
5622 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/11/">November (13)</a></li>
5623
5624 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/12/">December (12)</a></li>
5625
5626 </ul></li>
5627
5628 <li>2009
5629 <ul>
5630
5631 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (8)</a></li>
5632
5633 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (8)</a></li>
5634
5635 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (12)</a></li>
5636
5637 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (10)</a></li>
5638
5639 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/05/">May (9)</a></li>
5640
5641 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/06/">June (3)</a></li>
5642
5643 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/07/">July (4)</a></li>
5644
5645 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (3)</a></li>
5646
5647 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (1)</a></li>
5648
5649 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/10/">October (2)</a></li>
5650
5651 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (3)</a></li>
5652
5653 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (3)</a></li>
5654
5655 </ul></li>
5656
5657 <li>2008
5658 <ul>
5659
5660 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (5)</a></li>
5661
5662 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (7)</a></li>
5663
5664 </ul></li>
5665
5666 </ul>
5667
5668
5669
5670 <h2>Tags</h2>
5671 <ul>
5672
5673  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (13)</a></li>
5674
5675  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (1)</a></li>
5676
5677  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (1)</a></li>
5678
5679  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bankid">bankid (4)</a></li>
5680
5681  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin (5)</a></li>
5682
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5684
5685  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa (2)</a></li>
5686
5687  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (69)</a></li>
5688
5689  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (118)</a></li>
5690
5691  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan (9)</a></li>
5692
5693  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook (7)</a></li>
5694
5695  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/drivstoffpriser">drivstoffpriser (4)</a></li>
5696
5697  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (175)</a></li>
5698
5699  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (21)</a></li>
5700
5701  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (12)</a></li>
5702
5703  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture (10)</a></li>
5704
5705  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen (9)</a></li>
5706
5707  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju (32)</a></li>
5708
5709  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram (5)</a></li>
5710
5711  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (17)</a></li>
5712
5713  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap (8)</a></li>
5714
5715  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (6)</a></li>
5716
5717  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (1)</a></li>
5718
5719  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (25)</a></li>
5720
5721  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (219)</a></li>
5722
5723  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (148)</a></li>
5724
5725  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn (6)</a></li>
5726
5727  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (2)</a></li>
5728
5729  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (41)</a></li>
5730
5731  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (61)</a></li>
5732
5733  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid (1)</a></li>
5734
5735  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (11)</a></li>
5736
5737  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (2)</a></li>
5738
5739  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (6)</a></li>
5740
5741  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (1)</a></li>
5742
5743  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ruter">ruter (4)</a></li>
5744
5745  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/scraperwiki">scraperwiki (2)</a></li>
5746
5747  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (28)</a></li>
5748
5749  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (4)</a></li>
5750
5751  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis (4)</a></li>
5752
5753  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (39)</a></li>
5754
5755  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (3)</a></li>
5756
5757  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (5)</a></li>
5758
5759  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (12)</a></li>
5760
5761  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin (1)</a></li>
5762
5763  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (7)</a></li>
5764
5765  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (35)</a></li>
5766
5767  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (4)</a></li>
5768
5769  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (26)</a></li>
5770
5771 </ul>
5772
5773
5774     </div>
5775     <p style="text-align: right">
5776  Created by <a href="http://steve.org.uk/Software/chronicle">Chronicle v4.4</a>
5777 </p>
5778
5779   </body>
5780 </html>