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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 "english".</h3>
  22
  23     <div class="entry">
  24       <div class="title">
  25         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Suddenly_I_am_the_new_upstream_of_the_lsdvd_command_line_tool.html">Suddenly I am the new upstream of the lsdvd command line tool</a>
  26       </div>
  27       <div class="date">
  28         25th September 2014
  29       </div>
  30       <div class="body">
  31         <p>I use the <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd tool</a>
  32 to handle my fairly large DVD collection.  It is a nice command line
  33 tool to get details about a DVD, like title, tracks, track length,
  34 etc, in XML, Perl or human readable format.  But lsdvd have not seen
  35 any new development since 2006 and had a few irritating bugs affecting
  36 its use with some DVDs.  Upstream seemed to be dead, and in January I
  37 sent a small probe asking for a version control repository for the
  38 project, without any reply.  But I use it regularly and would like to
  39 get <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/lsdvd">an updated version
  40 into Debian</a>.  So two weeks ago I tried harder to get in touch with
  41 the project admin, and after getting a reply from him explaining that
  42 he was no longer interested in the project, I asked if I could take
  43 over.  And yesterday, I became project admin.</p>
  44
  45 <p>I've been in touch with a Gentoo developer and the Debian
  46 maintainer interested in joining forces to maintain the upstream
  47 project, and I hope we can get a new release out fairly quickly,
  48 collecting the patches spread around on the internet into on place.
  49 I've added the relevant Debian patches to the freshly created git
  50 repository, and expect the Gentoo patches to make it too.  If you got
  51 a DVD collection and care about command line tools, check out
  52 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/git/ci/master/tree/">the git source</a> and join
  53 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/">the project mailing
  54 list</a>. :)</p>
  55
  56       </div>
  57       <div class="tags">
  58
  59
  60         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>.
  61
  62
  63       </div>
  64     </div>
  65     <div class="padding"></div>
  66
  67     <div class="entry">
  68       <div class="title">
  69         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Speeding_up_the_Debian_installer_using_eatmydata_and_dpkg_divert.html">Speeding up the Debian installer using eatmydata and dpkg-divert</a>
  70       </div>
  71       <div class="date">
  72         16th September 2014
  73       </div>
  74       <div class="body">
  75         <p>The <a href="https://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> installer could be
  76 a lot quicker.  When we install more than 2000 packages in
  77 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a> using
  78 tasksel in the installer, unpacking the binary packages take forever.
  79 A part of the slow I/O issue was discussed in
  80 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/613428">bug #613428</a> about too
  81 much file system sync-ing done by dpkg, which is the package
  82 responsible for unpacking the binary packages.  Other parts (like code
  83 executed by postinst scripts) might also sync to disk during
  84 installation.  All this sync-ing to disk do not really make sense to
  85 me.  If the machine crash half-way through, I start over, I do not try
  86 to salvage the half installed system.  So the failure sync-ing is
  87 supposed to protect against, hardware or system crash, is not really
  88 relevant while the installer is running.</p>
  89
  90 <p>A few days ago, I thought of a way to get rid of all the file
  91 system sync()-ing in a fairly non-intrusive way, without the need to
  92 change the code in several packages.  The idea is not new, but I have
  93 not heard anyone propose the approach using dpkg-divert before.  It
  94 depend on the small and clever package
  95 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/eatmydata">eatmydata</a>, which
  96 uses LD_PRELOAD to replace the system functions for syncing data to
  97 disk with functions doing nothing, thus allowing programs to live
  98 dangerous while speeding up disk I/O significantly.  Instead of
  99 modifying the implementation of dpkg, apt and tasksel (which are the
 100 packages responsible for selecting, fetching and installing packages),
 101 it occurred to me that we could just divert the programs away, replace
 102 them with a simple shell wrapper calling
 103 "eatmydata&nbsp;$program&nbsp;$@", to get the same effect.
 104 Two days ago I decided to test the idea, and wrapped up a simple
 105 implementation for the Debian Edu udeb.</p>
 106
 107 <p>The effect was stunning.  In my first test it reduced the running
 108 time of the pkgsel step (installing tasks) from 64 to less than 44
 109 minutes (20 minutes shaved off the installation) on an old Dell
 110 Latitude D505 machine.  I am not quite sure what the optimised time
 111 would have been, as I messed up the testing a bit, causing the debconf
 112 priority to get low enough for two questions to pop up during
 113 installation.  As soon as I saw the questions I moved the installation
 114 along, but do not know how long the question were holding up the
 115 installation.  I did some more measurements using Debian Edu Jessie,
 116 and got these results.  The time measured is the time stamp in
 117 /var/log/syslog between the "pkgsel: starting tasksel" and the
 118 "pkgsel: finishing up" lines, if you want to do the same measurement
 119 yourself.  In Debian Edu, the tasksel dialog do not show up, and the
 120 timing thus do not depend on how quickly the user handle the tasksel
 121 dialog.</p>
 122
 123 <p><table>
 124
 125 <tr>
 126 <th>Machine/setup</th>
 127 <th>Original tasksel</th>
 128 <th>Optimised tasksel</th>
 129 <th>Reduction</th>
 130 </tr>
 131
 132 <tr>
 133 <td>Latitude D505 Main+LTSP LXDE</td>
 134 <td>64 min (07:46-08:50)</td>
 135 <td><44 min (11:27-12:11)</td>
 136 <td>>20 min 18%</td>
 137 </tr>
 138
 139 <tr>
 140 <td>Latitude D505 Roaming LXDE</td>
 141 <td>57 min (08:48-09:45)</td>
 142 <td>34 min (07:43-08:17)</td>
 143 <td>23 min 40%</td>
 144 </tr>
 145
 146 <tr>
 147 <td>Latitude D505 Minimal</td>
 148 <td>22 min (10:37-10:59)</td>
 149 <td>11 min (11:16-11:27)</td>
 150 <td>11 min 50%</td>
 151 </tr>
 152
 153 <tr>
 154 <td>Thinkpad X200 Minimal</td>
 155 <td>6 min (08:19-08:25)</td>
 156 <td>4 min (08:04-08:08)</td>
 157 <td>2 min 33%</td>
 158 </tr>
 159
 160 <tr>
 161 <td>Thinkpad X200 Roaming KDE</td>
 162 <td>19 min (09:21-09:40)</td>
 163 <td>15 min (10:25-10:40)</td>
 164 <td>4 min 21%</td>
 165 </tr>
 166
 167 </table></p>
 168
 169 <p>The test is done using a netinst ISO on a USB stick, so some of the
 170 time is spent downloading packages.  The connection to the Internet
 171 was 100Mbit/s during testing, so downloading should not be a
 172 significant factor in the measurement.  Download typically took a few
 173 seconds to a few minutes, depending on the amount of packages being
 174 installed.</p>
 175
 176 <p>The speedup is implemented by using two hooks in
 177 <a href="https://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/">Debian
 178 Installer</a>, the pre-pkgsel.d hook to set up the diverts, and the
 179 finish-install.d hook to remove the divert at the end of the
 180 installation.  I picked the pre-pkgsel.d hook instead of the
 181 post-base-installer.d hook because I test using an ISO without the
 182 eatmydata package included, and the post-base-installer.d hook in
 183 Debian Edu can only operate on packages included in the ISO.  The
 184 negative effect of this is that I am unable to activate this
 185 optimization for the kernel installation step in d-i.  If the code is
 186 moved to the post-base-installer.d hook, the speedup would be larger
 187 for the entire installation.</p>
 188
 189 <p>I've implemented this in the
 190 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-install">debian-edu-install</a>
 191 git repository, and plan to provide the optimization as part of the
 192 Debian Edu installation.  If you want to test this yourself, you can
 193 create two files in the installer (or in an udeb).  One shell script
 194 need do go into /usr/lib/pre-pkgsel.d/, with content like this:</p>
 195
 196 <p><blockquote><pre>
 197 #!/bin/sh
 198 set -e
 199 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
 200 info() {
 201     logger -t my-pkgsel "info: $*"
 202 }
 203 error() {
 204     logger -t my-pkgsel "error: $*"
 205 }
 206 override_install() {
 207     apt-install eatmydata || true
 208     if [ -x /target/usr/bin/eatmydata ] ; then
 209         for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
 210             file=/usr/bin/$bin
 211             # Test that the file exist and have not been diverted already.
 212             if [ -f /target$file ] ; then
 213                 info "diverting $file using eatmydata"
 214                 printf "#!/bin/sh\neatmydata $bin.distrib \"\$@\"\n" \
 215                     > /target$file.edu
 216                 chmod 755 /target$file.edu
 217                 in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
 218                     --rename --quiet --add $file
 219                 ln -sf ./$bin.edu /target$file
 220             else
 221                 error "unable to divert $file, as it is missing."
 222             fi
 223         done
 224     else
 225         error "unable to find /usr/bin/eatmydata after installing the eatmydata pacage"
 226     fi
 227 }
 228
 229 override_install
 230 </pre></blockquote></p>
 231
 232 <p>To clean up, another shell script should go into
 233 /usr/lib/finish-install.d/ with code like this:
 234
 235 <p><blockquote><pre>
 236 #! /bin/sh -e
 237 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
 238 error() {
 239     logger -t my-finish-install "error: $@"
 240 }
 241 remove_install_override() {
 242     for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
 243         file=/usr/bin/$bin
 244         if [ -x /target$file.edu ] ; then
 245             rm /target$file
 246             in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
 247                 --rename --quiet --remove $file
 248             rm /target$file.edu
 249         else
 250             error "Missing divert for $file."
 251         fi
 252     done
 253     sync # Flush file buffers before continuing
 254 }
 255
 256 remove_install_override
 257 </pre></blockquote></p>
 258
 259 <p>In Debian Edu, I placed both code fragments in a separate script
 260 edu-eatmydata-install and call it from the pre-pkgsel.d and
 261 finish-install.d scripts.</p>
 262
 263 <p>By now you might ask if this change should get into the normal
 264 Debian installer too?  I suspect it should, but am not sure the
 265 current debian-installer coordinators find it useful enough.  It also
 266 depend on the side effects of the change.  I'm not aware of any, but I
 267 guess we will see if the change is safe after some more testing.
 268 Perhaps there is some package in Debian depending on sync() and
 269 fsync() having effect?  Perhaps it should go into its own udeb, to
 270 allow those of us wanting to enable it to do so without affecting
 271 everyone.</p>
 272
 273 <p>Update 2014-09-24: Since a few days ago, enabling this optimization
 274 will break installation of all programs using gnutls because of
 275 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/702711">bug #702711.  An updated
 276 eatmydata package in Debian will solve it.</p>
 277
 278       </div>
 279       <div class="tags">
 280
 281
 282         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>.
 283
 284
 285       </div>
 286     </div>
 287     <div class="padding"></div>
 288
 289     <div class="entry">
 290       <div class="title">
 291         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Good_bye_subkeys_pgp_net__welcome_pool_sks_keyservers_net.html">Good bye subkeys.pgp.net, welcome pool.sks-keyservers.net</a>
 292       </div>
 293       <div class="date">
 294         10th September 2014
 295       </div>
 296       <div class="body">
 297         <p>Yesterday, I had the pleasure of attending a talk with the
 298 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a> about
 299 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20140909-sks-keyservers/">the
 300 OpenPGP keyserver pool sks-keyservers.net</a>, and was very happy to
 301 learn that there is a large set of publicly available key servers to
 302 use when looking for peoples public key.  So far I have used
 303 subkeys.pgp.net, and some times wwwkeys.nl.pgp.net when the former
 304 were misbehaving, but those days are ended.  The servers I have used
 305 up until yesterday have been slow and some times unavailable.  I hope
 306 those problems are gone now.</p>
 307
 308 <p>Behind the round robin DNS entry of the
 309 <a href="https://sks-keyservers.net/">sks-keyservers.net</a> service
 310 there is a pool of more than 100 keyservers which are checked every
 311 day to ensure they are well connected and up to date.  It must be
 312 better than what I have used so far. :)</p>
 313
 314 <p>Yesterdays speaker told me that the service is the default
 315 keyserver provided by the default configuration in GnuPG, but this do
 316 not seem to be used in Debian.  Perhaps it should?</p>
 317
 318 <p>Anyway, I've updated my ~/.gnupg/options file to now include this
 319 line:</p>
 320
 321 <p><blockquote><pre>
 322 keyserver pool.sks-keyservers.net
 323 </pre></blockquote></p>
 324
 325 <p>With GnuPG version 2 one can also locate the keyserver using SRV
 326 entries in DNS.  Just for fun, I did just that at work, so now every
 327 user of GnuPG at the University of Oslo should find a OpenGPG
 328 keyserver automatically should their need it:</p>
 329
 330 <p><blockquote><pre>
 331 % host -t srv _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no
 332 _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no has SRV record 0 100 11371 pool.sks-keyservers.net.
 333 %
 334 </pre></blockquote></p>
 335
 336 <p>Now if only
 337 <a href="http://ietfreport.isoc.org/idref/draft-shaw-openpgp-hkp/">the
 338 HKP lookup protocol</a> supported finding signature paths, I would be
 339 very happy.  It can look up a given key or search for a user ID, but I
 340 normally do not want that, but to find a trust path from my key to
 341 another key.  Given a user ID or key ID, I would like to find (and
 342 download) the keys representing a signature path from my key to the
 343 key in question, to be able to get a trust path between the two keys.
 344 This is as far as I can tell not possible today.  Perhaps something
 345 for a future version of the protocol?</p>
 346
 347       </div>
 348       <div class="tags">
 349
 350
 351         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/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
 352
 353
 354       </div>
 355     </div>
 356     <div class="padding"></div>
 357
 358     <div class="entry">
 359       <div class="title">
 360         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Do_you_need_an_agreement_with_MPEG_LA_to_publish_and_broadcast_H_264_video_in_Norway_.html">Do you need an agreement with MPEG-LA to publish and broadcast H.264 video in Norway?</a>
 361       </div>
 362       <div class="date">
 363         25th August 2014
 364       </div>
 365       <div class="body">
 366         <p>Two years later, I am still not sure if it is legal here in Norway
 367 to use or publish a video in H.264 or MPEG4 format edited by the
 368 commercially licensed video editors, without limiting the use to
 369 create "personal" or "non-commercial" videos or get a license
 370 agreement with <a href="http://www.mpegla.com">MPEG LA</a>.  If one
 371 want to publish and broadcast video in a non-personal or commercial
 372 setting, it might be that those tools can not be used, or that video
 373 format can not be used, without breaking their copyright license.  I
 374 am not sure.
 375 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Trenger_en_avtale_med_MPEG_LA_for___publisere_og_kringkaste_H_264_video_.html">Back
 376 then</a>, I found that the copyright license terms for Adobe Premiere
 377 and Apple Final Cut Pro both specified that one could not use the
 378 program to produce anything else without a patent license from MPEG
 379 LA.  The issue is not limited to those two products, though.  Other
 380 much used products like those from Avid and Sorenson Media have terms
 381 of use are similar to those from Adobe and Apple.  The complicating
 382 factor making me unsure if those terms have effect in Norway or not is
 383 that the patents in question are not valid in Norway, but copyright
 384 licenses are.</p>
 385
 386 <p>These are the terms for Avid Artist Suite, according to their
 387 <a href="http://www.avid.com/US/about-avid/legal-notices/legal-enduserlicense2">published
 388 end user</a>
 389 <a href="http://www.avid.com/static/resources/common/documents/corporate/LICENSE.pdf">license
 390 text</a> (converted to lower case text for easier reading):</p>
 391
 392 <p><blockquote>
 393 <p>18.2. MPEG-4. MPEG-4 technology may be included with the
 394 software. MPEG LA, L.L.C. requires this notice: </p>
 395
 396 <p>This product is licensed under the MPEG-4 visual patent portfolio
 397 license for the personal and non-commercial use of a consumer for (i)
 398 encoding video in compliance with the MPEG-4 visual standard (“MPEG-4
 399 video”) and/or (ii) decoding MPEG-4 video that was encoded by a
 400 consumer engaged in a personal and non-commercial activity and/or was
 401 obtained from a video provider licensed by MPEG LA to provide MPEG-4
 402 video.  No license is granted or shall be implied for any other
 403 use. Additional information including that relating to promotional,
 404 internal and commercial uses and licensing may be obtained from MPEG
 405 LA, LLC.  See http://www.mpegla.com. This product is licensed under
 406 the MPEG-4 systems patent portfolio license for encoding in compliance
 407 with the MPEG-4 systems standard, except that an additional license
 408 and payment of royalties are necessary for encoding in connection with
 409 (i) data stored or replicated in physical media which is paid for on a
 410 title by title basis and/or (ii) data which is paid for on a title by
 411 title basis and is transmitted to an end user for permanent storage
 412 and/or use, such additional license may be obtained from MPEG LA,
 413 LLC. See http://www.mpegla.com for additional details.</p>
 414
 415 <p>18.3. H.264/AVC. H.264/AVC technology may be included with the
 416 software.  MPEG LA, L.L.C. requires this notice:</p>
 417
 418 <p>This product is licensed under the AVC patent portfolio license for
 419 the personal use of a consumer or other uses in which it does not
 420 receive remuneration to (i) encode video in compliance with the AVC
 421 standard (“AVC video”) and/or (ii) decode AVC video that was encoded
 422 by a consumer engaged in a personal activity and/or was obtained from
 423 a video provider licensed to provide AVC video. No license is granted
 424 or shall be implied for any other use. Additional information may be
 425 obtained from MPEG LA, L.L.C. See http://www.mpegla.com.</p>
 426 </blockquote></p>
 427
 428 <p>Note the requirement that the videos created can only be used for
 429 personal or non-commercial purposes.</p>
 430
 431 <p>The Sorenson Media software have
 432 <a href="http://www.sorensonmedia.com/terms/">similar terms</a>:</p>
 433
 434 <p><blockquote>
 435
 436 <p>With respect to a license from Sorenson pertaining to MPEG-4 Video
 437 Decoders and/or Encoders: Any such product is licensed under the
 438 MPEG-4 visual patent portfolio license for the personal and
 439 non-commercial use of a consumer for (i) encoding video in compliance
 440 with the MPEG-4 visual standard (“MPEG-4 video”) and/or (ii) decoding
 441 MPEG-4 video that was encoded by a consumer engaged in a personal and
 442 non-commercial activity and/or was obtained from a video provider
 443 licensed by MPEG LA to provide MPEG-4 video. No license is granted or
 444 shall be implied for any other use. Additional information including
 445 that relating to promotional, internal and commercial uses and
 446 licensing may be obtained from MPEG LA, LLC. See
 447 http://www.mpegla.com.</p>
 448
 449 <p>With respect to a license from Sorenson pertaining to MPEG-4
 450 Consumer Recorded Data Encoder, MPEG-4 Systems Internet Data Encoder,
 451 MPEG-4 Mobile Data Encoder, and/or MPEG-4 Unique Use Encoder: Any such
 452 product is licensed under the MPEG-4 systems patent portfolio license
 453 for encoding in compliance with the MPEG-4 systems standard, except
 454 that an additional license and payment of royalties are necessary for
 455 encoding in connection with (i) data stored or replicated in physical
 456 media which is paid for on a title by title basis and/or (ii) data
 457 which is paid for on a title by title basis and is transmitted to an
 458 end user for permanent storage and/or use. Such additional license may
 459 be obtained from MPEG LA, LLC. See http://www.mpegla.com for
 460 additional details.</p>
 461
 462 </blockquote></p>
 463
 464 <p>Some free software like
 465 <a href="https://handbrake.fr/">Handbrake</A> and
 466 <a href="http://ffmpeg.org/">FFMPEG</a> uses GPL/LGPL licenses and do
 467 not have any such terms included, so for those, there is no
 468 requirement to limit the use to personal and non-commercial.</p>
 469
 470       </div>
 471       <div class="tags">
 472
 473
 474         Tags: <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/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</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>.
 475
 476
 477       </div>
 478     </div>
 479     <div class="padding"></div>
 480
 481     <div class="entry">
 482       <div class="title">
 483         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Bernd_Zeitzen.html">Debian Edu interview: Bernd Zeitzen</a>
 484       </div>
 485       <div class="date">
 486         31st July 2014
 487       </div>
 488       <div class="body">
 489         <p>The complete and free “out of the box” software solution for
 490 schools, <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
 491 Skolelinux</a>, is used quite a lot in Germany, and one of the people
 492 involved is Bernd Zeitzen, who show up on the project mailing lists
 493 from time to time with interesting questions and tips on how to adjust
 494 the setup.  I managed to interview him this summer.</p>
 495
 496 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
 497
 498 <p>My name is Bernd Zeitzen and I'm married with Hedda, a self
 499 employed physiotherapist.  My former profession is tool maker, but I
 500 haven't worked for 30 years in this job.  30 years ago I started to
 501 support my wife and become her officeworker and a few years later the
 502 administrator for a small computer network, today based on Ubuntu
 503 Server (Samba, OpenVPN). For her daily work she has to use Windows
 504 Desktops because the software she needs to organize her business only
 505 works with Windows . :-(</p>
 506
 507 <p>In 1988 we started with one PC and DOS, then I learned to use
 508 Windows 98, 2000, XP, …, 8, Ubuntu, MacOSX.  Today we are running a
 509 Linux server with 6 Windows clients and 10 persons (teacher of
 510 children with special needs, speech therapist, occupational therapist,
 511 psychologist and officeworkers) using our Samba shares via OpenVPN to
 512 work with the documentations of our patients.</p>
 513
 514 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
 515 project?</strong></p>
 516
 517 <p>Two years ago a friend of mine asked me, if I want to get a job in
 518 his school (<a href="http://www.gymnasium-harsewinkel.de/">Gymnasium
 519 Harsewinkel</a>).  They started with Skolelinux / Debian Edu and they
 520 were looking for people to give support to the teachers using the
 521 software and the network and teaching the pupils increasing their
 522 computer skills in optional lessons.  I'm spending 4-6 hours a week
 523 with this job.</p>
 524
 525 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
 526 Edu?</strong></p>
 527
 528 <p>The independence.</p>
 529
 530 <p>First: Every person is allowed to use, share and develop the
 531 software. Even if you are poor, you are allowed to use the software
 532 included in Skolelinux/Debian Edu and all the other Free Software.</p>
 533
 534 <p>Second: The software runs on old machines and this gives us the
 535 possibility to recycle computers, weeded out from offices.  The
 536 servers and desktops are running for more than two years and they are
 537 working reliable. </p>
 538
 539 <p>We have two servers (one tjener and one terminal server), 45
 540 workstations in three classrooms and seven laptops as a mobile
 541 solution for all classrooms.  These machines are all booting from the
 542 terminal server.  In the moment we are installing 30 laptops as mobile
 543 workstations.  Then the pupils have the possibility to work with these
 544 machines in their classrooms.  Internet access is realized by a WLAN
 545 router, connected to the schools network. This is all done without a
 546 dedicated system administrator or a computer science teacher.</p>
 547
 548 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
 549 Edu?</strong></p>
 550
 551 <p>Teachers and pupils are Windows users.  &lt;Irony on&gt; And Linux
 552 isn't cool. It's software for freaks using the command line. &lt;Irony
 553 off&gt; They don't realize the stability of the system. </p>
 554
 555 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
 556
 557 <p>Firefox, Thunderbird, LibreOffice, Ubuntu Server 12.04 (Samba,
 558 Apache, MySQL, Joomla!, … and Skolelinux / Debian Edu)</p>
 559
 560 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
 561 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
 562
 563 <p>In Germany we have the situation: every school is free to decide
 564 which software they want to use. This decision is influenced by
 565 teachers who learned to use Windows and MS Office. They buy a PC with
 566 Windows preinstalled and an additional testing version of MS
 567 Office. They don't know about the possibility to use Free Software
 568 instead.  Another problem are the publisher of school books.  They
 569 develop their software, added to the school books, for Windows.</p>
 570
 571       </div>
 572       <div class="tags">
 573
 574
 575         Tags: <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/intervju">intervju</a>.
 576
 577
 578       </div>
 579     </div>
 580     <div class="padding"></div>
 581
 582     <div class="entry">
 583       <div class="title">
 584         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/98_6_percent_done_with_the_Norwegian_draft_translation_of_Free_Culture.html">98.6 percent done with the Norwegian draft translation of Free Culture</a>
 585       </div>
 586       <div class="date">
 587         23rd July 2014
 588       </div>
 589       <div class="body">
 590         <p>This summer I finally had time to continue working on the Norwegian
 591 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
 592 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
 593 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with todays copyright
 594 law.  Yesterday, I finally completed translated the book text.  There
 595 are still some foot/end notes left to translate, the colophon page
 596 need to be rewritten, and a few words and phrases still need to be
 597 translated, but the Norwegian text is ready for the first proof
 598 reading. :) More spell checking is needed, and several illustrations
 599 need to be cleaned up.  The work stopped up because I had to give
 600 priority to other projects the last year, and the progress graph of
 601 the translation show this very well:</p>
 602
 603 <p><img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png"></p>
 604
 605 <p>If you want to read the result, check out the
 606 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>
 607 project pages and the
 608 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>,
 609 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
 610 and HTML version available in the
 611 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/tree/master/archive">archive
 612 directory</a>.</p>
 613
 614 <p>Please report typos, bugs and improvements to the github project if
 615 you find any.</p>
 616
 617       </div>
 618       <div class="tags">
 619
 620
 621         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
 622
 623
 624       </div>
 625     </div>
 626     <div class="padding"></div>
 627
 628     <div class="entry">
 629       <div class="title">
 630         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/From_English_wiki_to_translated_PDF_and_epub_via_Docbook.html">From English wiki to translated PDF and epub via Docbook</a>
 631       </div>
 632       <div class="date">
 633         17th June 2014
 634       </div>
 635       <div class="body">
 636         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
 637 project</a> provide an instruction manual for teachers, system
 638 administrators and other users that contain useful tips for setting up
 639 and maintaining a Debian Edu installation.  This text is about how the
 640 text processing of this manual is handled in the project.</p>
 641
 642 <p>One goal of the project is to provide information in the native
 643 language of its users, and for this we need to handle translations.
 644 But we also want to make sure each language contain the same
 645 information, so for this we need a good way to keep the translations
 646 in sync.  And we want it to be easy for our users to improve the
 647 documentation, avoiding the need to learn special formats or tools to
 648 contribute, and the obvious way to do this is to make it possible to
 649 edit the documentation using a web browser.  We also want it to be
 650 easy for translators to keep the translation up to date, and give them
 651 help in figuring out what need to be translated. Here is the list of
 652 tools and the process we have found trying to reach all these
 653 goals.</p>
 654
 655 <p>We maintain the authoritative source of our manual in the
 656 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">Debian
 657 wiki</a>, as several wiki pages written in English.  It consist of one
 658 front page with references to the different chapters, several pages
 659 for each chapter, and finally one "collection page" gluing all the
 660 chapters together into one large web page (aka
 661 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/AllInOne">the
 662 AllInOne page</a>).  The AllInOne page is the one used for further
 663 processing and translations.  Thanks to the fact that the
 664 <a href="http://moinmo.in/">MoinMoin</a> installation on
 665 wiki.debian.org support exporting pages in
 666 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">the Docbook format</a>, we can fetch
 667 the list of pages to export using the raw version of the AllInOne
 668 page, loop over each of them to generate a Docbook XML version of the
 669 manual.  This process also download images and transform image
 670 references to use the locally downloaded images.  The generated
 671 Docbook XML files are slightly broken, so some post-processing is done
 672 using the <tt>documentation/scripts/get_manual</tt> program, and the
 673 result is a nice Docbook XML file (debian-edu-wheezy-manual.xml) and
 674 a handfull of images.  The XML file can now be used to generate PDF, HTML
 675 and epub versions of the English manual.  This is the basic step of
 676 our process, making PDF (using dblatex), HTML (using xsltproc) and
 677 epub (using dbtoepub) version from Docbook XML, and the resulting files
 678 are placed in the debian-edu-doc-en binary package.</p>
 679
 680 <p>But English documentation is not enough for us.  We want translated
 681 documentation too, and we want to make it easy for translators to
 682 track the English original.  For this we use the
 683 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/poxml.html">poxml</a> package,
 684 which allow us to transform the English Docbook XML file into a
 685 translation file (a .pot file), usable with the normal gettext based
 686 translation tools used by those translating free software.  The pot
 687 file is used to create and maintain translation files (several .po
 688 files), which the translations update with the native language
 689 translations of all titles, paragraphs and blocks of text in the
 690 original.  The next step is combining the original English Docbook XML
 691 and the translation file (say debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.po), to
 692 create a translated Docbook XML file (in this case
 693 debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.xml).  This translated (or partly
 694 translated, if the translation is not complete) Docbook XML file can
 695 then be used like the original to create a PDF, HTML and epub version
 696 of the documentation.</p>
 697
 698 <p>The translators use different tools to edit the .po files.  We
 699 recommend using
 700 <a href="http://www.kde.org/applications/development/lokalize/">lokalize</a>,
 701 while some use emacs and vi, others can use web based editors like
 702 <a href="http://pootle.translatehouse.org/">Poodle</a> or
 703 <a href="https://www.transifex.com/">Transifex</a>.  All we care about
 704 is where the .po file end up, in our git repository.  Updated
 705 translations can either be committed directly to git, or submitted as
 706 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/src:debian-edu-doc">bug reports
 707 against the debian-edu-doc package</a>.</p>
 708
 709 <p>One challenge is images, which both might need to be translated (if
 710 they show translated user applications), and are needed in different
 711 formats when creating PDF and HTML versions (epub is a HTML version in
 712 this regard).  For this we transform the original PNG images to the
 713 needed density and format during build, and have a way to provide
 714 translated images by storing translated versions in
 715 images/$LANGUAGECODE/.  I am a bit unsure about the details here.  The
 716 package maintainers know more.</p>
 717
 718 <p>If you wonder what the result look like, we provide
 719 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/">the content
 720 of the documentation packages on the web</a>.  See for example the
 721 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/it/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.pdf">Italian
 722 PDF version</a> or the
 723 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/de/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.html">German
 724 HTML version</a>.  We do not yet build the epub version by default,
 725 but perhaps it will be done in the future.</p>
 726
 727 <p>To learn more, check out
 728 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/debian-edu-doc.html">the
 729 debian-edu-doc package</a>,
 730 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">the
 731 manual on the wiki</a> and
 732 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/Translations">the
 733 translation instructions</a> in the manual.</p>
 734
 735       </div>
 736       <div class="tags">
 737
 738
 739         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/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 740
 741
 742       </div>
 743     </div>
 744     <div class="padding"></div>
 745
 746     <div class="entry">
 747       <div class="title">
 748         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_software_car_computer_solution_.html">Free software car computer solution?</a>
 749       </div>
 750       <div class="date">
 751         29th May 2014
 752       </div>
 753       <div class="body">
 754         <p>Dear lazyweb.  I'm planning to set up a small Raspberry Pi computer
 755 in my car, connected to
 756 <a href="http://www.dx.com/p/400a-4-0-tft-lcd-digital-monitor-for-vehicle-parking-reverse-camera-1440x272-12v-dc-57776">a
 757 small screen</a> next to the rear mirror.  I plan to hook it up with a
 758 GPS and a USB wifi card too.  The idea is to get my own
 759 "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carputer">Carputer</a>".  But I
 760 wonder if someone already created a good free software solution for
 761 such car computer.</p>
 762
 763 <p>This is my current wish list for such system:</p>
 764
 765 <ul>
 766
 767  <li>Work on Raspberry Pi.</li>
 768
 769  <li>Show current speed limit based on location, and warn if going too
 770    fast (for example using color codes yellow and red on the screen,
 771    or make a sound).  This could be done either using either data from
 772    <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">Openstreetmap</a> or OCR
 773    info gathered from a dashboard camera.</li>
 774
 775  <li>Track automatic toll road passes and their cost, show total spent
 776    and make it possible to calculate toll costs for planned
 777    route.</li>
 778
 779  <li>Collect GPX tracks for use with OpenStreetMap.</li>
 780
 781  <li>Automatically detect and use any wireless connection to connect
 782    to home server.  Try IP over DNS
 783    (<a href="http://dev.kryo.se/iodine/">iodine</a>) or ICMP
 784    (<a href="http://code.gerade.org/hans/">Hans</a>) if direct
 785    connection do not work.</li>
 786
 787  <li>Set up mesh network to talk to other cars with the same system,
 788    or some standard car mesh protocol.</li>
 789
 790  <li>Warn when approaching speed cameras and speed camera ranges
 791    (speed calculated between two cameras).</li>
 792
 793  <li>Suport dashboard/front facing camera to discover speed limits and
 794    run OCR to track registration number of passing cars.</li>
 795
 796 </ul>
 797
 798 <p>If you know of any free software car computer system supporting
 799 some or all of these features, please let me know.</p>
 800
 801       </div>
 802       <div class="tags">
 803
 804
 805         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 806
 807
 808       </div>
 809     </div>
 810     <div class="padding"></div>
 811
 812     <div class="entry">
 813       <div class="title">
 814         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Half_the_Coverity_issues_in_Gnash_fixed_in_the_next_release.html">Half the Coverity issues in Gnash fixed in the next release</a>
 815       </div>
 816       <div class="date">
 817         29th April 2014
 818       </div>
 819       <div class="body">
 820         <p>I've been following <a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">the Gnash
 821 project</a> for quite a while now.  It is a free software
 822 implementation of Adobe Flash, both a standalone player and a browser
 823 plugin.  Gnash implement support for the AVM1 format (and not the
 824 newer AVM2 format - see
 825 <a href="http://lightspark.github.io/">Lightspark</a> for that one),
 826 allowing several flash based sites to work.  Thanks to the friendly
 827 developers at Youtube, it also work with Youtube videos, because the
 828 Javascript code at Youtube detect Gnash and serve a AVM1 player to
 829 those users. :) Would be great if someone found time to implement AVM2
 830 support, but it has not happened yet.  If you install both Lightspark
 831 and Gnash, Lightspark will invoke Gnash if it find a AVM1 flash file,
 832 so you can get both handled as free software.  Unfortunately,
 833 Lightspark so far only implement a small subset of AVM2, and many
 834 sites do not work yet.</p>
 835
 836 <p>A few months ago, I started looking at
 837 <a href="http://scan.coverity.com/">Coverity</a>, the static source
 838 checker used to find heaps and heaps of bugs in free software (thanks
 839 to the donation of a scanning service to free software projects by the
 840 company developing this non-free code checker), and Gnash was one of
 841 the projects I decided to check out.  Coverity is able to find lock
 842 errors, memory errors, dead code and more.  A few days ago they even
 843 extended it to also be able to find the heartbleed bug in OpenSSL.
 844 There are heaps of checks being done on the instrumented code, and the
 845 amount of bogus warnings is quite low compared to the other static
 846 code checkers I have tested over the years.</p>
 847
 848 <p>Since a few weeks ago, I've been working with the other Gnash
 849 developers squashing bugs discovered by Coverity.  I was quite happy
 850 today when I checked the current status and saw that of the 777 issues
 851 detected so far, 374 are marked as fixed.  This make me confident that
 852 the next Gnash release will be more stable and more dependable than
 853 the previous one.  Most of the reported issues were and are in the
 854 test suite, but it also found a few in the rest of the code.</p>
 855
 856 <p>If you want to help out, you find us on
 857 <a href="https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnash-dev">the
 858 gnash-dev mailing list</a> and on
 859 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#gnash">the #gnash channel on
 860 irc.freenode.net IRC server</a>.</p>
 861
 862       </div>
 863       <div class="tags">
 864
 865
 866         Tags: <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>.
 867
 868
 869       </div>
 870     </div>
 871     <div class="padding"></div>
 872
 873     <div class="entry">
 874       <div class="title">
 875         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Install_hardware_dependent_packages_using_tasksel__Isenkram_0_7_.html">Install hardware dependent packages using tasksel (Isenkram 0.7)</a>
 876       </div>
 877       <div class="date">
 878         23rd April 2014
 879       </div>
 880       <div class="body">
 881         <p>It would be nice if it was easier in Debian to get all the hardware
 882 related packages relevant for the computer installed automatically.
 883 So I implemented one, using
 884 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">my Isenkram
 885 package</a>.  To use it, install the tasksel and isenkram packages and
 886 run tasksel as user root.  You should be presented with a new option,
 887 "Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)".  When you
 888 select it, tasksel will install the packages isenkram claim is fit for
 889 the current hardware, hot pluggable or not.<p>
 890
 891 <p>The implementation is in two files, one is the tasksel menu entry
 892 description, and the other is the script used to extract the list of
 893 packages to install.  The first part is in
 894 <tt>/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc</tt> and look like
 895 this:</p>
 896
 897 <p><blockquote><pre>
 898 Task: isenkram
 899 Section: hardware
 900 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
 901  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
 902  proposed.
 903 Test-new-install: mark show
 904 Relevance: 8
 905 Packages: for-current-hardware
 906 </pre></blockquote></p>
 907
 908 <p>The second part is in
 909 <tt>/usr/lib/tasksel/packages/for-current-hardware</tt> and look like
 910 this:</p>
 911
 912 <p><blockquote><pre>
 913 #!/bin/sh
 914 #
 915 (
 916     isenkram-lookup
 917     isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
 918 ) | sort -u
 919 </pre></blockquote></p>
 920
 921 <p>All in all, a very short and simple implementation making it
 922 trivial to install the hardware dependent package we all may want to
 923 have installed on our machines.  I've not been able to find a way to
 924 get tasksel to tell you exactly which packages it plan to install
 925 before doing the installation.  So if you are curious or careful,
 926 check the output from the isenkram-* command line tools first.</p>
 927
 928 <p>The information about which packages are handling which hardware is
 929 fetched either from the isenkram package itself in
 930 /usr/share/isenkram/, from git.debian.org or from the APT package
 931 database (using the Modaliases header).  The APT package database
 932 parsing have caused a nasty resource leak in the isenkram daemon (bugs
 933 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/719837">#719837</a> and
 934 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/730704">#730704</a>).  The cause is in
 935 the python-apt code (bug
 936 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/745487">#745487</a>), but using a
 937 workaround I was able to get rid of the file descriptor leak and
 938 reduce the memory leak from ~30 MiB per hardware detection down to
 939 around 2 MiB per hardware detection.  It should make the desktop
 940 daemon a lot more useful.  The fix is in version 0.7 uploaded to
 941 unstable today.</p>
 942
 943 <p>I believe the current way of mapping hardware to packages in
 944 Isenkram is is a good draft, but in the future I expect isenkram to
 945 use the AppStream data source for this.  A proposal for getting proper
 946 AppStream support into Debian is floating around as
 947 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">DEP-11</a>, and
 948 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/SummerOfCode2014/Projects#SummerOfCode2014.2FProjects.2FAppStreamDEP11Implementation.AppStream.2FDEP-11_for_the_Debian_Archive">GSoC
 949 project</a> will take place this summer to improve the situation.  I
 950 look forward to seeing the result, and welcome patches for isenkram to
 951 start using the information when it is ready.</p>
 952
 953 <p>If you want your package to map to some specific hardware, either
 954 add a "Xb-Modaliases" header to your control file like I did in
 955 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">the pymissile
 956 package</a> or submit a bug report with the details to the isenkram
 957 package.  See also
 958 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">all my
 959 blog posts tagged isenkram</a> for details on the notation.  I expect
 960 the information will be migrated to AppStream eventually, but for the
 961 moment I got no better place to store it.</p>
 962
 963       </div>
 964       <div class="tags">
 965
 966
 967         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>.
 968
 969
 970       </div>
 971     </div>
 972     <div class="padding"></div>
 973
 974     <div class="entry">
 975       <div class="title">
 976         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/FreedomBox_milestone___all_packages_now_in_Debian_Sid.html">FreedomBox milestone - all packages now in Debian Sid</a>
 977       </div>
 978       <div class="date">
 979         15th April 2014
 980       </div>
 981       <div class="body">
 982         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
 983 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware to make
 984 it easy for non-technical people to host their data and communication
 985 at home, and being able to communicate with their friends and family
 986 encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It is still going strong, and
 987 today a major mile stone was reached.</p>
 988
 989 <p>Today, the last of the packages currently used by the project to
 990 created the system images were accepted into Debian Unstable.  It was
 991 the freedombox-setup package, which is used to configure the images
 992 during build and on the first boot.  Now all one need to get going is
 993 the build code from the freedom-maker git repository and packages from
 994 Debian.  And once the freedombox-setup package enter testing, we can
 995 build everything directly from Debian. :)</p>
 996
 997 <p>Some key packages used by Freedombox are
 998 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>,
 999 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/plinth">plinth</a>,
1000 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pagekite">pagekite</a>,
1001 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/tor">tor</a>,
1002 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>,
1003 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/owncloud">owncloud</a> and
1004 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/dnsmasq">dnsmasq</a>.  There
1005 are plans to integrate more packages into the setup.  User
1006 documentation is maintained on the Debian wiki.  Please
1007 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/Manual/Jessie">check out
1008 the manual</a> and help us improve it.</p>
1009
1010 <p>To test for yourself and create boot images with the FreedomBox
1011 setup, run this on a Debian machine using a user with sudo rights to
1012 become root:</p>
1013
1014 <p><pre>
1015 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
1016   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
1017   u-boot-tools
1018 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
1019   freedom-maker
1020 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
1021 </pre></p>
1022
1023 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
1024 devices.  See the README in the freedom-maker git repo for more
1025 details on the build.  If you do not want all three images, trim the
1026 make line.  Note that the virtualbox-image target is not really
1027 virtualbox specific.  It create a x86 image usable in kvm, qemu,
1028 vmware and any other x86 virtual machine environment.  You might need
1029 the version of vmdebootstrap in Jessie to get the build working, as it
1030 include fixes for a race condition with kpartx.</p>
1031
1032 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
1033 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
1034 the preseed values:</p>
1035
1036 <p><pre>
1037 url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
1038 </pre></p>
1039
1040 <p>I have not tested it myself the last few weeks, so I do not know if
1041 it still work.</p>
1042
1043 <p>If you wonder how to help, one task you could look at is using
1044 systemd as the boot system.  It will become the default for Linux in
1045 Jessie, so we need to make sure it is usable on the Freedombox.  I did
1046 a simple test a few weeks ago, and noticed dnsmasq failed to start
1047 during boot when using systemd.  I suspect there are other problems
1048 too. :) To detect problems, there is a test suite included, which can
1049 be run from the plinth web interface.</p>
1050
1051 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
1052 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
1053 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
1054 irc.debian.org)</a> and
1055 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
1056 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
1057
1058       </div>
1059       <div class="tags">
1060
1061
1062         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/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</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/S3QL__a_locally_mounted_cloud_file_system___nice_free_software.html">S3QL, a locally mounted cloud file system - nice free software</a>
1072       </div>
1073       <div class="date">
1074          9th April 2014
1075       </div>
1076       <div class="body">
1077         <p>For a while now, I have been looking for a sensible offsite backup
1078 solution for use at home.  My requirements are simple, it must be
1079 cheap and locally encrypted (in other words, I keep the encryption
1080 keys, the storage provider do not have access to my private files).
1081 One idea me and my friends had many years ago, before the cloud
1082 storage providers showed up, was to use Google mail as storage,
1083 writing a Linux block device storing blocks as emails in the mail
1084 service provided by Google, and thus get heaps of free space.  On top
1085 of this one can add encryption, RAID and volume management to have
1086 lots of (fairly slow, I admit that) cheap and encrypted storage.  But
1087 I never found time to implement such system.  But the last few weeks I
1088 have looked at a system called
1089 <a href="https://bitbucket.org/nikratio/s3ql/">S3QL</a>, a locally
1090 mounted network backed file system with the features I need.</p>
1091
1092 <p>S3QL is a fuse file system with a local cache and cloud storage,
1093 handling several different storage providers, any with Amazon S3,
1094 Google Drive or OpenStack API.  There are heaps of such storage
1095 providers.  S3QL can also use a local directory as storage, which
1096 combined with sshfs allow for file storage on any ssh server.  S3QL
1097 include support for encryption, compression, de-duplication, snapshots
1098 and immutable file systems, allowing me to mount the remote storage as
1099 a local mount point, look at and use the files as if they were local,
1100 while the content is stored in the cloud as well.  This allow me to
1101 have a backup that should survive fire.  The file system can not be
1102 shared between several machines at the same time, as only one can
1103 mount it at the time, but any machine with the encryption key and
1104 access to the storage service can mount it if it is unmounted.</p>
1105
1106 <p>It is simple to use.  I'm using it on Debian Wheezy, where the
1107 package is included already.  So to get started, run <tt>apt-get
1108 install s3ql</tt>.  Next, pick a storage provider.  I ended up picking
1109 Greenqloud, after reading their nice recipe on
1110 <a href="https://greenqloud.zendesk.com/entries/44611757-How-To-Use-S3QL-to-mount-a-StorageQloud-bucket-on-Debian-Wheezy">how
1111 to use S3QL with their Amazon S3 service</a>, because I trust the laws
1112 in Iceland more than those in USA when it come to keeping my personal
1113 data safe and private, and thus would rather spend money on a company
1114 in Iceland.  Another nice recipe is available from the article
1115 <a href="http://www.admin-magazine.com/HPC/Articles/HPC-Cloud-Storage">S3QL
1116 Filesystem for HPC Storage</a> by Jeff Layton in the HPC section of
1117 Admin magazine.  When the provider is picked, figure out how to get
1118 the API key needed to connect to the storage API.  With Greencloud,
1119 the key did not show up until I had added payment details to my
1120 account.</p>
1121
1122 <p>Armed with the API access details, it is time to create the file
1123 system.  First, create a new bucket in the cloud.  This bucket is the
1124 file system storage area.  I picked a bucket name reflecting the
1125 machine that was going to store data there, but any name will do.
1126 I'll refer to it as <tt>bucket-name</tt> below.  In addition, one need
1127 the API login and password, and a locally created password.  Store it
1128 all in ~root/.s3ql/authinfo2 like this:
1129
1130 <p><blockquote><pre>
1131 [s3c]
1132 storage-url: s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
1133 backend-login: API-login
1134 backend-password: API-password
1135 fs-passphrase: local-password
1136 </pre></blockquote></p>
1137
1138 <p>I create my local passphrase using <tt>pwget 50</tt> or similar,
1139 but any sensible way to create a fairly random password should do it.
1140 Armed with these details, it is now time to run mkfs, entering the API
1141 details and password to create it:</p>
1142
1143 <p><blockquote><pre>
1144 # mkdir -m 700 /var/lib/s3ql-cache
1145 # mkfs.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
1146   --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
1147 Enter backend login:
1148 Enter backend password:
1149 Before using S3QL, make sure to read the user's guide, especially
1150 the 'Important Rules to Avoid Loosing Data' section.
1151 Enter encryption password:
1152 Confirm encryption password:
1153 Generating random encryption key...
1154 Creating metadata tables...
1155 Dumping metadata...
1156 ..objects..
1157 ..blocks..
1158 ..inodes..
1159 ..inode_blocks..
1160 ..symlink_targets..
1161 ..names..
1162 ..contents..
1163 ..ext_attributes..
1164 Compressing and uploading metadata...
1165 Wrote 0.00 MB of compressed metadata.
1166 # </pre></blockquote></p>
1167
1168 <p>The next step is mounting the file system to make the storage available.
1169
1170 <p><blockquote><pre>
1171 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
1172   --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
1173 Using 4 upload threads.
1174 Downloading and decompressing metadata...
1175 Reading metadata...
1176 ..objects..
1177 ..blocks..
1178 ..inodes..
1179 ..inode_blocks..
1180 ..symlink_targets..
1181 ..names..
1182 ..contents..
1183 ..ext_attributes..
1184 Mounting filesystem...
1185 # df -h /s3ql
1186 Filesystem                              Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
1187 s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name  1.0T     0  1.0T   0% /s3ql
1188 #
1189 </pre></blockquote></p>
1190
1191 <p>The file system is now ready for use.  I use rsync to store my
1192 backups in it, and as the metadata used by rsync is downloaded at
1193 mount time, no network traffic (and storage cost) is triggered by
1194 running rsync.  To unmount, one should not use the normal umount
1195 command, as this will not flush the cache to the cloud storage, but
1196 instead running the umount.s3ql command like this:
1197
1198 <p><blockquote><pre>
1199 # umount.s3ql /s3ql
1200 #
1201 </pre></blockquote></p>
1202
1203 <p>There is a fsck command available to check the file system and
1204 correct any problems detected.  This can be used if the local server
1205 crashes while the file system is mounted, to reset the "already
1206 mounted" flag.  This is what it look like when processing a working
1207 file system:</p>
1208
1209 <p><blockquote><pre>
1210 # fsck.s3ql --force --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
1211 Using cached metadata.
1212 File system seems clean, checking anyway.
1213 Checking DB integrity...
1214 Creating temporary extra indices...
1215 Checking lost+found...
1216 Checking cached objects...
1217 Checking names (refcounts)...
1218 Checking contents (names)...
1219 Checking contents (inodes)...
1220 Checking contents (parent inodes)...
1221 Checking objects (reference counts)...
1222 Checking objects (backend)...
1223 ..processed 5000 objects so far..
1224 ..processed 10000 objects so far..
1225 ..processed 15000 objects so far..
1226 Checking objects (sizes)...
1227 Checking blocks (referenced objects)...
1228 Checking blocks (refcounts)...
1229 Checking inode-block mapping (blocks)...
1230 Checking inode-block mapping (inodes)...
1231 Checking inodes (refcounts)...
1232 Checking inodes (sizes)...
1233 Checking extended attributes (names)...
1234 Checking extended attributes (inodes)...
1235 Checking symlinks (inodes)...
1236 Checking directory reachability...
1237 Checking unix conventions...
1238 Checking referential integrity...
1239 Dropping temporary indices...
1240 Backing up old metadata...
1241 Dumping metadata...
1242 ..objects..
1243 ..blocks..
1244 ..inodes..
1245 ..inode_blocks..
1246 ..symlink_targets..
1247 ..names..
1248 ..contents..
1249 ..ext_attributes..
1250 Compressing and uploading metadata...
1251 Wrote 0.89 MB of compressed metadata.
1252 #
1253 </pre></blockquote></p>
1254
1255 <p>Thanks to the cache, working on files that fit in the cache is very
1256 quick, about the same speed as local file access.  Uploading large
1257 amount of data is to me limited by the bandwidth out of and into my
1258 house.  Uploading 685 MiB with a 100 MiB cache gave me 305 kiB/s,
1259 which is very close to my upload speed, and downloading the same
1260 Debian installation ISO gave me 610 kiB/s, close to my download speed.
1261 Both were measured using <tt>dd</tt>.  So for me, the bottleneck is my
1262 network, not the file system code.  I do not know what a good cache
1263 size would be, but suspect that the cache should e larger than your
1264 working set.</p>
1265
1266 <p>I mentioned that only one machine can mount the file system at the
1267 time.  If another machine try, it is told that the file system is
1268 busy:</p>
1269
1270 <p><blockquote><pre>
1271 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
1272   --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
1273 Using 8 upload threads.
1274 Backend reports that fs is still mounted elsewhere, aborting.
1275 #
1276 </pre></blockquote></p>
1277
1278 <p>The file content is uploaded when the cache is full, while the
1279 metadata is uploaded once every 24 hour by default.  To ensure the
1280 file system content is flushed to the cloud, one can either umount the
1281 file system, or ask S3QL to flush the cache and metadata using
1282 s3qlctrl:
1283
1284 <p><blockquote><pre>
1285 # s3qlctrl upload-meta /s3ql
1286 # s3qlctrl flushcache /s3ql
1287 #
1288 </pre></blockquote></p>
1289
1290 <p>If you are curious about how much space your data uses in the
1291 cloud, and how much compression and deduplication cut down on the
1292 storage usage, you can use s3qlstat on the mounted file system to get
1293 a report:</p>
1294
1295 <p><blockquote><pre>
1296 # s3qlstat /s3ql
1297 Directory entries:    9141
1298 Inodes:               9143
1299 Data blocks:          8851
1300 Total data size:      22049.38 MB
1301 After de-duplication: 21955.46 MB (99.57% of total)
1302 After compression:    21877.28 MB (99.22% of total, 99.64% of de-duplicated)
1303 Database size:        2.39 MB (uncompressed)
1304 (some values do not take into account not-yet-uploaded dirty blocks in cache)
1305 #
1306 </pre></blockquote></p>
1307
1308 <p>I mentioned earlier that there are several possible suppliers of
1309 storage.  I did not try to locate them all, but am aware of at least
1310 <a href="https://www.greenqloud.com/">Greenqloud</a>,
1311 <a href="http://drive.google.com/">Google Drive</a>,
1312 <a href="http://aws.amazon.com/s3/">Amazon S3 web serivces</a>,
1313 <a href="http://www.rackspace.com/">Rackspace</a> and
1314 <a href="http://crowncloud.net/">Crowncloud</A>.  The latter even
1315 accept payment in Bitcoin.  Pick one that suit your need.  Some of
1316 them provide several GiB of free storage, but the prize models are
1317 quite different and you will have to figure out what suits you
1318 best.</p>
1319
1320 <p>While researching this blog post, I had a look at research papers
1321 and posters discussing the S3QL file system.  There are several, which
1322 told me that the file system is getting a critical check by the
1323 science community and increased my confidence in using it.  One nice
1324 poster is titled
1325 "<a href="http://www.lanl.gov/orgs/adtsc/publications/science_highlights_2013/docs/pg68_69.pdf">An
1326 Innovative Parallel Cloud Storage System using OpenStack’s SwiftObject
1327 Store and Transformative Parallel I/O Approach</a>" by Hsing-Bung
1328 Chen, Benjamin McClelland, David Sherrill, Alfred Torrez, Parks Fields
1329 and Pamela Smith.  Please  have a look.</p>
1330
1331 <p>Given my problems with different file systems earlier, I decided to
1332 check out the mounted S3QL file system to see if it would be usable as
1333 a home directory (in other word, that it provided POSIX semantics when
1334 it come to locking and umask handling etc).  Running
1335 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">my
1336 test code to check file system semantics</a>, I was happy to discover that
1337 no error was found.  So the file system can be used for home
1338 directories, if one chooses to do so.</p>
1339
1340 <p>If you do not want a locally file system, and want something that
1341 work without the Linux fuse file system, I would like to mention the
1342 <a href="http://www.tarsnap.com/">Tarsnap service</a>, which also
1343 provide locally encrypted backup using a command line client.  It have
1344 a nicer access control system, where one can split out read and write
1345 access, allowing some systems to write to the backup and others to
1346 only read from it.</p>
1347
1348 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1349 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1350 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1351
1352       </div>
1353       <div class="tags">
1354
1355
1356         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/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
1357
1358
1359       </div>
1360     </div>
1361     <div class="padding"></div>
1362
1363     <div class="entry">
1364       <div class="title">
1365         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ReactOS_Windows_clone___nice_free_software.html">ReactOS Windows clone - nice free software</a>
1366       </div>
1367       <div class="date">
1368          1st April 2014
1369       </div>
1370       <div class="body">
1371         <p>Microsoft have announced that Windows XP reaches its end of life
1372 2014-04-08, in 7 days.  But there are heaps of machines still running
1373 Windows XP, and depending on Windows XP to run their applications, and
1374 upgrading will be expensive, both when it comes to money and when it
1375 comes to the amount of effort needed to migrate from Windows XP to a
1376 new operating system.  Some obvious options (buy new a Windows
1377 machine, buy a MacOSX machine, install Linux on the existing machine)
1378 are already well known and covered elsewhere.  Most of them involve
1379 leaving the user applications installed on Windows XP behind and
1380 trying out replacements or updated versions. In this blog post I want
1381 to mention one strange bird that allow people to keep the hardware and
1382 the existing Windows XP applications and run them on a free software
1383 operating system that is Windows XP compatible.</p>
1384
1385 <p><a href="http://www.reactos.org/">ReactOS</a> is a free software
1386 operating system (GNU GPL licensed) working on providing a operating
1387 system that is binary compatible with Windows, able to run windows
1388 programs directly and to use Windows drivers for hardware directly.
1389 The project goal is for Windows user to keep their existing machines,
1390 drivers and software, and gain the advantages from user a operating
1391 system without usage limitations caused by non-free licensing.  It is
1392 a Windows clone running directly on the hardware, so quite different
1393 from the approach taken by <a href="http://www.winehq.org/">the Wine
1394 project</a>, which make it possible to run Windows binaries on
1395 Linux.</p>
1396
1397 <p>The ReactOS project share code with the Wine project, so most
1398 shared libraries available on Windows are already implemented already.
1399 There is also a software manager like the one we are used to on Linux,
1400 allowing the user to install free software applications with a simple
1401 click directly from the Internet.  Check out the
1402 <a href="http://www.reactos.org/screenshots">screen shots on the
1403 project web site</a> for an idea what it look like (it looks just like
1404 Windows before metro).</p>
1405
1406 <p>I do not use ReactOS myself, preferring Linux and Unix like
1407 operating systems.  I've tested it, and it work fine in a virt-manager
1408 virtual machine.  The browser, minesweeper, notepad etc is working
1409 fine as far as I can tell.  Unfortunately, my main test application
1410 is the software included on a CD with the Lego Mindstorms NXT, which
1411 seem to install just fine from CD but fail to leave any binaries on
1412 the disk after the installation.  So no luck with that test software.
1413 No idea why, but hope someone else figure out and fix the problem.
1414 I've tried the ReactOS Live ISO on a physical machine, and it seemed
1415 to work just fine.  If you like Windows and want to keep running your
1416 old Windows binaries, check it out by
1417 <a href="http://www.reactos.org/download">downloading</a> the
1418 installation CD, the live CD or the preinstalled virtual machine
1419 image.</p>
1420
1421       </div>
1422       <div class="tags">
1423
1424
1425         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reactos">reactos</a>.
1426
1427
1428       </div>
1429     </div>
1430     <div class="padding"></div>
1431
1432     <div class="entry">
1433       <div class="title">
1434         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Roger_Marsal.html">Debian Edu interview: Roger Marsal</a>
1435       </div>
1436       <div class="date">
1437         30th March 2014
1438       </div>
1439       <div class="body">
1440         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
1441 keep gaining new users.  Some weeks ago, a person showed up on IRC,
1442 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/#debian-edu">#debian-edu</a>, with a
1443 wish to contribute, and I managed to get a interview with this great
1444 contributor Roger Marsal to learn more about his background.</p>
1445
1446 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
1447
1448 <p>My name is Roger Marsal, I'm 27 years old (1986 generation) and I
1449 live in Barcelona, Spain. I've got a strong business background and I
1450 work as a patrimony manager and as a real estate agent.  Additionally,
1451 I've co-founded a British based tech company that is nowadays on the
1452 last development phase of a new social networking concept.</p>
1453
1454 <p>I'm a Linux enthusiast that started its journey with Ubuntu four years
1455 ago and have recently switched to Debian seeking rock solid stability
1456 and as a necessary step to gain expertise.</p>
1457
1458 <p>In a nutshell, I spend my days working and learning as much as I
1459 can to face both my job, entrepreneur project and feed my Linux
1460 hunger.</p>
1461
1462 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
1463 project?</strong></p>
1464
1465 <p>I discovered the <a href="http://www.ltsp.org/">LTSP</a> advantages
1466 with "Ubuntu 12.04 alternate install" and after a year of use I
1467 started looking for an alternative.  Even though I highly value and
1468 respect the Ubuntu project, I thought it was necessary for me to
1469 change to a more robust and stable alternative.  As far as I was using
1470 Debian on my personal laptop I thought it would be fine to install
1471 Debian and configure an LTSP server myself.  Surprised, I discovered
1472 that the Debian project also supported a kind of Edubuntu equivalent,
1473 and after having some pain I obtained a Debian Edu network up and
1474 running.  I just loved it.</p>
1475
1476 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
1477 Edu?</strong></p>
1478
1479 <p>I found a main advantage in that, once you know "the tips and
1480 tricks", a new installation just works out of the box. It's the most
1481 complete alternative I've found to create an LTSP network. All the
1482 other distributions seems to be made of plastic, Debian Edu seems to
1483 be made of steel.</p>
1484
1485 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
1486 Edu?</strong></p>
1487
1488 <p>I found two main disadvantages.</p>
1489
1490 <p>I'm not an expert but I've got notions and I had to spent a considerable
1491 amount of time trying to bring up a standard network topology. I'm quite
1492 stubborn and I just worked until I did but I'm sure many people with few
1493 resources (not big schools, but academies for example) would have switched
1494 or dropped.</p>
1495
1496 <p>It's amazing how such a complex system like Debian Edu has achieved
1497 this out-of-the-box state. Even though tweaking without breaking gets
1498 more difficult, as more factors have to be considered. This can
1499 discourage many people too.</p>
1500
1501 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
1502
1503 <p>I use Debian, Firefox, Okular, Inkscape, LibreOffice and
1504 Virtualbox.</p>
1505
1506
1507 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
1508 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
1509
1510 <p>I don't think there is a need for a particular strategy. The free
1511 attribute in both "freedom" and "no price" meanings is what will
1512 really bring free software to schools. In my experience I can think of
1513 the <a href="http://www.r-project.org/">"R" statistical language</a>; a
1514 few years a ago was an extremely nerd tool for university people.
1515 Today it's being increasingly used to teach statistics at many
1516 different level of studies.  I believe free and open software will
1517 increasingly gain popularity, but I'm sure schools will be one of the
1518 first scenarios where this will happen.</p>
1519
1520       </div>
1521       <div class="tags">
1522
1523
1524         Tags: <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/intervju">intervju</a>.
1525
1526
1527       </div>
1528     </div>
1529     <div class="padding"></div>
1530
1531     <div class="entry">
1532       <div class="title">
1533         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Public_Trusted_Timestamping_services_for_everyone.html">Public Trusted Timestamping services for everyone</a>
1534       </div>
1535       <div class="date">
1536         25th March 2014
1537       </div>
1538       <div class="body">
1539         <p>Did you ever need to store logs or other files in a way that would
1540 allow it to be used as evidence in court, and needed a way to
1541 demonstrate without reasonable doubt that the file had not been
1542 changed since it was created?  Or, did you ever need to document that
1543 a given document was received at some point in time, like some
1544 archived document or the answer to an exam, and not changed after it
1545 was received?  The problem in these settings is to remove the need to
1546 trust yourself and your computers, while still being able to prove
1547 that a file is the same as it was at some given time in the past.</p>
1548
1549 <p>A solution to these problems is to have a trusted third party
1550 "stamp" the document and verify that at some given time the document
1551 looked a given way.  Such
1552 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notarius">notarius</a> service
1553 have been around for thousands of years, and its digital equivalent is
1554 called a
1555 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_timestamping">trusted
1556 timestamping service</a>.  <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">The Internet
1557 Engineering Task Force</a> standardised how such service could work a
1558 few years ago as <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3161">RFC
1559 3161</a>.  The mechanism is simple.  Create a hash of the file in
1560 question, send it to a trusted third party which add a time stamp to
1561 the hash and sign the result with its private key, and send back the
1562 signed hash + timestamp.  Both email, FTP and HTTP can be used to
1563 request such signature, depending on what is provided by the service
1564 used. Anyone with the document and the signature can then verify that
1565 the document matches the signature by creating their own hash and
1566 checking the signature using the trusted third party public key.
1567 There are several commercial services around providing such
1568 timestamping.  A quick search for
1569 "<a href="https://duckduckgo.com/?q=rfc+3161+service">rfc 3161
1570 service</a>" pointed me to at least
1571 <a href="https://www.digistamp.com/technical/how-a-digital-time-stamp-works/">DigiStamp</a>,
1572 <a href="http://www.quovadisglobal.co.uk/CertificateServices/SigningServices/TimeStamp.aspx">Quo
1573 Vadis</a>,
1574 <a href="https://www.globalsign.com/timestamp-service/">Global Sign</a>
1575 and <a href="http://www.globaltrustfinder.com/TSADefault.aspx">Global
1576 Trust Finder</a>.  The system work as long as the private key of the
1577 trusted third party is not compromised.</p>
1578
1579 <p>But as far as I can tell, there are very few public trusted
1580 timestamp services available for everyone.  I've been looking for one
1581 for a while now. But yesterday I found one over at
1582 <a href="https://www.pki.dfn.de/zeitstempeldienst/">Deutches
1583 Forschungsnetz</a> mentioned in
1584 <a href="http://www.d-mueller.de/blog/dealing-with-trusted-timestamps-in-php-rfc-3161/">a
1585 blog by David Müller</a>.  I then found
1586 <a href="http://www.rz.uni-greifswald.de/support/dfn-pki-zertifikate/zeitstempeldienst.html">a
1587 good recipe on how to use the service</a> over at the University of
1588 Greifswald.</p>
1589
1590 <p><a href="http://www.openssl.org/">The OpenSSL library</a> contain
1591 both server and tools to use and set up your own signing service.  See
1592 the ts(1SSL), tsget(1SSL) manual pages for more details.  The
1593 following shell script demonstrate how to extract a signed timestamp
1594 for any file on the disk in a Debian environment:</p>
1595
1596 <p><blockquote><pre>
1597 #!/bin/sh
1598 set -e
1599 url="http://zeitstempel.dfn.de"
1600 caurl="https://pki.pca.dfn.de/global-services-ca/pub/cacert/chain.txt"
1601 reqfile=$(mktemp -t tmp.XXXXXXXXXX.tsq)
1602 resfile=$(mktemp -t tmp.XXXXXXXXXX.tsr)
1603 cafile=chain.txt
1604 if [ ! -f $cafile ] ; then
1605     wget -O $cafile "$caurl"
1606 fi
1607 openssl ts -query -data "$1" -cert | tee "$reqfile" \
1608     | /usr/lib/ssl/misc/tsget -h "$url" -o "$resfile"
1609 openssl ts -reply -in "$resfile" -text 1>&2
1610 openssl ts -verify -data "$1" -in "$resfile" -CAfile "$cafile" 1>&2
1611 base64 < "$resfile"
1612 rm "$reqfile" "$resfile"
1613 </pre></blockquote></p>
1614
1615 <p>The argument to the script is the file to timestamp, and the output
1616 is a base64 encoded version of the signature to STDOUT and details
1617 about the signature to STDERR.  Note that due to
1618 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=742553">a bug
1619 in the tsget script</a>, you might need to modify the included script
1620 and remove the last line.  Or just write your own HTTP uploader using
1621 curl. :) Now you too can prove and verify that files have not been
1622 changed.</p>
1623
1624 <p>But the Internet need more public trusted timestamp services.
1625 Perhaps something for <a href="http://www.uninett.no/">Uninett</a> or
1626 my work place the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a>
1627 to set up?</p>
1628
1629       </div>
1630       <div class="tags">
1631
1632
1633         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
1634
1635
1636       </div>
1637     </div>
1638     <div class="padding"></div>
1639
1640     <div class="entry">
1641       <div class="title">
1642         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Video_DVD_reader_library___python_dvdvideo___nice_free_software.html">Video DVD reader library / python-dvdvideo - nice free software</a>
1643       </div>
1644       <div class="date">
1645         21st March 2014
1646       </div>
1647       <div class="body">
1648         <p>Keeping your DVD collection safe from scratches and curious
1649 children fingers while still having it available when you want to see a
1650 movie is not straight forward.  My preferred method at the moment is
1651 to store a full copy of the ISO on a hard drive, and use VLC, Popcorn
1652 Hour or other useful players to view the resulting file.  This way the
1653 subtitles and bonus material are still available and using the ISO is
1654 just like inserting the original DVD record in the DVD player.</p>
1655
1656 <p>Earlier I used dd for taking security copies, but it do not handle
1657 DVDs giving read errors (which are quite a few of them).  I've also
1658 tried using
1659 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ripping_problematic_DVDs_using_dvdbackup_and_genisoimage.html">dvdbackup
1660 and genisoimage</a>, but these days I use the marvellous python library
1661 and program
1662 <a href="http://bblank.thinkmo.de/blog/new-software-python-dvdvideo">python-dvdvideo</a>
1663 written by Bastian Blank.  It is
1664 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/python-dvdvideo.html">in Debian
1665 already</a> and the binary package name is python3-dvdvideo. Instead
1666 of trying to read every block from the DVD, it parses the file
1667 structure and figure out which block on the DVD is actually in used,
1668 and only read those blocks from the DVD.  This work surprisingly well,
1669 and I have been able to almost backup my entire DVD collection using
1670 this method.</p>
1671
1672 <p>So far, python-dvdvideo have failed on between 10 and
1673 20 DVDs, which is a small fraction of my collection.  The most common
1674 problem is
1675 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=720831">DVDs
1676 using UTF-16 instead of UTF-8 characters</a>, which according to
1677 Bastian is against the DVD specification (and seem to cause some
1678 players to fail too).  A rarer problem is what seem to be inconsistent
1679 DVD structures, as the python library
1680 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=723079">claim
1681 there is a overlap between objects</a>.  An equally rare problem claim
1682 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=741878">some
1683 value is out of range</a>.  No idea what is going on there.  I wish I
1684 knew enough about the DVD format to fix these, to ensure my movie
1685 collection will stay with me in the future.</p>
1686
1687 <p>So, if you need to keep your DVDs safe, back them up using
1688 python-dvdvideo. :)</p>
1689
1690       </div>
1691       <div class="tags">
1692
1693
1694         Tags: <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/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
1695
1696
1697       </div>
1698     </div>
1699     <div class="padding"></div>
1700
1701     <div class="entry">
1702       <div class="title">
1703         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Freedombox_on_Dreamplug__Raspberry_Pi_and_virtual_x86_machine.html">Freedombox on Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and virtual x86 machine</a>
1704       </div>
1705       <div class="date">
1706         14th March 2014
1707       </div>
1708       <div class="body">
1709         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
1710 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware for
1711 making it easy for non-technical people to host their data and
1712 communication at home, and being able to communicate with their
1713 friends and family encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It has been
1714 going on for a while, and is slowly progressing towards a new test
1715 release (0.2).</p>
1716
1717 <p>And what day could be better than the Pi day to announce that the
1718 new version will provide "hard drive" / SD card / USB stick images for
1719 Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and VirtualBox (or any other virtualization
1720 system), and can also be installed using a Debian installer preseed
1721 file.  The Debian based Freedombox is now based on Debian Jessie,
1722 where most of the needed packages used are already present.  Only one,
1723 the freedombox-setup package, is missing.  To try to build your own
1724 boot image to test the current status, fetch the freedom-maker scripts
1725 and build using
1726 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/vmdebootstrap">vmdebootstrap</a>
1727 with a user with sudo access to become root:
1728
1729 <pre>
1730 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
1731   freedom-maker
1732 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
1733   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
1734   u-boot-tools
1735 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
1736 </pre>
1737
1738 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
1739 devices.  See the README for more details on the build. If you do not
1740 want all three images, trim the make line.  But note that thanks to <a
1741 href="https://bugs.debian.org/741407">a race condition in
1742 vmdebootstrap</a>, the build might fail without the patch to the
1743 kpartx call.</p>
1744
1745 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
1746 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
1747 the preseed values:</p>
1748
1749 <pre>
1750 url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
1751 </pre>
1752
1753 <p>But note that due to <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/740673">a
1754 recently introduced bug in apt in Jessie</a>, the installer will
1755 currently hang while setting up APT sources.  Killing the
1756 '<tt>apt-cdrom ident</tt>' process when it hang a few times during the
1757 installation will get the installation going.  This affect all
1758 installations in Jessie, and I expect it will be fixed soon.</p>
1759
1760 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
1761 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
1762 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
1763 irc.debian.org)</a> and
1764 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
1765 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
1766
1767       </div>
1768       <div class="tags">
1769
1770
1771         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/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
1772
1773
1774       </div>
1775     </div>
1776     <div class="padding"></div>
1777
1778     <div class="entry">
1779       <div class="title">
1780         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_add_extra_storage_servers_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux.html">How to add extra storage servers in Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
1781       </div>
1782       <div class="date">
1783         12th March 2014
1784       </div>
1785       <div class="body">
1786         <p>On larger sites, it is useful to use a dedicated storage server for
1787 storing user home directories and data.  The design for handling this
1788 in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>, is
1789 to update the automount rules in LDAP and let the automount daemon on
1790 the clients take care of the rest.  I was reminded about the need to
1791 document this better when one of the customers of
1792 <a href="http://www.slxdrift.no/">Skolelinux Drift AS</a>, where I am
1793 on the board of directors, asked about how to do this.  The steps to
1794 get this working are the following:</p>
1795
1796 <p><ol>
1797
1798 <li>Add new storage server in DNS.  I use nas-server.intern as the
1799 example host here.</li>
1800
1801 <li>Add automoun LDAP information about this server in LDAP, to allow
1802 all clients to automatically mount it on reqeust.</li>
1803
1804 <li>Add the relevant entries in tjener.intern:/etc/fstab, because
1805 tjener.intern do not use automount to avoid mounting loops.</li>
1806
1807 </ol></p>
1808
1809 <p>DNS entries are added in GOsa², and not described here.  Follow the
1810 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/GettingStarted">instructions
1811 in the manual</a> (Machine Management with GOsa² in section Getting
1812 started).</p>
1813
1814 <p>Ensure that the NFS export points on the server are exported to the
1815 relevant subnets or machines:</p>
1816
1817 <p><blockquote><pre>
1818 root@tjener:~# showmount -e nas-server
1819 Export list for nas-server:
1820 /storage         10.0.0.0/8
1821 root@tjener:~#
1822 </pre></blockquote></p>
1823
1824 <p>Here everything on the backbone network is granted access to the
1825 /storage export.  With NFSv3 it is slightly better to limit it to
1826 netgroup membership or single IP addresses to have some limits on the
1827 NFS access.</p>
1828
1829 <p>The next step is to update LDAP.  This can not be done using GOsa²,
1830 because it lack a module for automount.  Instead, use ldapvi and add
1831 the required LDAP objects using an editor.</p>
1832
1833 <p><blockquote><pre>
1834 ldapvi --ldap-conf -ZD '(cn=admin)' -b ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
1835 </pre></blockquote></p>
1836
1837 <p>When the editor show up, add the following LDAP objects at the
1838 bottom of the document.  The "/&" part in the last LDAP object is a
1839 wild card matching everything the nas-server exports, removing the
1840 need to list individual mount points in LDAP.</p>
1841
1842 <p><blockquote><pre>
1843 add cn=nas-server,ou=auto.skole,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
1844 objectClass: automount
1845 cn: nas-server
1846 automountInformation: -fstype=autofs --timeout=60 ldap:ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
1847
1848 add ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
1849 objectClass: top
1850 objectClass: automountMap
1851 ou: auto.nas-server
1852
1853 add cn=/,ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
1854 objectClass: automount
1855 cn: /
1856 automountInformation: -fstype=nfs,tcp,rsize=32768,wsize=32768,rw,intr,hard,nodev,nosuid,noatime nas-server.intern:/&
1857 </pre></blockquote></p>
1858
1859 <p>The last step to remember is to mount the relevant mount points in
1860 tjener.intern by adding them to /etc/fstab, creating the mount
1861 directories using mkdir and running "mount -a" to mount them.</p>
1862
1863 <p>When this is done, your users should be able to access the files on
1864 the storage server directly by just visiting the
1865 /tjener/nas-server/storage/ directory using any application on any
1866 workstation, LTSP client or LTSP server.</p>
1867
1868       </div>
1869       <div class="tags">
1870
1871
1872         Tags: <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>.
1873
1874
1875       </div>
1876     </div>
1877     <div class="padding"></div>
1878
1879     <div class="entry">
1880       <div class="title">
1881         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_home_and_release_1_0_for_netgroup_and_innetgr__aka_ng_utils_.html">New home and release 1.0 for netgroup and innetgr (aka ng-utils)</a>
1882       </div>
1883       <div class="date">
1884         22nd February 2014
1885       </div>
1886       <div class="body">
1887         <p>Many years ago, I wrote a GPL licensed version of the netgroup and
1888 innetgr tools, because I needed them in
1889 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>.  I called the project
1890 ng-utils, and it has served me well.  I placed the project under the
1891 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/">Hungry Programmer</a> umbrella, and it was maintained in our CVS
1892 repository.  But many years ago, the CVS repository was dropped (lost,
1893 not migrated to new hardware, not sure), and the project have lacked a
1894 proper home since then.</p>
1895
1896 <p>Last summer, I had a look at the package and made a new release
1897 fixing a irritating crash bug, but was unable to store the changes in
1898 a proper source control system.  I applied for a project on
1899 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/">Alioth</a>, but did not have time
1900 to follow up on it.  Until today. :)</p>
1901
1902 <p>After many hours of cleaning and migration, the ng-utils project
1903 now have a new home, and a git repository with the highlight of the
1904 history of the project.  I published all release tarballs and imported
1905 them into the git repository.  As the project is really stable and not
1906 expected to gain new features any time soon, I decided to make a new
1907 release and call it 1.0.  Visit the new project home on
1908 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/">https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/</a>
1909 if you want to check it out.  The new version is also uploaded into
1910 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/ng-utils.html">Debian Unstable</a>.</p>
1911
1912       </div>
1913       <div class="tags">
1914
1915
1916         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>.
1917
1918
1919       </div>
1920     </div>
1921     <div class="padding"></div>
1922
1923     <div class="entry">
1924       <div class="title">
1925         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_sysvinit_from_experimental_in_Debian_Hurd.html">Testing sysvinit from experimental in Debian Hurd</a>
1926       </div>
1927       <div class="date">
1928          3rd February 2014
1929       </div>
1930       <div class="body">
1931         <p>A few days ago I decided to try to help the Hurd people to get
1932 their changes into sysvinit, to allow them to use the normal sysvinit
1933 boot system instead of their old one.  This follow up on the
1934 <a href="https://teythoon.cryptobitch.de//categories/gsoc.html">great
1935 Google Summer of Code work</a> done last summer by Justus Winter to
1936 get Debian on Hurd working more like Debian on Linux.  To get started,
1937 I downloaded a prebuilt hard disk image from
1938 <a href="http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian-cd/hurd-i386/current/debian-hurd.img.tar.gz">http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian-cd/hurd-i386/current/debian-hurd.img.tar.gz</a>,
1939 and started it using virt-manager.</p>
1940
1941 <p>The first think I had to do after logging in (root without any
1942 password) was to get the network operational.  I followed
1943 <a href="https://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/hurd-install">the
1944 instructions on the Debian GNU/Hurd ports page</a> and ran these
1945 commands as root to get the machine to accept a IP address from the
1946 kvm internal DHCP server:</p>
1947
1948 <p><blockquote><pre>
1949 settrans -fgap /dev/netdde /hurd/netdde
1950 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[p]finet/ { print $2}')
1951 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[d]evnode/ { print $2}')
1952 dhclient /dev/eth0
1953 </pre></blockquote></p>
1954
1955 <p>After this, the machine had internet connectivity, and I could
1956 upgrade it and install the sysvinit packages from experimental and
1957 enable it as the default boot system in Hurd.</p>
1958
1959 <p>But before I did that, I set a password on the root user, as ssh is
1960 running on the machine it for ssh login to work a password need to be
1961 set.  Also, note that a bug somewhere in openssh on Hurd block
1962 compression from working.  Remember to turn that off on the client
1963 side.</p>
1964
1965 <p>Run these commands as root to upgrade and test the new sysvinit
1966 stuff:</p>
1967
1968 <p><blockquote><pre>
1969 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/experimental.list &lt;&lt;EOF
1970 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ experimental main
1971 EOF
1972 apt-get update
1973 apt-get dist-upgrade
1974 apt-get install -t experimental initscripts sysv-rc sysvinit \
1975     sysvinit-core sysvinit-utils
1976 update-alternatives --config runsystem
1977 </pre></blockquote></p>
1978
1979 <p>To reboot after switching boot system, you have to use
1980 <tt>reboot-hurd</tt> instead of just <tt>reboot</tt>, as there is not
1981 yet a sysvinit process able to receive the signals from the normal
1982 'reboot' command.  After switching to sysvinit as the boot system,
1983 upgrading every package and rebooting, the network come up with DHCP
1984 after boot as it should, and the settrans/pkill hack mentioned at the
1985 start is no longer needed.  But for some strange reason, there are no
1986 longer any login prompt in the virtual console, so I logged in using
1987 ssh instead.
1988
1989 <p>Note that there are some race conditions in Hurd making the boot
1990 fail some times.  No idea what the cause is, but hope the Hurd porters
1991 figure it out.  At least Justus said on IRC (#debian-hurd on
1992 irc.debian.org) that they are aware of the problem.  A way to reduce
1993 the impact is to upgrade to the Hurd packages built by Justus by
1994 adding this repository to the machine:</p>
1995
1996 <p><blockquote><pre>
1997 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hurd-ci.list &lt;&lt;EOF
1998 deb http://darnassus.sceen.net/~teythoon/hurd-ci/ sid main
1999 EOF
2000 </pre></blockquote></p>
2001
2002 <p>At the moment the prebuilt virtual machine get some packages from
2003 http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian, because some of the packages in
2004 unstable do not yet include the required patches that are lingering in
2005 BTS.  This is the completely list of "unofficial" packages installed:</p>
2006
2007 <p><blockquote><pre>
2008 # aptitude search '?narrow(?version(CURRENT),?origin(Debian Ports))'
2009 i   emacs                   - GNU Emacs editor (metapackage)
2010 i   gdb                     - GNU Debugger
2011 i   hurd-recommended        - Miscellaneous translators
2012 i   isc-dhcp-client         - ISC DHCP client
2013 i   isc-dhcp-common         - common files used by all the isc-dhcp* packages
2014 i   libc-bin                - Embedded GNU C Library: Binaries
2015 i   libc-dev-bin            - Embedded GNU C Library: Development binaries
2016 i   libc0.3                 - Embedded GNU C Library: Shared libraries
2017 i A libc0.3-dbg             - Embedded GNU C Library: detached debugging symbols
2018 i   libc0.3-dev             - Embedded GNU C Library: Development Libraries and Hea
2019 i   multiarch-support       - Transitional package to ensure multiarch compatibilit
2020 i A x11-common              - X Window System (X.Org) infrastructure
2021 i   xorg                    - X.Org X Window System
2022 i A xserver-xorg            - X.Org X server
2023 i A xserver-xorg-input-all  - X.Org X server -- input driver metapackage
2024 #
2025 </pre></blockquote></p>
2026
2027 <p>All in all, testing hurd has been an interesting experience. :)
2028 X.org did not work out of the box and I never took the time to follow
2029 the porters instructions to fix it.  This time I was interested in the
2030 command line stuff.<p>
2031
2032       </div>
2033       <div class="tags">
2034
2035
2036         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>.
2037
2038
2039       </div>
2040     </div>
2041     <div class="padding"></div>
2042
2043     <div class="entry">
2044       <div class="title">
2045         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_fist_full_of_non_anonymous_Bitcoins.html">A fist full of non-anonymous Bitcoins</a>
2046       </div>
2047       <div class="date">
2048         29th January 2014
2049       </div>
2050       <div class="body">
2051         <p>Bitcoin is a incredible use of peer to peer communication and
2052 encryption, allowing direct and immediate money transfer without any
2053 central control.  It is sometimes claimed to be ideal for illegal
2054 activity, which I believe is quite a long way from the truth.  At least
2055 I would not conduct illegal money transfers using a system where the
2056 details of every transaction are kept forever.  This point is
2057 investigated in
2058 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login">USENIX ;login:</a>
2059 from December 2013, in the article
2060 "<a href="https://www.usenix.org/system/files/login/articles/03_meiklejohn-online.pdf">A
2061 Fistful of Bitcoins - Characterizing Payments Among Men with No
2062 Names</a>" by Sarah Meiklejohn, Marjori Pomarole,Grant Jordan, Kirill
2063 Levchenko, Damon McCoy, Geoffrey M. Voelker, and Stefan Savage.  They
2064 analyse the transaction log in the Bitcoin system, using it to find
2065 addresses belong to individuals and organisations and follow the flow
2066 of money from both Bitcoin theft and trades on Silk Road to where the
2067 money end up.  This is how they wrap up their article:</p>
2068
2069 <p><blockquote>
2070 <p>"To demonstrate the usefulness of this type of analysis, we turned
2071 our attention to criminal activity. In the Bitcoin economy, criminal
2072 activity can appear in a number of forms, such as dealing drugs on
2073 Silk Road or simply stealing someone else’s bitcoins. We followed the
2074 flow of bitcoins out of Silk Road (in particular, from one notorious
2075 address) and from a number of highly publicized thefts to see whether
2076 we could track the bitcoins to known services. Although some of the
2077 thieves attempted to use sophisticated mixing techniques (or possibly
2078 mix services) to obscure the flow of bitcoins, for the most part
2079 tracking the bitcoins was quite straightforward, and we ultimately saw
2080 large quantities of bitcoins flow to a variety of exchanges directly
2081 from the point of theft (or the withdrawal from Silk Road).</p>
2082
2083 <p>As acknowledged above, following stolen bitcoins to the point at
2084 which they are deposited into an exchange does not in itself identify
2085 the thief; however, it does enable further de-anonymization in the
2086 case in which certain agencies can determine (through, for example,
2087 subpoena power) the real-world owner of the account into which the
2088 stolen bitcoins were deposited.  Because such exchanges seem to serve
2089 as chokepoints into and out of the Bitcoin economy (i.e., there are
2090 few alternative ways to cash out), we conclude that using Bitcoin for
2091 money laundering or other illicit purposes does not (at least at
2092 present) seem to be particularly attractive."</p>
2093 </blockquote><p>
2094
2095 <p>These researches are not the first to analyse the Bitcoin
2096 transaction log.  The 2011 paper
2097 "<a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/1107.4524">An Analysis of Anonymity in
2098 the Bitcoin System</A>" by Fergal Reid and Martin Harrigan is
2099 summarized like this:</p>
2100
2101 <p><blockquote>
2102 "Anonymity in Bitcoin, a peer-to-peer electronic currency system, is a
2103 complicated issue. Within the system, users are identified by
2104 public-keys only. An attacker wishing to de-anonymize its users will
2105 attempt to construct the one-to-many mapping between users and
2106 public-keys and associate information external to the system with the
2107 users. Bitcoin tries to prevent this attack by storing the mapping of
2108 a user to his or her public-keys on that user's node only and by
2109 allowing each user to generate as many public-keys as required. In
2110 this chapter we consider the topological structure of two networks
2111 derived from Bitcoin's public transaction history. We show that the
2112 two networks have a non-trivial topological structure, provide
2113 complementary views of the Bitcoin system and have implications for
2114 anonymity. We combine these structures with external information and
2115 techniques such as context discovery and flow analysis to investigate
2116 an alleged theft of Bitcoins, which, at the time of the theft, had a
2117 market value of approximately half a million U.S. dollars."
2118 </blockquote></p>
2119
2120 <p>I hope these references can help kill the urban myth that Bitcoin
2121 is anonymous.  It isn't really a good fit for illegal activites.  Use
2122 cash if you need to stay anonymous, at least until regular DNA
2123 sampling of notes and coins become the norm. :)</p>
2124
2125 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2126 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2127 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2128
2129       </div>
2130       <div class="tags">
2131
2132
2133         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</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>.
2134
2135
2136       </div>
2137     </div>
2138     <div class="padding"></div>
2139
2140     <div class="entry">
2141       <div class="title">
2142         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_16.html">New chrpath release 0.16</a>
2143       </div>
2144       <div class="date">
2145         14th January 2014
2146       </div>
2147       <div class="body">
2148         <p><a href="http://www.coverity.com/">Coverity</a> is a nice tool to
2149 find problems in C, C++ and Java code using static source code
2150 analysis.  It can detect a lot of different problems, and is very
2151 useful to find memory and locking bugs in the error handling part of
2152 the source.  The company behind it provide
2153 <a href="https://scan.coverity.com/">check of free software projects as
2154 a community service</a>, and many hundred free software projects are
2155 already checked.  A few days ago I decided to have a closer look at
2156 the Coverity system, and discovered that the
2157 <a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/">gnash</a> and
2158 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/ipmitool/">ipmitool</a>
2159 projects I am involved with was already registered.  But these are
2160 fairly big, and I would also like to have a small and easy project to
2161 check, and decided to <a href="http://scan.coverity.com/projects/1179">request
2162 checking of the chrpath project</a>.  It was
2163 added to the checker and discovered seven potential defects.  Six of
2164 these were real, mostly resource "leak" when the program detected an
2165 error.  Nothing serious, as the resources would be released a fraction
2166 of a second later when the program exited because of the error, but it
2167 is nice to do it right in case the source of the program some time in
2168 the future end up in a library.  Having fixed all defects and added
2169 <a href="https://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/chrpath-devel">a
2170 mailing list for the chrpath developers</a>, I decided it was time to
2171 publish a new release.  These are the release notes:</p>
2172
2173 <p>New in 0.16 released 2014-01-14:</p>
2174
2175 <ul>
2176
2177   <li>Fixed all minor bugs discovered by Coverity.</li>
2178   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project.</li>
2179   <li>Mention new project mailing list in the documentation.</li>
2180
2181 </ul>
2182
2183 <p>You can
2184 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
2185 new version 0.16 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
2186 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
2187 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
2188 include a test suite check.</p>
2189
2190       </div>
2191       <div class="tags">
2192
2193
2194         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath</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>.
2195
2196
2197       </div>
2198     </div>
2199     <div class="padding"></div>
2200
2201     <div class="entry">
2202       <div class="title">
2203         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Dominik_George.html">Debian Edu interview: Dominik George</a>
2204       </div>
2205       <div class="date">
2206         25th December 2013
2207       </div>
2208       <div class="body">
2209         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
2210 project</a> consist of both newcomers and old timers, and this time I
2211 was able to get an interview with a newcomer in the project who showed
2212 up on the IRC channel a few weeks ago to let us know about his
2213 successful installation of Debian Edu Wheezy in his School.  Say hello
2214 to <a href="https://www.ohloh.net/accounts/Natureshadow">Dominik
2215 George</a>.</p>
2216
2217 <!-- http://www.dominik-george.de/images/foto.jpg -->
2218
2219 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
2220
2221 <p>I am a 23 year-old student from Germany who has spent half of his
2222 life with open source. In "real life", I am, as already mentioned, a
2223 student in the fields of Computer Science, Electrical Engineering,
2224 Information Technologies and Anglistics. Due to my (only partially
2225 voluntary) huge engagement in the open source world, these things are
2226 a bit vacant right now however.</p>
2227
2228 <p>I also have been working as a project teacher at a Gymasnium
2229 (public school) for various years now. I took up that work some time
2230 around 2005 when still attending that school myself and have continued
2231 it until today. I also had been running the (kind of very advanced)
2232 network of that school together with a team of very interested and
2233 talented students in the age of 11 to 15 years, who took the chance to
2234 learn a lot about open source and networking before I left the school
2235 to help building another school's informational education concept from
2236 scratch.</p>
2237
2238 <p>That said, one might see me as a kind of "glue" between school kids
2239 and the elderly of teachers as well as between the open source
2240 ecosystem and the (even more complex) educational ecosystem.</p>
2241
2242 <p>When I am not busy with open source or education, I like Geocaching
2243 and cycling.</p>
2244
2245 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
2246 project?</strong></p>
2247
2248 <p>I think that happened some time around 2009 when I first attended
2249 <a href="http://www.froscon.org">FrOSCon</a> and visited the project
2250 booth. I think I wasn't too interested back then because I used to
2251 have an attitude of disliking software that does too much stuff on its
2252 own. Maybe I was too inexperienced to realise the upsides of an
2253 "out-of-the-box" solution ;).</p>
2254
2255 <p>The first time I actively talked to Skolelinux people was at
2256 <a href="http://www.openrheinruhr.de">OpenRheinRuhr</a> 2011 when the
2257 BiscuIT project, a home-grewn software used by my school for various
2258 really cool things from timetables and class contact lists to lunch
2259 ordering, student ID card printing and project elections first got to
2260 a stage where it could have been published. I asked the Skolelinux
2261 guys running the booth if the project were interested in it and gave a
2262 small demonstration, but there wasn't any real feedback and the guys
2263 seemed rather uninterested.</p>
2264
2265 <p>After I left the school where I developed the software, it got
2266 mostly lost, but I am now reimplementing it for my new school. I have
2267 reusability and compatibility in mind, and I hop there will be a new
2268 basis for contributing it to the Skolelinux project ;)!</p>
2269
2270 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
2271 Edu?</strong></p>
2272
2273 <p>The most important advantage seems to be that it "just
2274 works". After overcoming some minor (but still very annoying) glitches
2275 in the installer, I got a fully functional, working school network,
2276 without the month-long hassle I experienced when setting all that up
2277 from scratch in earlier years. And above that, it rocked - I didn't
2278 have any real hardware at hand, because the school was just founded
2279 and has no money whatsoever, so I installed a combined server (main
2280 server, terminal services and workstation) in a VM on my personal
2281 notebook, bridging the LTSP network interface to the ethernet port,
2282 and then PXE-booted the Windows notebooks that were lying around from
2283 it. I could use 8 clients without any performance issues, by using a
2284 tiny little VM on a tiny little notebook. I think that's enough to say
2285 that it rocks!</p>
2286
2287 <p>Secondly, there are marketing reasons. Life's bad, and so no
2288 politician will ever permit a setup described as "Debian, an universal
2289 operating system, with some really cool educational tools" while they
2290 will be jsut fine with "Skolelinux, a single-purpose solution for your
2291 school network", even if both turn out to be the very same thing (yes,
2292 this is unfair towards the Skolelinux project, and must not be taken
2293 too seriously - you get the idea, anyway).</p>
2294
2295 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
2296 Edu?</strong></p>
2297
2298 <p>I have not been involved with Skolelinux long enough to really
2299 answer this question in a fair way. Thus, please allow me to put it in
2300 other words: "What do you expect from Skolelinux to keep liking it?" I
2301 can list a few points about that:</p>
2302
2303 <ul>
2304
2305  <li>always strive to get all things integrated into Debian upstream
2306  <li>be open to discussion about changes and the like, even with newcomers
2307  <li>be helpful at being helpful ;)
2308
2309 </ul>
2310
2311 <p>I'm really sorry I cannot say much more about that :(!</p>
2312
2313 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
2314
2315 <p>First of all, all software I use is free and open. I have abandoned
2316 all non-free software (except for firmware on my darned phone) this
2317 year.</p>
2318
2319 <p>I run Debian GNU/Linux on all PC systems I use. On that, I mostly
2320 run text tools. I use
2321 <a href="https://www.mirbsd.org/mksh.htm">mksh</a> as shell,
2322 <a href="https://www.mirbsd.org/jupp.htm">jupp</a> as very advanced
2323 text editor (I even got the developer to help me write a script/macro
2324 based full-featured student management software with the two),
2325 <a href="http://mcabber.com/">mcabber</a> for XMPP and
2326 <a href="http://www.irssi.org/">irssi</a> for IRC. For that overly
2327 coloured world called the WWW, I use
2328 <a href="https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/">Iceweasel
2329 (Firefox)</a>. Oh, and <a href="http://www.mutt.org/">mutt</a> for
2330 e-mail.</p>
2331
2332 <p>However, while I am personally aware of the fact that text tools
2333 are more efficient and powerful than anything else, I also use (or at
2334 least operate) some tools that are suitable to bring open source to
2335 kids. One of these things is <a href="http://jappix.org/">Jappix</a>,
2336 which I already introduced to some kids even before they got aware of
2337 Facebook, making them see for themselves that they do not need
2338 Facebook now ;).</p>
2339
2340 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
2341 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
2342
2343 <p>Well, that's a two-sided thing. One side is what I believe, and one
2344 side is what I have experienced.</p>
2345
2346 <p>I believe that the right strategy is showing them the benefits. But
2347 that won't work out as long as the acceptance of free alternatives
2348 grows globally. What I mean is that if all the kids are almost forced
2349 to use Windows, Facebook, Skype, you name it at home, they will not
2350 see why they would want to use alternatives at school. I have seen
2351 students take seat in front of a fully-functional, modern Debian
2352 desktop that could do anything their Windows at home could do, and
2353 they jsut refused to use it because "Linux sucks". It is something
2354 that makes the council of our city spend around 600000 € to buy
2355 software - not including hardware, mind you - for operating school
2356 networks, and for installing a system that, as has been proved, does
2357 not work. For those of you readers who are good at maths, have you
2358 already found out how many lives could have been saved with that money
2359 if we had instead used it to bring education to parts of the world
2360 that need it? I have, and found it to be nothing less dramatic than
2361 plain criminal.</p>
2362
2363 <p>That said, the only feasible way appears to be the bottom up
2364 method. We have to bring free software to kids and parents. I have
2365 founded an association named
2366 <a href="https://www.teckids.org">Teckids</a> here in Germany that does
2367 just that. We organise several events for kids and adolescents in the
2368 area of free and open source software, for example the
2369 <a href="http://kids.froscon.org">FrogLabs</a>, which share staff with
2370 Teckids and are the youth programme of
2371 <a href="http://www.froscon.org">the Free and Open Source Software
2372 Conference (FrOSCon)</a>. We do a lot more than most other conferences
2373 - this year, we first offered the FrogLabs as a holiday camp for kids
2374 aged 10 to 16. It was a huge success, with approx. 30 kids taking part
2375 and learning with and about free software through a whole weekend. All
2376 of us had a lot of fun, and the results were really exciting.</p>
2377
2378 <p>Apart from that, we are preparing a campaign that is supposed to bring
2379 the message of free alternatives to stuff kids use every day to them and
2380 their parents, e.g. the use of Jabber / Jappix instead of Facebook and
2381 Skype. To make that possible, we are planning to get together a team of
2382 clever kids who understand very well what their peers need and can bring
2383 it across to them. So we will have a peer-driven network of adolescents
2384 who teach each other and collect feedback from the community of minors.
2385 We then take that feedback and our own experience to work closely with
2386 open source projects, such as Skolelinux or Jappix, at improving their
2387 software in a way that makes it more and more attractive for the target
2388 group. At least I hope that we will have good cooperation with
2389 Skolelinux in the future ;)!</p>
2390
2391 <p>So in conclusion, what I believe is that, if it weren't for the world
2392 being so bad, it should be very clear to the political decision makers
2393 that the only way to go nowadays is free software for various reasons,
2394 but I have learnt that the only way that seems to work is bottom up.</p>
2395
2396 <!--
2397
2398 >  * Who should be interviewed with this questions in the future?
2399
2400 That's probably the hardest question of them all, as I do not know the
2401 community. However, I would be willing to do the following:
2402
2403  <li>Run an interview with a German headteacher who is very open to
2404    free software, and also prefers it, but cannot really use it because
2405    of the decision makers above;
2406  <li>Run interviews with some kids, both with and without previous
2407    knowledge about free software
2408
2409 If that is wanted, just let me know ;).
2410
2411 -->
2412
2413       </div>
2414       <div class="tags">
2415
2416
2417         Tags: <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/intervju">intervju</a>.
2418
2419
2420       </div>
2421     </div>
2422     <div class="padding"></div>
2423
2424     <div class="entry">
2425       <div class="title">
2426         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Klaus_Knopper.html">Debian Edu interview: Klaus Knopper</a>
2427       </div>
2428       <div class="date">
2429          6th December 2013
2430       </div>
2431       <div class="body">
2432         <p>It has been a while since I managed to publish the last interview,
2433 but the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
2434 Skolelinux</a> community is still going strong, and yesterday we even
2435 had a new school administrator show up on
2436 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/#debian-edu">#debian-edu</a> to share
2437 his success story with installing Debian Edu at their school.  This
2438 time I have been able to get some helpful comments from the creator of
2439 Knoppix, Klaus Knopper, who was involved in a Skolelinux project in
2440 Germany a few years ago.</p>
2441
2442 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
2443
2444 <p>I am Klaus Knopper.  I have a master degree in electrical
2445 engineering, and is currently professor in information management at
2446 the university of applied sciences Kaiserslautern / Germany and
2447 freelance Open Source software developer and consultant.</p>
2448
2449 <p>All of this is pretty much of the work I spend my days with. Apart
2450 from teaching, I'm also conducting some more or less experimental
2451 projects like the <a href="http://www.knoppix.org">Knoppix GNU/Linux live
2452 system</a> (Debian-based like Skolelinux),
2453 <a href="http://www.knopper.net/knoppix-adriane/index-en.html">ADRIANE</a>
2454 (a blind-friendly talking desktop system) and
2455 <a href="http://www.knopper.net/linbo/index-en.html">LINBO</a>
2456 (Linux-based network boot console, a fast remote install and repair
2457 system supporting various operating systems).</p>
2458
2459 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
2460 project?</strong></p>
2461
2462 <p>The credit for this have to go to Kurt Gramlich, who is the German
2463 coordinator for Skolelinux.  We were looking for an all-in-one open
2464 source community-supported distribution for schools, and Kurt
2465 introduced us to Skolelinux for this purpose.</p>
2466
2467 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
2468 Edu?</strong></p>
2469
2470 <ul>
2471   <li>Quick installation,</li>
2472   <li>works (almost) out of the box,</li>
2473   <li>contains many useful software packages for teaching and learning,</li>
2474   <li>is a purely community-based distro and not controlled by a
2475     single company,</li>
2476   <li>has a large number of supporters and teachers who share their
2477     experience and problem solutions.</li>
2478 </ul>
2479
2480 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
2481 Edu?</strong></p>
2482
2483 <ul>
2484   <li>Skolelinux is - as we had to learn - not easily upgradable to
2485   the next version.  Opposed to its genuine Debian base, upgrading to
2486   a new version means a full new installation from scratch to get it
2487   working again reliably.
2488
2489   <li>Skolelinux is based on Debian/stable, and therefore always a
2490   little outdated in terms of program versions compared to Edubuntu or
2491   similar educational Linux distros, which rather use Debian/testing
2492   as their base.
2493
2494   <li>Skolelinux has some very self-opinionated and stubborn default
2495   configuration which in my opinion adds unnecessary complexity and is
2496   not always suitable for a schools needs, the preset network
2497   configuration is actually a core definition feature of Skolelinux
2498   and not easy to change, so schools sometimes have to change their
2499   network configuration to make it "Skolelinux-compatible".
2500
2501   <li>Some proposed extensions, which were made available as
2502   contribution, like secure examination mode and lecture material
2503   distribution and collection, were not accepted into the mainline
2504   Skolelinux development and are now not easy to maintain in the
2505   future because of Skolelinux somewhat undeterministic update
2506   schemes.</li>
2507
2508   <li>Skolelinux has only a very tiny number of base developers
2509   compared to Debian.</li>
2510
2511 </ul>
2512
2513 <p>For these reasons and experience from our project, I would now
2514 rather consider using plain Debian for schools next time, until
2515 Skolelinux is more closely integrated into Debian and becomes
2516 upgradeable without reinstallation.</p>
2517
2518 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
2519
2520 <p>GNU/Linux with LXDE desktop, bash for interactive dialog and
2521 programming, texlive for documentation and correspondence,
2522 occasionally LibreOffice for document format conversion. Various
2523 programming languages for teaching.</p>
2524
2525 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
2526 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
2527
2528 <p>Strong arguments are</p>
2529
2530 <ul>
2531
2532   <li>Knowledge is free, and so should be methods and tools for
2533     teaching and learning.</li>
2534
2535   <li>Students can learn with and use the same software at school, at
2536     home, and at their working place without running into license or
2537     conversion problems.</li>
2538
2539   <li>Closed source or proprietary software hides knowledge rather
2540     than exposing it, and proprietary software vendors try to bind
2541     customers to certain products.  But teachers need to teach
2542     science, not products.</li>
2543
2544   <li>If you have everything you for daily work as open source, what
2545     would you need proprietary software for?</li>
2546
2547 </ul>
2548
2549       </div>
2550       <div class="tags">
2551
2552
2553         Tags: <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/intervju">intervju</a>.
2554
2555
2556       </div>
2557     </div>
2558     <div class="padding"></div>
2559
2560     <div class="entry">
2561       <div class="title">
2562         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnadsnett_for_alle__a_wireless_community_network_in_Oslo__take_shape.html">Dugnadsnett for alle, a wireless community network in Oslo, take shape</a>
2563       </div>
2564       <div class="date">
2565         30th November 2013
2566       </div>
2567       <div class="body">
2568         <p>If you want the ability to electronically communicate directly with
2569 your neighbors and friends using a network controlled by your peers in
2570 stead of centrally controlled by a few corporations, or would like to
2571 experiment with interesting network technology, the
2572 <a href="http://www.dugnadsnett.no/">Dugnasnett for alle i Oslo</a>
2573 might be project for you.  39 mesh nodes are currently being planned,
2574 in the freshly started initiative from NUUG and Hackeriet to create a
2575 wireless community network.  The work is inspired by
2576 <a href="http://freifunk.net/">Freifunk</a>,
2577 <a href="http://www.awmn.net/">Athens Wireless Metropolitan
2578 Network</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roofnet">Roofnet</a>
2579 and other successful mesh networks around the globe.  Two days ago we
2580 held a workshop to try to get people started on setting up their own
2581 mesh node, and there we decided to create a new mailing list
2582 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/dugnadsnett">dugnadsnett
2583 (at) nuug.no</a> and IRC channel
2584 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#dugnadsnett.no">#dugnadsnett.no</a> to
2585 coordinate the work.  See also the NUUG blog post
2586 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/E_postliste_og_IRC_kanal_for_Dugnadsnett_for_alle_i_Oslo.shtml">announcing
2587 the mailing list and IRC channel</a>.</p>
2588
2589       </div>
2590       <div class="tags">
2591
2592
2593         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
2594
2595
2596       </div>
2597     </div>
2598     <div class="padding"></div>
2599
2600     <div class="entry">
2601       <div class="title">
2602         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_15.html">New chrpath release 0.15</a>
2603       </div>
2604       <div class="date">
2605         24th November 2013
2606       </div>
2607       <div class="body">
2608         <p>After many years break from the package and a vain hope that
2609 development would be continued by someone else, I finally pulled my
2610 acts together this morning and wrapped up a new release of chrpath,
2611 the command line tool to modify the rpath and runpath of already
2612 compiled ELF programs.  The update was triggered by the persistence of
2613 Isha Vishnoi at IBM, which needed a new config.guess file to get
2614 support for the ppc64le architecture (powerpc 64-bit Little Endian) he
2615 is working on.  I checked the
2616 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/chrpath">Debian</a>,
2617 <a href="https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/chrpath">Ubuntu</a> and
2618 <a href="https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/acls/name/chrpath">Fedora</a>
2619 packages for interesting patches (failed to find the source from
2620 OpenSUSE and Mandriva packages), and found quite a few nice fixes.
2621 These are the release notes:</p>
2622
2623 <p>New in 0.15 released 2013-11-24:</p>
2624
2625 <ul>
2626
2627   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project to work
2628    with newer architectures.  Thanks to isha vishnoi for the heads
2629    up.</li>
2630
2631   <li>Updated README with current URLs.</li>
2632
2633   <li>Added byteswap fix found in Ubuntu, credited Jeremy Kerr and
2634    Matthias Klose.</li>
2635
2636   <li>Added missing help for -k|--keepgoing option, using patch by
2637    Petr Machata found in Fedora.</li>
2638
2639   <li>Rewrite removal of RPATH/RUNPATH to make sure the entry in
2640    .dynamic is a NULL terminated string.  Based on patch found in
2641    Fedora credited Axel Thimm and Christian Krause.</li>
2642
2643 </ul>
2644
2645 <p>You can
2646 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
2647 new version 0.15 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
2648 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
2649 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
2650 include a testsuite check.</p>
2651
2652       </div>
2653       <div class="tags">
2654
2655
2656         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath</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>.
2657
2658
2659       </div>
2660     </div>
2661     <div class="padding"></div>
2662
2663     <div class="entry">
2664       <div class="title">
2665         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/All_drones_should_be_radio_marked_with_what_they_do_and_who_they_belong_to.html">All drones should be radio marked with what they do and who they belong to</a>
2666       </div>
2667       <div class="date">
2668         21st November 2013
2669       </div>
2670       <div class="body">
2671         <p>Drones, flying robots, are getting more and more popular.  The most
2672 know ones are the killer drones used by some government to murder
2673 people they do not like without giving them the chance of a fair
2674 trial, but the technology have many good uses too, from mapping and
2675 forest maintenance to photography and search and rescue.  I am sure it
2676 is just a question of time before "bad drones" are in the hands of
2677 private enterprises and not only state criminals but petty criminals
2678 too.  The drone technology is very useful and very dangerous.  To have
2679 some control over the use of drones, I agree with Daniel Suarez in his
2680 TED talk
2681 "<a href="https://archive.org/details/DanielSuarez_2013G">The kill
2682 decision shouldn't belong to a robot</a>", where he suggested this
2683 little gem to keep the good while limiting the bad use of drones:</p>
2684
2685 <blockquote>
2686
2687 <p>Each robot and drone should have a cryptographically signed
2688 I.D. burned in at the factory that can be used to track its movement
2689 through public spaces. We have license plates on cars, tail numbers on
2690 aircraft. This is no different. And every citizen should be able to
2691 download an app that shows the population of drones and autonomous
2692 vehicles moving through public spaces around them, both right now and
2693 historically. And civic leaders should deploy sensors and civic drones
2694 to detect rogue drones, and instead of sending killer drones of their
2695 own up to shoot them down, they should notify humans to their
2696 presence. And in certain very high-security areas, perhaps civic
2697 drones would snare them and drag them off to a bomb disposal facility.</p>
2698
2699 <p>But notice, this is more an immune system than a weapons system. It
2700 would allow us to avail ourselves of the use of autonomous vehicles
2701 and drones while still preserving our open, civil society.</p>
2702
2703 </blockquote>
2704
2705 <p>The key is that <em>every citizen</em> should be able to read the
2706 radio beacons sent from the drones in the area, to be able to check
2707 both the government and others use of drones.  For such control to be
2708 effective, everyone must be able to do it.  What should such beacon
2709 contain?  At least formal owner, purpose, contact information and GPS
2710 location.  Probably also the origin and target position of the current
2711 flight.  And perhaps some registration number to be able to look up
2712 the drone in a central database tracking their movement.  Robots
2713 should not have privacy.  It is people who need privacy.</p>
2714
2715       </div>
2716       <div class="tags">
2717
2718
2719         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
2720
2721
2722       </div>
2723     </div>
2724     <div class="padding"></div>
2725
2726     <div class="entry">
2727       <div class="title">
2728         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_a_wireless_community_network_in_Oslo_.html">Lets make a wireless community network in Oslo!</a>
2729       </div>
2730       <div class="date">
2731         13th November 2013
2732       </div>
2733       <div class="body">
2734         <p>Today NUUG and Hackeriet announced
2735 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Bli_med___bygge_dugnadsnett_for_alle_i_Oslo.shtml">our
2736 plans to join forces and create a wireless community network in
2737 Oslo</a>.  The workshop to help people get started will take place
2738 Thursday 2013-11-28, but we already are collecting the geolocation of
2739 people joining forces to make this happen.  We have
2740 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/blob/master/oslo-nodes.geojson">9
2741 locations plotted on the map</a>, but we will need more before we have
2742 a connected mesh spread across Oslo.  If this sound interesting to
2743 you, please join us at the workshop.  If you are too impatient to wait
2744 15 days, please join us on the IRC channel
2745 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23nuug">#nuug on irc.freenode.net</a>
2746 right away. :)</p>
2747
2748       </div>
2749       <div class="tags">
2750
2751
2752         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
2753
2754
2755       </div>
2756     </div>
2757     <div class="padding"></div>
2758
2759     <div class="entry">
2760       <div class="title">
2761         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Running_TP_Link_MR3040_as_a_batman_adv_mesh_node_using_openwrt.html">Running TP-Link MR3040 as a batman-adv mesh node using openwrt</a>
2762       </div>
2763       <div class="date">
2764         10th November 2013
2765       </div>
2766       <div class="body">
2767         <p>Continuing my research into mesh networking, I was recommended to
2768 use TP-Link 3040 and 3600 access points as mesh nodes, and the pair I
2769 bought arrived on Friday.  Here are my notes on how to set up the
2770 MR3040 as a mesh node using
2771 <a href="http://www.openwrt.org/">OpenWrt</a>.</p>
2772
2773 <p>I started by following the instructions on the OpenWRT wiki for
2774 <a href="http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/tl-mr3040">TL-MR3040</a>,
2775 and downloaded
2776 <a href="http://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/trunk/ar71xx/openwrt-ar71xx-generic-tl-mr3040-v2-squashfs-factory.bin">the
2777 recommended firmware image</a>
2778 (openwrt-ar71xx-generic-tl-mr3040-v2-squashfs-factory.bin) and
2779 uploaded it into the original web interface.  The flashing went fine,
2780 and the machine was available via telnet on the ethernet port.  After
2781 logging in and setting the root password, ssh was available and I
2782 could start to set it up as a batman-adv mesh node.</p>
2783
2784 <p>I started off by reading the instructions from
2785 <a href="http://wirelessafrica.meraka.org.za/wiki/index.php?title=Antoine's_Research">Wireless
2786 Africa</a>, which had quite a lot of useful information, but
2787 eventually I followed the recipe from the Open Mesh wiki for
2788 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki/Batman-adv-openwrt-config">using
2789 batman-adv on OpenWrt</a>.  A small snag was the fact that the
2790 <tt>opkg install kmod-batman-adv</tt> command did not work as it
2791 should.  The batman-adv kernel module would fail to load because its
2792 dependency crc16 was not already loaded.  I
2793 <a href="https://dev.openwrt.org/ticket/14452">reported the bug</a> to
2794 the openwrt project and hope it will be fixed soon.  But the problem
2795 only seem to affect initial testing of batman-adv, as configuration
2796 seem to work when booting from scratch.</p>
2797
2798 <p>The setup is done using files in /etc/config/.  I did not bridge
2799 the Ethernet and mesh interfaces this time, to be able to hook up the
2800 box on my local network and log into it for configuration updates.
2801 The following files were changed and look like this after modifying
2802 them:</p>
2803
2804 <p><tt>/etc/config/network</tt></p>
2805
2806 <pre>
2807
2808 config interface 'loopback'
2809         option ifname 'lo'
2810         option proto 'static'
2811         option ipaddr '127.0.0.1'
2812         option netmask '255.0.0.0'
2813
2814 config globals 'globals'
2815         option ula_prefix 'fdbf:4c12:3fed::/48'
2816
2817 config interface 'lan'
2818         option ifname 'eth0'
2819         option type 'bridge'
2820         option proto 'dhcp'
2821         option ipaddr '192.168.1.1'
2822         option netmask '255.255.255.0'
2823         option hostname 'tl-mr3040'
2824         option ip6assign '60'
2825
2826 config interface 'mesh'
2827         option ifname 'adhoc0'
2828         option mtu '1528'
2829         option proto 'batadv'
2830         option mesh 'bat0'
2831 </pre>
2832
2833 <p><tt>/etc/config/wireless</tt></p>
2834 <pre>
2835
2836 config wifi-device 'radio0'
2837         option type 'mac80211'
2838         option channel '11'
2839         option hwmode '11ng'
2840         option path 'platform/ar933x_wmac'
2841         option htmode 'HT20'
2842         list ht_capab 'SHORT-GI-20'
2843         list ht_capab 'SHORT-GI-40'
2844         list ht_capab 'RX-STBC1'
2845         list ht_capab 'DSSS_CCK-40'
2846         option disabled '0'
2847
2848 config wifi-iface 'wmesh'
2849         option device 'radio0'
2850         option ifname 'adhoc0'
2851         option network 'mesh'
2852         option encryption 'none'
2853         option mode 'adhoc'
2854         option bssid '02:BA:00:00:00:01'
2855         option ssid 'meshfx@hackeriet'
2856 </pre>
2857 <p><tt>/etc/config/batman-adv</tt></p>
2858 <pre>
2859
2860 config 'mesh' 'bat0'
2861         option interfaces 'adhoc0'
2862         option 'aggregated_ogms'
2863         option 'ap_isolation'
2864         option 'bonding'
2865         option 'fragmentation'
2866         option 'gw_bandwidth'
2867         option 'gw_mode'
2868         option 'gw_sel_class'
2869         option 'log_level'
2870         option 'orig_interval'
2871         option 'vis_mode'
2872         option 'bridge_loop_avoidance'
2873         option 'distributed_arp_table'
2874         option 'network_coding'
2875         option 'hop_penalty'
2876
2877 # yet another batX instance
2878 # config 'mesh' 'bat5'
2879 #       option 'interfaces' 'second_mesh'
2880 </pre>
2881
2882 <p>The mesh node is now operational.  I have yet to test its range,
2883 but I hope it is good.  I have not yet tested the TP-Link 3600 box
2884 still wrapped up in plastic.</p>
2885
2886       </div>
2887       <div class="tags">
2888
2889
2890         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
2891
2892
2893       </div>
2894     </div>
2895     <div class="padding"></div>
2896
2897     <div class="entry">
2898       <div class="title">
2899         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_init_d_boot_script_example_for_rsyslog.html">Debian init.d boot script example for rsyslog</a>
2900       </div>
2901       <div class="date">
2902          2nd November 2013
2903       </div>
2904       <div class="body">
2905         <p>If one of the points of switching to a new init system in Debian is
2906 <a href="http://thomas.goirand.fr/blog/?p=147">to get rid of huge
2907 init.d scripts</a>, I doubt we need to switch away from sysvinit and
2908 init.d scripts at all.  Here is an example init.d script, ie a rewrite
2909 of /etc/init.d/rsyslog:</p>
2910
2911 <p><pre>
2912 #!/lib/init/init-d-script
2913 ### BEGIN INIT INFO
2914 # Provides:          rsyslog
2915 # Required-Start:    $remote_fs $time
2916 # Required-Stop:     umountnfs $time
2917 # X-Stop-After:      sendsigs
2918 # Default-Start:     2 3 4 5
2919 # Default-Stop:      0 1 6
2920 # Short-Description: enhanced syslogd
2921 # Description:       Rsyslog is an enhanced multi-threaded syslogd.
2922 #                    It is quite compatible to stock sysklogd and can be
2923 #                    used as a drop-in replacement.
2924 ### END INIT INFO
2925 DESC="enhanced syslogd"
2926 DAEMON=/usr/sbin/rsyslogd
2927 </pre></p>
2928
2929 <p>Pretty minimalistic to me... For the record, the original sysv-rc
2930 script was 137 lines, and the above is just 15 lines, most of it meta
2931 info/comments.</p>
2932
2933 <p>How to do this, you ask?  Well, one create a new script
2934 /lib/init/init-d-script looking something like this:
2935
2936 <p><pre>
2937 #!/bin/sh
2938
2939 # Define LSB log_* functions.
2940 # Depend on lsb-base (>= 3.2-14) to ensure that this file is present
2941 # and status_of_proc is working.
2942 . /lib/lsb/init-functions
2943
2944 #
2945 # Function that starts the daemon/service
2946
2947 #
2948 do_start()
2949 {
2950         # Return
2951         #   0 if daemon has been started
2952         #   1 if daemon was already running
2953         #   2 if daemon could not be started
2954         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON --test > /dev/null \
2955                 || return 1
2956         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON -- \
2957                 $DAEMON_ARGS \
2958                 || return 2
2959         # Add code here, if necessary, that waits for the process to be ready
2960         # to handle requests from services started subsequently which depend
2961         # on this one.  As a last resort, sleep for some time.
2962 }
2963
2964 #
2965 # Function that stops the daemon/service
2966 #
2967 do_stop()
2968 {
2969         # Return
2970         #   0 if daemon has been stopped
2971         #   1 if daemon was already stopped
2972         #   2 if daemon could not be stopped
2973         #   other if a failure occurred
2974         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --retry=TERM/30/KILL/5 --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
2975         RETVAL="$?"
2976         [ "$RETVAL" = 2 ] && return 2
2977         # Wait for children to finish too if this is a daemon that forks
2978         # and if the daemon is only ever run from this initscript.
2979         # If the above conditions are not satisfied then add some other code
2980         # that waits for the process to drop all resources that could be
2981         # needed by services started subsequently.  A last resort is to
2982         # sleep for some time.
2983         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --oknodo --retry=0/30/KILL/5 --exec $DAEMON
2984         [ "$?" = 2 ] && return 2
2985         # Many daemons don't delete their pidfiles when they exit.
2986         rm -f $PIDFILE
2987         return "$RETVAL"
2988 }
2989
2990 #
2991 # Function that sends a SIGHUP to the daemon/service
2992 #
2993 do_reload() {
2994         #
2995         # If the daemon can reload its configuration without
2996         # restarting (for example, when it is sent a SIGHUP),
2997         # then implement that here.
2998         #
2999         start-stop-daemon --stop --signal 1 --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
3000         return 0
3001 }
3002
3003 SCRIPTNAME=$1
3004 scriptbasename="$(basename $1)"
3005 echo "SN: $scriptbasename"
3006 if [ "$scriptbasename" != "init-d-library" ] ; then
3007     script="$1"
3008     shift
3009     . $script
3010 else
3011     exit 0
3012 fi
3013
3014 NAME=$(basename $DAEMON)
3015 PIDFILE=/var/run/$NAME.pid
3016
3017 # Exit if the package is not installed
3018 #[ -x "$DAEMON" ] || exit 0
3019
3020 # Read configuration variable file if it is present
3021 [ -r /etc/default/$NAME ] && . /etc/default/$NAME
3022
3023 # Load the VERBOSE setting and other rcS variables
3024 . /lib/init/vars.sh
3025
3026 case "$1" in
3027   start)
3028         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Starting $DESC" "$NAME"
3029         do_start
3030         case "$?" in
3031                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
3032                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
3033         esac
3034         ;;
3035   stop)
3036         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Stopping $DESC" "$NAME"
3037         do_stop
3038         case "$?" in
3039                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
3040                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
3041         esac
3042         ;;
3043   status)
3044         status_of_proc "$DAEMON" "$NAME" && exit 0 || exit $?
3045         ;;
3046   #reload|force-reload)
3047         #
3048         # If do_reload() is not implemented then leave this commented out
3049         # and leave 'force-reload' as an alias for 'restart'.
3050         #
3051         #log_daemon_msg "Reloading $DESC" "$NAME"
3052         #do_reload
3053         #log_end_msg $?
3054         #;;
3055   restart|force-reload)
3056         #
3057         # If the "reload" option is implemented then remove the
3058         # 'force-reload' alias
3059         #
3060         log_daemon_msg "Restarting $DESC" "$NAME"
3061         do_stop
3062         case "$?" in
3063           0|1)
3064                 do_start
3065                 case "$?" in
3066                         0) log_end_msg 0 ;;
3067                         1) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Old process is still running
3068                         *) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Failed to start
3069                 esac
3070                 ;;
3071           *)
3072                 # Failed to stop
3073                 log_end_msg 1
3074                 ;;
3075         esac
3076         ;;
3077   *)
3078         echo "Usage: $SCRIPTNAME {start|stop|status|restart|force-reload}" >&2
3079         exit 3
3080         ;;
3081 esac
3082
3083 :
3084 </pre></p>
3085
3086 <p>It is based on /etc/init.d/skeleton, and could be improved quite a
3087 lot.  I did not really polish the approach, so it might not always
3088 work out of the box, but you get the idea.  I did not try very hard to
3089 optimize it nor make it more robust either.</p>
3090
3091 <p>A better argument for switching init system in Debian than reducing
3092 the size of init scripts (which is a good thing to do anyway), is to
3093 get boot system that is able to handle the kernel events sensibly and
3094 robustly, and do not depend on the boot to run sequentially.  The boot
3095 and the kernel have not behaved sequentially in years.</p>
3096
3097       </div>
3098       <div class="tags">
3099
3100
3101         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>.
3102
3103
3104       </div>
3105     </div>
3106     <div class="padding"></div>
3107
3108     <div class="entry">
3109       <div class="title">
3110         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Browser_plugin_for_SPICE__spice_xpi__uploaded_to_Debian.html">Browser plugin for SPICE (spice-xpi) uploaded to Debian</a>
3111       </div>
3112       <div class="date">
3113          1st November 2013
3114       </div>
3115       <div class="body">
3116         <p><a href="http://www.spice-space.org/">The SPICE protocol</a> for
3117 remote display access is the preferred solution with oVirt and RedHat
3118 Enterprise Virtualization, and I was sad to discover the other day
3119 that the browser plugin needed to use these systems seamlessly was
3120 missing in Debian.  The <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/668284">request
3121 for a package</a> was from 2012-04-10 with no progress since
3122 2013-04-01, so I decided to wrap up a package based on the great work
3123 from Cajus Pollmeier and put it in a collab-maint maintained git
3124 repository to get a package I could use.  I would very much like
3125 others to help me maintain the package (or just take over, I do not
3126 mind), but as no-one had volunteered so far, I just uploaded it to
3127 NEW.  I hope it will be available in Debian in a few days.</p>
3128
3129 <p>The source is now available from
3130 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/spice-xpi.git;a=summary">http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/spice-xpi.git;a=summary</a>.</p>
3131
3132       </div>
3133       <div class="tags">
3134
3135
3136         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>.
3137
3138
3139       </div>
3140     </div>
3141     <div class="padding"></div>
3142
3143     <div class="entry">
3144       <div class="title">
3145         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Teaching_vmdebootstrap_to_create_Raspberry_Pi_SD_card_images.html">Teaching vmdebootstrap to create Raspberry Pi SD card images</a>
3146       </div>
3147       <div class="date">
3148         27th October 2013
3149       </div>
3150       <div class="body">
3151         <p>The
3152 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/v/vmdebootstrap.html">vmdebootstrap</a>
3153 program is a a very nice system to create virtual machine images.  It
3154 create a image file, add a partition table, mount it and run
3155 debootstrap in the mounted directory to create a Debian system on a
3156 stick.  Yesterday, I decided to try to teach it how to make images for
3157 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi">Raspberry Pi</a>, as part
3158 of a plan to simplify the build system for
3159 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the FreedomBox
3160 project</a>.  The FreedomBox project already uses vmdebootstrap for
3161 the virtualbox images, but its current build system made multistrap
3162 based system for Dreamplug images, and it is lacking support for
3163 Raspberry Pi.</p>
3164
3165 <p>Armed with the knowledge on how to build "foreign" (aka non-native
3166 architecture) chroots for Raspberry Pi, I dived into the vmdebootstrap
3167 code and adjusted it to be able to build armel images on my amd64
3168 Debian laptop.  I ended up giving vmdebootstrap five new options,
3169 allowing me to replicate the image creation process I use to make
3170 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html">Debian
3171 Jessie based mesh node images for the Raspberry Pi</a>.  First, the
3172 <tt>--foreign /path/to/binfm_handler</tt> option tell vmdebootstrap to
3173 call debootstrap with --foreign and to copy the handler into the
3174 generated chroot before running the second stage.  This allow
3175 vmdebootstrap to create armel images on an amd64 host.  Next I added
3176 two new options <tt>--bootsize size</tt> and <tt>--boottype
3177 fstype</tt> to teach it to create a separate /boot/ partition with the
3178 given file system type, allowing me to create an image with a vfat
3179 partition for the /boot/ stuff.  I also added a <tt>--variant
3180 variant</tt> option to allow me to create smaller images without the
3181 Debian base system packages installed.  Finally, I added an option
3182 <tt>--no-extlinux</tt> to tell vmdebootstrap to not install extlinux
3183 as a boot loader.  It is not needed on the Raspberry Pi and probably
3184 most other non-x86 architectures.  The changes were accepted by the
3185 upstream author of vmdebootstrap yesterday and today, and is now
3186 available from
3187 <a href="http://git.liw.fi/cgi-bin/cgit/cgit.cgi/vmdebootstrap/">the
3188 upstream project page</a>.</p>
3189
3190 <p>To use it to build a Raspberry Pi image using Debian Jessie, first
3191 create a small script (the customize script) to add the non-free
3192 binary blob needed to boot the Raspberry Pi and the APT source
3193 list:</p>
3194
3195 <p><pre>
3196 #!/bin/sh
3197 set -e # Exit on first error
3198 rootdir="$1"
3199 cd "$rootdir"
3200 cat &lt;&lt;EOF > etc/apt/sources.list
3201 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ jessie main contrib non-free
3202 EOF
3203 # Install non-free binary blob needed to boot Raspberry Pi.  This
3204 # install a kernel somewhere too.
3205 wget https://raw.github.com/Hexxeh/rpi-update/master/rpi-update \
3206     -O $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
3207 chmod a+x $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
3208 mkdir -p $rootdir/lib/modules
3209 touch $rootdir/boot/start.elf
3210 chroot $rootdir rpi-update
3211 </pre></p>
3212
3213 <p>Next, fetch the latest vmdebootstrap script and call it like this
3214 to build the image:</p>
3215
3216 <pre>
3217 sudo ./vmdebootstrap \
3218     --variant minbase \
3219     --arch armel \
3220     --distribution jessie \
3221     --mirror http://http.debian.net/debian \
3222     --image test.img \
3223     --size 600M \
3224     --bootsize 64M \
3225     --boottype vfat \
3226     --log-level debug \
3227     --verbose \
3228     --no-kernel \
3229     --no-extlinux \
3230     --root-password raspberry \
3231     --hostname raspberrypi \
3232     --foreign /usr/bin/qemu-arm-static \
3233     --customize `pwd`/customize \
3234     --package netbase \
3235     --package git-core \
3236     --package binutils \
3237     --package ca-certificates \
3238     --package wget \
3239     --package kmod
3240 </pre></p>
3241
3242 <p>The list of packages being installed are the ones needed by
3243 rpi-update to make the image bootable on the Raspberry Pi, with the
3244 exception of netbase, which is needed by debootstrap to find
3245 /etc/hosts with the minbase variant.  I really wish there was a way to
3246 set up an Raspberry Pi using only packages in the Debian archive, but
3247 that is not possible as far as I know, because it boots from the GPU
3248 using a non-free binary blob.</p>
3249
3250 <p>The build host need debootstrap, kpartx and qemu-user-static and
3251 probably a few others installed.  I have not checked the complete
3252 build dependency list.</p>
3253
3254 <p>The resulting image will not use the hardware floating point unit
3255 on the Raspberry PI, because the armel architecture in Debian is not
3256 optimized for that use.  So the images created will be a bit slower
3257 than <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/">Raspbian</a> based images.</p>
3258
3259       </div>
3260       <div class="tags">
3261
3262
3263         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/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>.
3264
3265
3266       </div>
3267     </div>
3268     <div class="padding"></div>
3269
3270     <div class="entry">
3271       <div class="title">
3272         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html">A Raspberry Pi based batman-adv Mesh network node</a>
3273       </div>
3274       <div class="date">
3275         21st October 2013
3276       </div>
3277       <div class="body">
3278         <p>The last few days I have been experimenting with
3279 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki">the
3280 batman-adv mesh technology</a>.  I want to gain some experience to see
3281 if it will fit <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the
3282 Freedombox project</a>, and together with my neighbors try to build a
3283 mesh network around the park where I live.  Batman-adv is a layer 2
3284 mesh system ("ethernet" in other words), where the mesh network appear
3285 as if all the mesh clients are connected to the same switch.</p>
3286
3287 <p>My hardware of choice was the Linksys WRT54GL routers I had lying
3288 around, but I've been unable to get them working with batman-adv.  So
3289 instead, I started playing with a
3290 <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org/">Raspberry Pi</a>, and tried to
3291 get it working as a mesh node.  My idea is to use it to create a mesh
3292 node which function as a switch port, where everything connected to
3293 the Raspberry Pi ethernet plug is connected (bridged) to the mesh
3294 network.  This allow me to hook a wifi base station like the Linksys
3295 WRT54GL to the mesh by plugging it into a Raspberry Pi, and allow
3296 non-mesh clients to hook up to the mesh.  This in turn is useful for
3297 Android phones using <a href="http://servalproject.org/">the Serval
3298 Project</a> voip client, allowing every one around the playground to
3299 phone and message each other for free.  The reason is that Android
3300 phones do not see ad-hoc wifi networks (they are filtered away from
3301 the GUI view), and can not join the mesh without being rooted.  But if
3302 they are connected using a normal wifi base station, they can talk to
3303 every client on the local network.</p>
3304
3305 <p>To get this working, I've created a debian package
3306 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node">meshfx-node</a>
3307 and a script
3308 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/blob/master/build-rpi-mesh-node">build-rpi-mesh-node</a>
3309 to create the Raspberry Pi boot image.  I'm using Debian Jessie (and
3310 not Raspbian), to get more control over the packages available.
3311 Unfortunately a huge binary blob need to be inserted into the boot
3312 image to get it booting, but I'll ignore that for now.  Also, as
3313 Debian lack support for the CPU features available in the Raspberry
3314 Pi, the system do not use the hardware floating point unit.  I hope
3315 the routing performance isn't affected by the lack of hardware FPU
3316 support.</p>
3317
3318 <p>To create an image, run the following with a sudo enabled user
3319 after inserting the target SD card into the build machine:</p>
3320
3321 <p><pre>
3322 % wget -O build-rpi-mesh-node \
3323     https://raw.github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/master/build-rpi-mesh-node
3324 % sudo bash -x ./build-rpi-mesh-node > build.log 2>&1
3325 % dd if=/root/rpi/rpi_basic_jessie_$(date +%Y%m%d).img of=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=1M
3326 %
3327 </pre></p>
3328
3329 <p>Booting with the resulting SD card on a Raspberry PI with a USB
3330 wifi card inserted should give you a mesh node.  At least it does for
3331 me with a the wifi card I am using. The default mesh settings are the
3332 ones used by the Oslo mesh project at Hackeriet, as I mentioned in
3333 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Oslo_community_mesh_network___with_NUUG_and_Hackeriet_at_Hausmania.html">an
3334 earlier blog post about this mesh testing</a>.</p>
3335
3336 <p>The mesh node was not horribly expensive either.  I bought
3337 everything over the counter in shops nearby.  If I had ordered online
3338 from the lowest bidder, the price should be significantly lower:</p>
3339
3340 <p><table>
3341
3342 <tr><th>Supplier</th><th>Model</th><th>NOK</th></tr>
3343 <tr><td>Teknikkmagasinet</td><td>Raspberry Pi model B</td><td>349.90</td></tr>
3344 <tr><td>Teknikkmagasinet</td><td>Raspberry Pi type B case</td><td>99.90</td></tr>
3345 <tr><td>Lefdal</td><td>Jensen Air:Link 25150</td><td>295.-</td></tr>
3346 <tr><td>Clas Ohlson</td><td>Kingston 16 GB SD card</td><td>199.-</td></tr>
3347 <tr><td>Total cost</td><td></td><td>943.80</td></tr>
3348
3349 </table></p>
3350
3351 <p>Now my mesh network at home consist of one laptop in the basement
3352 connected to my production network, one Raspberry Pi node on the 1th
3353 floor that can be seen by my neighbor across the park, and one
3354 play-node I use to develop the image building script.  And some times
3355 I hook up my work horse laptop to the mesh to test it.  I look forward
3356 to figuring out what kind of latency the batman-adv setup will give,
3357 and how much packet loss we will experience around the park. :)</p>
3358
3359       </div>
3360       <div class="tags">
3361
3362
3363         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
3364
3365
3366       </div>
3367     </div>
3368     <div class="padding"></div>
3369
3370     <div class="entry">
3371       <div class="title">
3372         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Perl_library_to_control_the_Spykee_robot_moved_to_github.html">Perl library to control the Spykee robot moved to github</a>
3373       </div>
3374       <div class="date">
3375         19th October 2013
3376       </div>
3377       <div class="body">
3378         <p>Back in 2010, I created a Perl library to talk to
3379 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spykee">the Spykee robot</a>
3380 (with two belts, wifi, USB and Linux) and made it available from my
3381 web page.  Today I concluded that it should move to a site that is
3382 easier to use to cooperate with others, and moved it to github.  If
3383 you got a Spykee robot, you might want to check out
3384 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/libspykee-perl">the
3385 libspykee-perl github repository</a>.</p>
3386
3387       </div>
3388       <div class="tags">
3389
3390
3391         Tags: <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/robot">robot</a>.
3392
3393
3394       </div>
3395     </div>
3396     <div class="padding"></div>
3397
3398     <div class="entry">
3399       <div class="title">
3400         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Good_causes__Debian_Outreach_Program_for_Women__EFF_documenting_the_spying_and_Open_access_in_Norway.html">Good causes: Debian Outreach Program for Women, EFF documenting the spying and Open access in Norway</a>
3401       </div>
3402       <div class="date">
3403         15th October 2013
3404       </div>
3405       <div class="body">
3406         <p>The last few days I came across a few good causes that should get
3407 wider attention.  I recommend signing and donating to each one of
3408 these. :)</p>
3409
3410 <p>Via <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2013/18/">Debian
3411 Project News for 2013-10-14</a> I came across the Outreach Program for
3412 Women program which is a Google Summer of Code like initiative to get
3413 more women involved in free software.  One debian sponsor has offered
3414 to match <a href="http://debian.ch/opw2013">any donation done to Debian
3415 earmarked</a> for this initiative.  I donated a few minutes ago, and
3416 hope you will to. :)</p>
3417
3418 <p>And the Electronic Frontier Foundation just announced plans to
3419 create <a href="https://supporters.eff.org/donate/nsa-videos">video
3420 documentaries about the excessive spying</a> on every Internet user that
3421 take place these days, and their need to fund the work.  I've already
3422 donated.  Are you next?</p>
3423
3424 <p>For my Norwegian audience, the organisation Studentenes og
3425 Akademikernes Internasjonale Hjelpefond is collecting signatures for a
3426 statement under the heading
3427 <a href="http://saih.no/Bloggers_United/">Bloggers United for Open
3428 Access</a> for those of us asking for more focus on open access in the
3429 Norwegian government.  So far 499 signatures.  I hope you will sign it
3430 too.</p>
3431
3432       </div>
3433       <div class="tags">
3434
3435
3436         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/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
3437
3438
3439       </div>
3440     </div>
3441     <div class="padding"></div>
3442
3443     <div class="entry">
3444       <div class="title">
3445         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Oslo_community_mesh_network___with_NUUG_and_Hackeriet_at_Hausmania.html">Oslo community mesh network - with NUUG and Hackeriet at Hausmania</a>
3446       </div>
3447       <div class="date">
3448         11th October 2013
3449       </div>
3450       <div class="body">
3451         <p>Wireless mesh networks are self organising and self healing
3452 networks that can be used to connect computers across small and large
3453 areas, depending on the radio technology used.  Normal wifi equipment
3454 can be used to create home made radio networks, and there are several
3455 successful examples like
3456 <a href="http://www.freifunk.net/">Freifunk</a> and
3457 <a href="http://www.awmn.net/">Athens Wireless Metropolitan Network</a>
3458 (see
3459 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wireless_community_networks_by_region#Greece">wikipedia
3460 for a large list</a>) around the globe.  To give you an idea how it
3461 work, check out the nice overview of the Kiel Freifunk community which
3462 can be seen from their
3463 <a href="http://freifunk.in-kiel.de/ffmap/nodes.html">dynamically
3464 updated node graph and map</a>, where one can see how the mesh nodes
3465 automatically handle routing and recover from nodes disappearing.
3466 There is also a small community mesh network group in Oslo, Norway,
3467 and that is the main topic of this blog post.</p>
3468
3469 <p>I've wanted to check out mesh networks for a while now, and hoped
3470 to do it as part of my involvement with the <a
3471 href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG member organisation</a> community, and
3472 my recent involvement in
3473 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the Freedombox project</a>
3474 finally lead me to give mesh networks some priority, as I suspect a
3475 Freedombox should use mesh networks to connect neighbours and family
3476 when possible, given that most communication between people are
3477 between those nearby (as shown for example by research on Facebook
3478 communication patterns).  It also allow people to communicate without
3479 any central hub to tap into for those that want to listen in on the
3480 private communication of citizens, which have become more and more
3481 important over the years.</p>
3482
3483 <p>So far I have only been able to find one group of people in Oslo
3484 working on community mesh networks, over at the hack space
3485 <a href="http://hackeriet.no/">Hackeriet</a> at Husmania.  They seem to
3486 have started with some Freifunk based effort using OLSR, called
3487 <a href="http://oslo.freifunk.net/index.php?title=Main_Page">the Oslo
3488 Freifunk project</a>, but that effort is now dead and the people
3489 behind it have moved on to a batman-adv based system called
3490 <a href="http://meshfx.org/trac">meshfx</a>.  Unfortunately the wiki
3491 site for the Oslo Freifunk project is no longer possible to update to
3492 reflect this fact, so the old project page can't be updated to point to
3493 the new project.  A while back, the people at Hackeriet invited people
3494 from the Freifunk community to Oslo to talk about mesh networks.  I
3495 came across this video where Hans Jørgen Lysglimt interview the
3496 speakers about this talk (from
3497 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2Kd7CLkhSY">youtube</a>):</p>
3498
3499 <p><iframe width="420" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/N2Kd7CLkhSY" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
3500
3501 <p>I mentioned OLSR and batman-adv, which are mesh routing protocols.
3502 There are heaps of different protocols, and I am still struggling to
3503 figure out which one would be "best" for some definitions of best, but
3504 given that the community mesh group in Oslo is so small, I believe it
3505 is best to hook up with the existing one instead of trying to create a
3506 completely different setup, and thus I have decided to focus on
3507 batman-adv for now.  It sure help me to  know that the very cool
3508 <a href="http://www.servalproject.org/">Serval project in Australia</a>
3509 is using batman-adv as their meshing technology when it create a self
3510 organizing and self healing telephony system for disaster areas and
3511 less industrialized communities.  Check out this cool video presenting
3512 that project (from
3513 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30qNfzJCQOA">youtube</a>):</p>
3514
3515 <p><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/30qNfzJCQOA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
3516
3517 <p>According to the wikipedia page on
3518 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_mesh_network">Wireless
3519 mesh network</a> there are around 70 competing schemes for routing
3520 packets across mesh networks, and OLSR, B.A.T.M.A.N. and
3521 B.A.T.M.A.N. advanced are protocols used by several free software
3522 based community mesh networks.</p>
3523
3524 <p>The batman-adv protocol is a bit special, as it provide layer 2
3525 (as in ethernet ) routing, allowing ipv4 and ipv6 to work on the same
3526 network.  One way to think about it is that it provide a mesh based
3527 vlan you can bridge to or handle like any other vlan connected to your
3528 computer.  The required drivers are already in the Linux kernel at
3529 least since Debian Wheezy, and it is fairly easy to set up.  A
3530 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki/Quick-start-guide">good
3531 introduction</a> is available from the Open Mesh project.  These are
3532 the key settings needed to join the Oslo meshfx network:</p>
3533
3534 <p><table>
3535 <tr><th>Setting</th><th>Value</th></tr>
3536 <tr><td>Protocol / kernel module</td><td>batman-adv</td></tr>
3537 <tr><td>ESSID</td><td>meshfx@hackeriet</td></tr>
3538 <td>Channel / Frequency</td><td>11 / 2462</td></tr>
3539 <td>Cell ID</td><td>02:BA:00:00:00:01</td>
3540 </table></p>
3541
3542 <p>The reason for setting ad-hoc wifi Cell ID is to work around bugs
3543 in firmware used in wifi card and wifi drivers.  (See a nice post from
3544 VillageTelco about
3545 "<a href="http://tiebing.blogspot.no/2009/12/ad-hoc-cell-splitting-re-post-original.html">Information
3546 about cell-id splitting, stuck beacons, and failed IBSS merges!</a>
3547 for details.)  When these settings are activated and you have some
3548 other mesh node nearby, your computer will be connected to the mesh
3549 network and can communicate with any mesh node that is connected to
3550 any of the nodes in your network of nodes. :)</p>
3551
3552 <p>My initial plan was to reuse my old Linksys WRT54GL as a mesh node,
3553 but that seem to be very hard, as I have not been able to locate a
3554 firmware supporting batman-adv.  If anyone know how to use that old
3555 wifi access point with batman-adv these days, please let me know.</p>
3556
3557 <p>If you find this project interesting and want to join, please join
3558 us on IRC, either channel
3559 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#oslohackerspace">#oslohackerspace</a>
3560 or <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#nuug">#nuug</a> on
3561 irc.freenode.net.</p>
3562
3563 <p>While investigating mesh networks in Oslo, I came across an old
3564 research paper from the university of Stavanger and Telenor Research
3565 and Innovation called
3566 <a href="http://folk.uio.no/paalee/publications/netrel-egeland-iswcs-2008.pdf">The
3567 reliability of wireless backhaul mesh networks</a> and elsewhere
3568 learned that Telenor have been experimenting with mesh networks at
3569 Grünerløkka in Oslo.  So mesh networks are also interesting for
3570 commercial companies, even though Telenor discovered that it was hard
3571 to figure out a good business plan for mesh networking and as far as I
3572 know have closed down the experiment.  Perhaps Telenor or others would
3573 be interested in a cooperation?</p>
3574
3575 <p><strong>Update 2013-10-12</strong>: I was just
3576 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2013-October/005900.html">told
3577 by the Serval project developers</a> that they no longer use
3578 batman-adv (but are compatible with it), but their own crypto based
3579 mesh system.</p>
3580
3581       </div>
3582       <div class="tags">
3583
3584
3585         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
3586
3587
3588       </div>
3589     </div>
3590     <div class="padding"></div>
3591
3592     <div class="entry">
3593       <div class="title">
3594         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_7_1_install_and_overview_video_from_Marcelo_Salvador.html">Skolelinux / Debian Edu 7.1 install and overview video from Marcelo Salvador</a>
3595       </div>
3596       <div class="date">
3597          8th October 2013
3598       </div>
3599       <div class="body">
3600         <p>The other day I was pleased and surprised to discover that Marcelo
3601 Salvador had published a
3602 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-GgpdqgLFc">video on
3603 Youtube</a> showing how to install the standalone Debian Edu /
3604 Skolelinux profile.  This is the profile intended for use at home or
3605 on laptops that should not be integrated into the provided network
3606 services (no central home directory, no Kerberos / LDAP directory etc,
3607 in other word a single user machine).  The result is 11 minutes long,
3608 and show some user applications (seem to be rather randomly picked).
3609 Missed a few of my favorites like celestia, planets and chromium
3610 showing the <a href="http://www.zygotebody.com/">Zygote Body 3D model
3611 of the human body</a>, but I guess he did not know about those or find
3612 other programs more interesting. :) And the video do not show the
3613 advantages I believe is one of the most valuable featuers in Debian
3614 Edu, its central school server making it possible to run hundreds of
3615 computers without hard drives by installing one central
3616 <a href="http://www.ltsp.org/">LTSP server</a>.</p>
3617
3618 <p>Anyway, check out the video, embedded below and linked to above:</p>
3619
3620 <iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/w-GgpdqgLFc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
3621
3622 <p>Are there other nice videos demonstrating Skolelinux?  Please let
3623 me know. :)</p>
3624
3625       </div>
3626       <div class="tags">
3627
3628
3629         Tags: <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/video">video</a>.
3630
3631
3632       </div>
3633     </div>
3634     <div class="padding"></div>
3635
3636     <div class="entry">
3637       <div class="title">
3638         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Finally__Debian_Edu_Wheezy_is_released_today_.html">Finally, Debian Edu Wheezy is released today!</a>
3639       </div>
3640       <div class="date">
3641         29th September 2013
3642       </div>
3643       <div class="body">
3644         <p>A few hours ago, the announcement for the first stable release of
3645 Debian Edu Wheezy went out from the Debian publicity team.  The
3646 complete announcement text can be found at
3647 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130928">the Debian News
3648 section</a>, translated to several languages.  Please check it out.</p>
3649
3650 <p>There is one minor known problem that we will fix very soon.  One
3651 can not install a amd64 Thin Client Server using PXE, as the /var/
3652 partition is too small.  A workaround is to extend the partition (use
3653 lvresize + resize2fs in tty 2 while installing).</p>
3654
3655       </div>
3656       <div class="tags">
3657
3658
3659         Tags: <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>.
3660
3661
3662       </div>
3663     </div>
3664     <div class="padding"></div>
3665
3666     <div class="entry">
3667       <div class="title">
3668         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Videos_about_the_Freedombox_project___for_inspiration_and_learning.html">Videos about the Freedombox project - for inspiration and learning</a>
3669       </div>
3670       <div class="date">
3671         27th September 2013
3672       </div>
3673       <div class="body">
3674         <p>The <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox
3675 project</a> have been going on for a while, and have presented the
3676 vision, ideas and solution several places.  Here is a little
3677 collection of videos of talks and presentation of the project.</p>
3678
3679 <ul>
3680
3681 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukvUz5taxvA">FreedomBox -
3682 2,5 minute marketing film</a> (Youtube)</li>
3683
3684 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzW25QTVWsE">Eben Moglen
3685 discusses the Freedombox on CBS news 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
3686
3687 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae8SZbxfE0g">Eben Moglen -
3688 Freedom in the Cloud - Software Freedom, Privacy and and Security for
3689 Web 2.0 and Cloud computing at ISOC-NY Public Meeting 2010</a>
3690 (Youtube)</li>
3691
3692 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNaIji_3xBE">Fosdem 2011
3693 Keynote by Eben Moglen presenting the Freedombox</a> (Youtube)</li>
3694
3695 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bDDUyJSQ9s">Presentation of
3696 the Freedombox by James Vasile at Elevate in Gratz 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
3697
3698 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQTmnk27g9s"> Freedombox -
3699 Discovery, Identity, and Trust by Nick Daly at Freedombox Hackfest New
3700 York City in 2012</a> (Youtube)</li>
3701
3702 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkbSB4Ba7Ck">Introduction
3703 to the Freedombox at Freedombox Hackfest New York City in 2012</a>
3704 (Youtube)</li>
3705
3706 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-P2Jaeg0aQ">Freedom, Out
3707 of the Box! by Bdale Garbee at linux.conf.au Ballarat, 2012</a> (Youtube) </li>
3708
3709 <li><a href="https://archive.fosdem.org/2013/schedule/event/freedombox/">Freedombox
3710 1.0 by Eben Moglen and Bdale Garbee at Fosdem 2013</a> (FOSDEM) </li>
3711
3712 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1LpYX2zVYg">What is the
3713 FreedomBox today by Bdale Garbee at Debconf13 in Vaumarcus
3714 2013</a> (Youtube)</li>
3715
3716 </ul>
3717
3718 <p>A larger list is available from
3719 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/TalksAndPresentations">the
3720 Freedombox Wiki</a>.</p>
3721
3722 <p>On other news, I am happy to report that Freedombox based on Debian
3723 Jessie is coming along quite well, and soon both Owncloud and using
3724 Tor should be available for testers of the Freedombox solution. :) In
3725 a few weeks I hope everything needed to test it is included in Debian.
3726 The withsqlite package is already in Debian, and the plinth package is
3727 pending in NEW.  The third and vital part of that puzzle is the
3728 metapackage/setup framework, which is still pending an upload.  Join
3729 us on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC
3730 (#freedombox on irc.debian.org)</a> and
3731 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
3732 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
3733
3734       </div>
3735       <div class="tags">
3736
3737
3738         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/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
3739
3740
3741       </div>
3742     </div>
3743     <div class="padding"></div>
3744
3745     <div class="entry">
3746       <div class="title">
3747         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_and_probably_last_beta_release_of_Debian_Edu_Wheezy.html">Third and probably last beta release of Debian Edu Wheezy</a>
3748       </div>
3749       <div class="date">
3750         16th September 2013
3751       </div>
3752       <div class="body">
3753         <p>The third wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
3754 today.  This is the release announcement from Holger Levsen:</p>
3755
3756 <blockquote>
3757 <p>Hi,</p>
3758
3759 <p>it is my pleasure to announce the third beta release (beta 2 for
3760 short) of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
3761 Skolelinux</a> based on Debian Wheezy!</p>
3762
3763 <p>Please test these images extensivly, if no new problems are found
3764 we plan to do this final Debian Edu Wheezy release this coming
3765 weekend.  We are not aware of any major problems or blockers in beta2,
3766 if you find something, please notify us immediately!</p>
3767
3768 <p>(More about the remaining steps for the Edu Wheezy release in
3769 another mail to the edu list tonight or tomorrow...)</p>
3770
3771 <p>Noteworthy changes and software updates for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b2
3772 compared to beta1:</p>
3773
3774 <ul>
3775
3776 <li>The KDE proxy setup has been adjusted to use the provided wpad.dat. This
3777 also gets Chromium to use this proxy.</li>
3778 <li>Install kdepim-groupware with KDE desktops to make sure korganizer
3779 understand ical/dav sources.</li>
3780 <li>Increased default maximum size of /var/spool/squid and /skole/backup on the
3781 main server.</li>
3782 <li>A source DVD image containing all source packages is now available as well.</li>
3783 <li>Updates for chromium (29.0.1547.57-1~deb7u1), imagemagick
3784 (6.7.7.10-5+deb7u2), php5 (5.4.4-14+deb7u4), libmodplug
3785 (0.8.8.4-3+deb7u1+git20130828), tiff (4.0.2-6+deb7u2), linux-image
3786 (3.2.0-4-486_3.2.46-1+deb7u1).</li>
3787
3788 </ul>
3789
3790 <p>Where to get it:</p>
3791
3792 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
3793
3794 <ul>
3795 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso</a></li>
3796 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso</a></li>
3797 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso .</li>
3798 </ul>
3799
3800 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is:  3a1c89f4666df80eebcd46c5bf5fedb866f9472f</p>
3801
3802 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use
3803 <ul>
3804 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso</a></li>
3805 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso</a></li>
3806 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso .</li>
3807 </ul>
3808
3809 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 702d1718548f401c74bfa6df9f032cc3ee16597e</p>
3810
3811 <p>The Source DVD image has the filename
3812 debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-source-DVD.iso and the SHA1SUM
3813 089eed8b3f962db47aae1f6a9685e9bb2fa30ca5 and is available the same way
3814 as the other isos.</p>
3815
3816 <p>How to report bugs</p>
3817
3818 <p>For information how to report bugs please see
3819 <br><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
3820
3821
3822 <p>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</p>
3823
3824 <p>Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based
3825 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
3826 configured school network. Immediately after installation a school
3827 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
3828 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
3829 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
3830 initial installation of the main server from CD or USB stick all other
3831 machines can be installed via the network. The provided school server
3832 provides LDAP database and Kerberos authentication service,
3833 centralized home directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other
3834 services.  The desktop contains more than 60 educational software
3835 packages and more are available from the Debian archive, and schools
3836 can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
3837
3838 <p>This is the seventh test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
3839 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
3840 Squeeze release.</p>
3841
3842 <p>Notes for upgrades from Alpha Prereleases</p>
3843
3844 <p>Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
3845 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
3846 release. Both alpha and beta0 based installations should reinstall or
3847 deal with gosa.conf manually; there are two options: (1) Keep
3848 gosa.conf and edit this file as outlined on the mailing list. (2)
3849 Accept the new version of gosa.conf and replace both contained admin
3850 password placeholders with the password hashes found in the old one
3851 (backup copy!). In both cases all users need to change their password
3852 to make sure a password is set for CIFS access to their home
3853 directory.</p>
3854
3855
3856 <p>cheers,
3857 <br>        Holger</p>
3858 </blockquote>
3859
3860       </div>
3861       <div class="tags">
3862
3863
3864         Tags: <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>.
3865
3866
3867       </div>
3868     </div>
3869     <div class="padding"></div>
3870
3871     <div class="entry">
3872       <div class="title">
3873         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Recipe_to_test_the_Freedombox_project_on_amd64_or_Raspberry_Pi.html">Recipe to test the Freedombox project on amd64 or Raspberry Pi</a>
3874       </div>
3875       <div class="date">
3876         10th September 2013
3877       </div>
3878       <div class="body">
3879         <p>I was introduced to the
3880 <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox project</a>
3881 in 2010, when Eben Moglen presented his vision about serving the need
3882 of non-technical people to keep their personal information private and
3883 within the legal protection of their own homes.  The idea is to give
3884 people back the power over their network and machines, and return
3885 Internet back to its intended peer-to-peer architecture.  Instead of
3886 depending on a central service, the Freedombox will give everyone
3887 control over their own basic infrastructure.</p>
3888
3889 <p>I've intended to join the effort since then, but other tasks have
3890 taken priority.  But this summers nasty news about the misuse of trust
3891 and privilege exercised by the "western" intelligence gathering
3892 communities increased my eagerness to contribute to a point where I
3893 actually started working on the project a while back.</p>
3894
3895 <p>The <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/freedombox/">initial
3896 Debian initiative</a> based on the vision from Eben Moglen, is to
3897 create a simple and cheap Debian based appliance that anyone can hook
3898 up in their home and get access to secure and private services and
3899 communication.  The initial deployment platform have been the
3900 <a href="http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/t-dreamplugdetails.aspx">Dreamplug</a>,
3901 which is a piece of hardware I do not own.  So to be able to test what
3902 the current Freedombox setup look like, I had to come up with a way to install
3903 it on some hardware I do have access to.  I have rewritten the
3904 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedom-maker">freedom-maker</a>
3905 image build framework to use .deb packages instead of only copying
3906 setup into the boot images, and thanks to this rewrite I am able to
3907 set up any machine supported by Debian Wheezy as a Freedombox, using
3908 the previously mentioned deb (and a few support debs for packages
3909 missing in Debian).</p>
3910
3911 <p>The current Freedombox setup consist of a set of bootstrapping
3912 scripts
3913 (<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>),
3914 and a administrative web interface
3915 (<a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/Plinth">plinth</a> + exmachina +
3916 withsqlite), as well as a privacy enhancing proxy based on
3917 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>
3918 (freedombox-privoxy).  There is also a web/javascript based XMPP
3919 client (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/jwchat">jwchat</a>)
3920 trying (unsuccessfully so far) to talk to the XMPP server
3921 (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/ejabberd">ejabberd</a>).  The
3922 web interface is pluggable, and the goal is to use it to enable OpenID
3923 services, mesh network connectivity, use of TOR, etc, etc.  Not much of
3924 this is really working yet, see
3925 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedombox-todos/blob/master/TODO">the
3926 project TODO</a> for links to GIT repositories.  Most of the code is
3927 on github at the moment.  The HTTP proxy is operational out of the
3928 box, and the admin web interface can be used to add/remove plinth
3929 users.  I've not been able to do anything else with it so far, but
3930 know there are several branches spread around github and other places
3931 with lots of half baked features.</p>
3932
3933 <p>Anyway, if you want to have a look at the current state, the
3934 following recipes should work to give you a test machine to poke
3935 at.</p>
3936
3937 <p><strong>Debian Wheezy amd64</strong></p>
3938
3939 <ol>
3940
3941 <li>Fetch normal Debian Wheezy installation ISO.</li>
3942 <li>Boot from it, either as CD or USB stick.</li>
3943 <li><p>Press [tab] on the boot prompt and add this as a boot argument
3944 to the Debian installer:<p>
3945 <pre>url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat</a></pre></li>
3946
3947 <li>Answer the few language/region/password questions and pick disk to
3948 install on.</li>
3949
3950 <li>When the installation is finished and the machine have rebooted a
3951 few times, your Freedombox is ready for testing.</li>
3952
3953 </ol>
3954
3955 <p><strong>Raspberry Pi Raspbian</strong></p>
3956
3957 <ol>
3958
3959 <li>Fetch a Raspbian SD card image, create SD card.</li>
3960 <li>Boot from SD card, extend file system to fill the card completely.</li>
3961 <li><p>Log in and add this to /etc/sources.list:</p>
3962 <pre>
3963 deb <a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox</a> wheezy main
3964 </pre></li>
3965 <li><p>Run this as root:</p>
3966 <pre>
3967 wget -O - http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/BE1A583D.asc | \
3968    apt-key add -
3969 apt-get update
3970 apt-get install freedombox-setup
3971 /usr/lib/freedombox/setup
3972 </pre></li>
3973 <li>Reboot into your freshly created Freedombox.</li>
3974
3975 </ol>
3976
3977 <p>You can test it on other architectures too, but because the
3978 freedombox-privoxy package is binary, it will only work as intended on
3979 the architectures where I have had time to build the binary and put it
3980 in my APT repository.  But do not let this stop you.  It is only a
3981 short "<tt>apt-get source -b freedombox-privoxy</tt>" away. :)</p>
3982
3983 <p>Note that by default Freedombox is a DHCP server on the
3984 192.168.1.0/24 subnet, so if this is your subnet be careful and turn
3985 off the DHCP server by running "<tt>update-rc.d isc-dhcp-server
3986 disable</tt>" as root.</p>
3987
3988 <p>Please let me know if this works for you, or if you have any
3989 problems.  We gather on the IRC channel
3990 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">#freedombox</a> on
3991 irc.debian.org and the
3992 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">project
3993 mailing list</a>.</p>
3994
3995 <p>Once you get your freedombox operational, you can visit
3996 <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/</tt> to see the state of the plint
3997 welcome screen (dead end - do not be surprised if you are unable to
3998 get past it), and next visit <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/help/</tt>
3999 to look at the rest of plinth.  The default user is 'admin' and the
4000 default password is 'secret'.</p>
4001
4002       </div>
4003       <div class="tags">
4004
4005
4006         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/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
4007
4008
4009       </div>
4010     </div>
4011     <div class="padding"></div>
4012
4013     <div class="entry">
4014       <div class="title">
4015         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_beta_release__beta_1__of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Second beta release (beta 1) of Debian Edu/Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
4016       </div>
4017       <div class="date">
4018         22nd August 2013
4019       </div>
4020       <div class="body">
4021         <p>The second wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
4022 today, slightly delayed because of some bugs in the initial Windows
4023 integration fixes .  This is the release announcement:</p>
4024
4025 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b1 released 2013-08-22</strong></p>
4026
4027 <p>These are the release notes for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
4028 7.1+edu0~b1, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
4029
4030 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
4031
4032 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
4033 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
4034 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
4035 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
4036 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
4037 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
4038 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
4039 the main server from CD or USB stick all other machines can be
4040 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
4041 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
4042 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
4043 desktop contains
4044 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
4045 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
4046 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
4047 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
4048
4049 <p>This is the sixth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically this
4050 is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the Squeeze
4051 release.</p>
4052
4053 <p>ALERT: Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
4054 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
4055 release. Both alpha and beta0 based installations should reinstall or
4056 deal with gosa.conf manually; there are two options: (1) Keep
4057 gosa.conf and edit this file as outlined
4058 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/08/msg00127.html">on
4059 the mailing list</a>. (2) Accept the new version of gosa.conf and
4060 replace both contained admin password placeholders with the password
4061 hashes found in the old one (backup copy!). In both cases every user
4062 need to change their their password to make sure a password is set for
4063 CIFS access to their home directory.</p>
4064
4065 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
4066
4067 <ul>
4068
4069 <li>Added ssh askpass packages to default installation, to ensure ssh
4070     work also without a attached tty.</li>
4071 <li>Add the command-not-found package to the default installation to
4072     make it easier to figure out where to find missing command line
4073     tools. Please note, that the command 'update-command-not-found'
4074     has to be run as root to actually make it useful (internet access
4075     required).</li>
4076
4077 </ul>
4078
4079 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
4080
4081 <ul>
4082
4083 <li>Adjusted the USB stick ISO image build to include every tool
4084 needed for desktop=xfce installations.</li>
4085 <li>Adjust thin-client-server task to work when installing from USB
4086 stick ISO image.</li>
4087 <li>Made new grub artwork (changed png from indexed to RGB format).</li>
4088 <li>Minor cleanup in the CUPS setup.</li>
4089 <li>Make sure that bootstrapping of the Samba domain really happens
4090     during installation of the main server and adjust SID handling to
4091     cope with this.</li>
4092 <li>Make Samba passwords changeable (again) via GOsa².</li>
4093 <li>Fix generation of LM and NT password hashes via GOsa² to avoid
4094     empty password hashes.</li>
4095 <li>Adapted Samba machine domain joining to latest change in the
4096     smbldap-tools Perl package, fixing bugs blocking Windows machines
4097     from joining the Samba domain.</li>
4098
4099 </ul>
4100
4101 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
4102
4103 <ul>
4104
4105 <li>KDE fails to understand the wpad.dat file provided, causing it to
4106     not use the http proxy as it should.</li>
4107 <li>Chromium also fails to use the proxy when using the KDE desktop
4108     (using the KDE configuration).</li>
4109
4110 </ul>
4111
4112 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
4113
4114 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
4115
4116 <ul>
4117
4118 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso</a></li>
4119
4120 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso</a></li>
4121
4122 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso .</li>
4123
4124 </ul>
4125
4126 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 1e357f80b55e703523f2254adde6d78b
4127 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 7157f9be5fd27c7694d713c6ecfed61c3edda3b2</p>
4128
4129 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
4130
4131 <ul>
4132
4133 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso</a></li>
4134 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso</a></li>
4135 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso .</li>
4136
4137 </ul>
4138
4139 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 7a8408ead59cf7e3cef25afb6e91590b
4140 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: f1817c031f02790d5edb3bfa0dcf8451088ad119</p>
4141
4142
4143 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
4144
4145 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
4146
4147       </div>
4148       <div class="tags">
4149
4150
4151         Tags: <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>.
4152
4153
4154       </div>
4155     </div>
4156     <div class="padding"></div>
4157
4158     <div class="entry">
4159       <div class="title">
4160         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_180_SSD_disk_with_Lenovo_firmware_can_not_use_Intel_firmware.html">Intel 180 SSD disk with Lenovo firmware can not use Intel firmware</a>
4161       </div>
4162       <div class="date">
4163         18th August 2013
4164       </div>
4165       <div class="body">
4166         <p>Earlier, I reported about
4167 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html">my
4168 problems using an Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB disk</a>.  Friday I was
4169 told by IBM that the original disk should be thrown away.  And as
4170 there no longer was a problem if I bricked the firmware, I decided
4171 today to try to install Intel firmware to replace the Lenovo firmware
4172 currently on the disk.</p>
4173
4174 <p>I searched the Intel site for firmware, and found
4175 <a href="https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&ProdId=3472&DwnldID=18363&ProductFamily=Solid-State+Drives+and+Caching&ProductLine=Intel%c2%ae+High+Performance+Solid-State+Drive&ProductProduct=Intel%c2%ae+SSD+520+Series+(180GB%2c+2.5in+SATA+6Gb%2fs%2c+25nm%2c+MLC)&lang=eng">issdfut_2.0.4.iso</a>
4176 (aka Intel SATA Solid-State Drive Firmware Update Tool) which
4177 according to the site should contain the latest firmware for SSD
4178 disks.  I inserted the broken disk in one of my spare laptops and
4179 booted the ISO from a USB stick.  The disk was recognized, but the
4180 program claimed the newest firmware already were installed and refused
4181 to insert any Intel firmware.  So no change, and the disk is still
4182 unable to handle write load. :( I guess the only way to get them
4183 working would be if Lenovo releases new firmware.  No idea how likely
4184 that is.  Anyway, just blogging about this test for completeness.  I
4185 got a working Samsung disk, and see no point in spending more time on
4186 the broken disks.</p>
4187
4188       </div>
4189       <div class="tags">
4190
4191
4192         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>.
4193
4194
4195       </div>
4196     </div>
4197     <div class="padding"></div>
4198
4199     <div class="entry">
4200       <div class="title">
4201         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/90_percent_done_with_the_Norwegian_draft_translation_of_Free_Culture.html">90 percent done with the Norwegian draft translation of Free Culture</a>
4202       </div>
4203       <div class="date">
4204          2nd August 2013
4205       </div>
4206       <div class="body">
4207         <p>It has been a while since my last update.  Since last summer, I
4208 have worked on a Norwegian
4209 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
4210 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
4211 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with the copyright
4212 law.  Yesterday, I finally broken the 90% mark, when counting the
4213 number of strings to translate.  Due to real life constraints, I have
4214 not had time to work on it since March, but when the summer broke out,
4215 I found time to work on it again.  Still lots of work left, but the
4216 first draft is nearing completion.  I created a graph to show the
4217 progress of the translation:</p>
4218
4219 <p><img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png"></p>
4220
4221 <p>When the first draft is done, the translated text need to be
4222 proof read, and the remaining formatting problems with images and SVG
4223 drawings need to be fixed.  There are probably also some index entries
4224 missing that need to be added.  This can be done by comparing the
4225 index entries listed in the SiSU version of the book, or comparing the
4226 English docbook version with the paper version.  Last, the colophon
4227 page with ISBN numbers etc need to be wrapped up before the release is
4228 done.  I should also figure out how to get correct Norwegian sorting
4229 of the index pages.  All docbook tools I have tried so far (xmlto,
4230 docbook-xsl, dblatex) get the order of symbols and the special
4231 Norwegian letters ÆØÅ wrong.</p>
4232
4233 <p>There is still need for translators and people with docbook
4234 knowledge, to be able to get a good looking book (I still struggle
4235 with dblatex, xmlto and docbook-xsl) as well as to do the draft
4236 translation and proof reading.  And I would like the figures to be
4237 redrawn as SVGs to make it easy to translate them.  Any SVG master
4238 around?  There are also some legal terms that are unfamiliar to me.
4239 If you want to help, please get in touch with me, and check out the
4240 project files currently available from
4241 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
4242
4243 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
4244 the updated
4245 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
4246 and
4247 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
4248 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
4249 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
4250 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
4251
4252       </div>
4253       <div class="tags">
4254
4255
4256         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
4257
4258
4259       </div>
4260     </div>
4261     <div class="padding"></div>
4262
4263     <div class="entry">
4264       <div class="title">
4265         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_beta_release_of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">First beta release of Debian Edu/Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
4266       </div>
4267       <div class="date">
4268         27th July 2013
4269       </div>
4270       <div class="body">
4271         <p>The first wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
4272 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
4273
4274 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b0 released
4275 2013-07-27</strong></p>
4276
4277 <p>These are the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
4278 7.1+edu0~b0, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
4279
4280 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
4281
4282 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
4283 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
4284 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
4285 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
4286 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
4287 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
4288 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
4289 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
4290 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
4291 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
4292 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
4293 desktop contains
4294 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
4295 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
4296 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
4297 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
4298
4299 <p>This is the fifth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
4300 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
4301 Squeeze release.</p>
4302
4303 <p>ALERT: Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
4304 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
4305 release.</p>
4306
4307 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
4308
4309 <ul>
4310
4311 <li>Switched roaming workstation profiles from wicd to network-manager
4312    for network configuration, as wicd didn't work any more.</li>
4313 <li>Changed version numbers of patched gosa and libpam-mklocaluser
4314    packages to make sure our locally patched versions will be replaced
4315    by the official packages when they are released from Debian. Those
4316    installing alpha version need to reinstall or manually downgrade gosa
4317    and libpam-mklocaluser.</li>
4318 <li>Added bluetooth tools to the default desktop (bluedevil, blueman).</li>
4319 <li>Added tools for sharing the desktop on KDE (krdc, krfb).</li>
4320 <li>Added valgrind to the default installation for easier debugging of
4321    crash bugs.</li>
4322
4323 </ul>
4324
4325 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
4326
4327 <ul>
4328
4329 <li>Fixed artwork package to work with gnome, no longer break
4330    desktop=gnome installations.</li>
4331 <li>Adjusted installer to now work when forced to use a proxy with the
4332    netinst CD.</li>
4333 <li>Fixed code detecting and setting/loading hardware specific
4334    setup/firmware to work more robust out of the box.</li>
4335 <li>Adjusted Kerberos setup to detect realm and server settings at
4336    install time instead of dynamically at run time. This avoid a crash
4337    with krb5-auth-dialog on diskless workstations without a DNS name.</li>
4338 <li>Worked around misfeature in network-manager not calling the dhclient
4339    exit hooks, causing automatic proxy configuration and automatic host
4340    name setting at run time to work again.</li>
4341 <li>Fixed feature setting the default Iceweasel start page from URL
4342    fetched from LDAP, to allow schools to set the global default by
4343    updating the dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no LDAP object.</li>
4344 <li>Changed default host name on all networked machines to be unique
4345    (generated from MAC or reverse DNS) after boot.</li>
4346 <li>Adjusted partition sizes to make sure they are big enough.</li>
4347
4348 </ul>
4349
4350 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
4351
4352 <ul>
4353
4354 <li>Grub is missing the new artwork.</li>
4355 <li>KDE fail to understand the wpad.dat file provided, causing it to
4356     not use the http proxy as it should.</li>
4357 <li>Chromium also fail to use the proxy.</li>
4358
4359 </ul>
4360
4361 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
4362
4363 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
4364
4365 <ul>
4366
4367 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso</a></li>
4368
4369 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso</a></li>
4370
4371 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso .</li>
4372
4373 </ul>
4374
4375 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 55d5de9765b6dccd5d9ec33cf1a07109
4376 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 996a1d9517740e4d627d100de2d12b23dd545a3f</p>
4377
4378 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
4379
4380 <ul>
4381
4382 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso</a></li>
4383 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso</a></li>
4384 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso .</li>
4385
4386 </ul>
4387
4388 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: d8f0818c51a78d357de794066f289f69
4389 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 49185ca354e8d0543240423746924f76a6cee733</p>
4390
4391
4392 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
4393
4394 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
4395
4396       </div>
4397       <div class="tags">
4398
4399
4400         Tags: <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>.
4401
4402
4403       </div>
4404     </div>
4405     <div class="padding"></div>
4406
4407     <div class="entry">
4408       <div class="title">
4409         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html">How to fix a Thinkpad X230 with a broken 180 GB SSD disk</a>
4410       </div>
4411       <div class="date">
4412         17th July 2013
4413       </div>
4414       <div class="body">
4415         <p>Today I switched to
4416 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">my
4417 new laptop</a>.  I've previously written about the problems I had with
4418 my new Thinkpad X230, which was delivered with an
4419 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_SSD_520_Series_180_GB_with_Lenovo_firmware_still_lock_up_from_sustained_writes.html">180
4420 GB Intel SSD disk with Lenovo firmware</a> that did not handle
4421 sustained writes.  My hardware supplier have been very forthcoming in
4422 trying to find a solution, and after first trying with another
4423 identical 180 GB disks they decided to send me a 256 GB Samsung SSD
4424 disk instead to fix it once and for all.  The Samsung disk survived
4425 the installation of Debian with encrypted disks (filling the disk with
4426 random data during installation killed the first two), and I thus
4427 decided to trust it with my data.  I have installed it as a Debian Edu
4428 Wheezy roaming workstation hooked up with my Debian Edu Squeeze main
4429 server at home using Kerberos and LDAP, and will use it as my work
4430 station from now on.</p>
4431
4432 <p>As this is a solid state disk with no moving parts, I believe the
4433 Debian Wheezy default installation need to be tuned a bit to increase
4434 performance and increase life time of the disk.  The Linux kernel and
4435 user space applications do not yet adjust automatically to such
4436 environment.  To make it easier for my self, I created a draft Debian
4437 package <tt>ssd-setup</tt> to handle this tuning.  The
4438 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/ssd-setup.git">source
4439 for the ssd-setup package</a> is available from collab-maint, and it
4440 is set up to adjust the setup of the machine by just installing the
4441 package.  If there is any non-SSD disk in the machine, the package
4442 will refuse to install, as I did not try to write any logic to sort
4443 file systems in SSD and non-SSD file systems.</p>
4444
4445 <p>I consider the package a draft, as I am a bit unsure how to best
4446 set up Debian Wheezy with an SSD.  It is adjusted to my use case,
4447 where I set up the machine with one large encrypted partition (in
4448 addition to /boot), put LVM on top of this and set up partitions on
4449 top of this again.  See the README file in the package source for the
4450 references I used to pick the settings.  At the moment these
4451 parameters are tuned:</p>
4452
4453 <ul>
4454
4455 <li>Set up cryptsetup to pass TRIM commands to the physical disk
4456     (adding discard to /etc/crypttab)</li>
4457
4458 <li>Set up LVM to pass on TRIM commands to the underlying device (in
4459     this case a cryptsetup partition) by changing issue_discards from
4460     0 to 1 in /etc/lvm/lvm.conf.</li>
4461
4462 <li>Set relatime as a file system option for ext3 and ext4 file
4463     systems.</li>
4464
4465 <li>Tell swap to use TRIM commands by adding 'discard' to
4466     /etc/fstab.</li>
4467
4468 <li>Change I/O scheduler from cfq to deadline using a udev rule.</li>
4469
4470 <li>Run fstrim on every ext3 and ext4 file system every night (from
4471     cron.daily).</li>
4472
4473 <li>Adjust sysctl values vm.swappiness to 1 and vm.vfs_cache_pressure
4474     to 50 to reduce the kernel eagerness to swap out processes.</li>
4475
4476 </ul>
4477
4478 <p>During installation, I cancelled the part where the installer fill
4479 the disk with random data, as this would kill the SSD performance for
4480 little gain.  My goal with the encrypted file system is to ensure
4481 those stealing my laptop end up with a brick and not a working
4482 computer.  I have no hope in keeping the really resourceful people
4483 from getting the data on the disk (see
4484 <a href="http://xkcd.com/538/">XKCD #538</a> for an explanation why).
4485 Thus I concluded that adding the discard option to crypttab is the
4486 right thing to do.</p>
4487
4488 <p>I considered using the noop I/O scheduler, as several recommended
4489 it for SSD, but others recommended deadline and a benchmark I found
4490 indicated that deadline might be better for interactive use.</p>
4491
4492 <p>I also considered using the 'discard' file system option for ext3
4493 and ext4, but read that it would give a performance hit ever time a
4494 file is removed, and thought it best to that that slowdown once a day
4495 instead of during my work.</p>
4496
4497 <p>My package do not set up tmpfs on /var/run, /var/lock and /tmp, as
4498 this is already done by Debian Edu.</p>
4499
4500 <p>I have not yet started on the user space tuning.  I expect
4501 iceweasel need some tuning, and perhaps other applications too, but
4502 have not yet had time to investigate those parts.</p>
4503
4504 <p>The package should work on Ubuntu too, but I have not yet tested it
4505 there.</p>
4506
4507 <p>As for the answer to the question in the title of this blog post,
4508 as far as I know, the only solution I know about is to replace the
4509 disk.  It might be possible to flash it with Intel firmware instead of
4510 the Lenovo firmware.  But I have not tried and did not want to do so
4511 without approval from Lenovo as I wanted to keep the warranty on the
4512 disk until a solution was found and they wanted the broken disks
4513 back.</p>
4514
4515       </div>
4516       <div class="tags">
4517
4518
4519         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>.
4520
4521
4522       </div>
4523     </div>
4524     <div class="padding"></div>
4525
4526     <div class="entry">
4527       <div class="title">
4528         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_SSD_520_Series_180_GB_with_Lenovo_firmware_still_lock_up_from_sustained_writes.html">Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB with Lenovo firmware still lock up from sustained writes</a>
4529       </div>
4530       <div class="date">
4531         10th July 2013
4532       </div>
4533       <div class="body">
4534         <p>A few days ago, I wrote about
4535 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">the
4536 problems I experienced with my new X230 and its SSD disk</a>, which
4537 was dying during installation because it is unable to cope with
4538 sustained write.  My supplier is in contact with
4539 <a href="http://www.lenovo.com/">Lenovo</a>, and they wanted to send a
4540 replacement disk to try to fix the problem.  They decided to send an
4541 identical model, so my hopes for a permanent fix was slim.</p>
4542
4543 <p>Anyway, today I got the replacement disk and tried to install
4544 Debian Edu Wheezy with encrypted disk on it.  The new disk have the
4545 same firmware version as the original.  This time my hope raised
4546 slightly as the installation progressed, as the original disk used to
4547 die after 4-7% of the disk was written to, while this time it kept
4548 going past 10%, 20%, 40% and even past 50%.  But around 60%, the disk
4549 died again and I was back on square one.  I still do not have a new
4550 laptop with a disk I can trust.  I can not live with a disk that might
4551 lock up when I download a new
4552 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ISO or
4553 other large files.  I look forward to hearing from my supplier with
4554 the next proposal from Lenovo.</p>
4555
4556 <p>The original disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
4557 11S0C38722Z1ZNME35X1TR, ISN: CVCV321407HB180EGN, SA: G57560302, FW:
4558 LF1i, 29MAY2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
4559 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40002756C4, Model:
4560 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
4561 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
4562
4563 <p>The replacement disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
4564 11S0C38722Z1ZNDE34N0L0, ISN: CVCV315306RK180EGN, SA: G57560-302, FW:
4565 LF1i, 22APR2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
4566 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40000AB69E, Model:
4567 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
4568 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
4569
4570 <p>The only difference is in the first number (serial number?), ISN,
4571 SA, date and WNPP values.  Mentioning all the details here in case
4572 someone is able to use the information to find a way to identify the
4573 failing disk among working ones (if any such working disk actually
4574 exist).</p>
4575
4576       </div>
4577       <div class="tags">
4578
4579
4580         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>.
4581
4582
4583       </div>
4584     </div>
4585     <div class="padding"></div>
4586
4587     <div class="entry">
4588       <div class="title">
4589         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/July_13th__Debian_Ubuntu_BSP_and_Skolelinux_Debian_Edu_developer_gathering_in_Oslo.html">July 13th: Debian/Ubuntu BSP and Skolelinux/Debian Edu developer gathering in Oslo</a>
4590       </div>
4591       <div class="date">
4592          9th July 2013
4593       </div>
4594       <div class="body">
4595         <p>The upcoming Saturday, 2013-07-13, we are organising a combined
4596 Debian Edu developer gathering and Debian and Ubuntu bug squashing
4597 party in Oslo.  It is organised by <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the
4598 member assosiation NUUG</a> and
4599 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
4600 project</a> together with <a href="http://bitraf.no/">the hack space
4601 Bitraf</a>.</p>
4602
4603 <p>It starts 10:00 and continue until late evening.  Everyone is
4604 welcome, and there is no fee to participate.  There is on the other
4605 hand limited space, and only room for 30 people.  Please put your name
4606 on <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2013/07/13/no/Oslo">the event
4607 wiki page</a> if you plan to join us.</p>
4608
4609       </div>
4610       <div class="tags">
4611
4612
4613         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>.
4614
4615
4616       </div>
4617     </div>
4618     <div class="padding"></div>
4619
4620     <div class="entry">
4621       <div class="title">
4622         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">The Thinkpad is dead, long live the Thinkpad X230?</a>
4623       </div>
4624       <div class="date">
4625          5th July 2013
4626       </div>
4627       <div class="body">
4628         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a
4629 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">replacement
4630 for my trusty old Thinkpad X41</a>.  Unfortunately I did not have much
4631 time to spend on it, and it took a while to find a model I believe
4632 will do the job, but two days ago the replacement finally arrived.  I
4633 ended up picking a
4634 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad X230</a>
4635 with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu Wheezy as
4636 a roaming workstation, and it seemed to work flawlessly.  But my
4637 second installation with encrypted disk was not as successful.  More
4638 on that below.</p>
4639
4640 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
4641 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
4642 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
4643 feature at <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
4644 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
4645 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks according
4646 to that search interface, so I had to drop specifying the number of
4647 disks from my search parameters.  I also asked around among friends to
4648 get their impression on keyboards and robustness.</p>
4649
4650 <p>So the new laptop arrived, and it is quite a lot wider than the
4651 X41.  I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is
4652 significantly wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my
4653 hand a lot more to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly
4654 good and the individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope
4655 I will get used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really
4656 needed a new laptop now. :)</p>
4657
4658 <p>Turning off the touch pad was simple.  All it took was a quick
4659 visit to the BIOS during boot it disable it.</p>
4660
4661 <p>But there is a fatal problem with the laptop.  The 180 GB SSD disk
4662 lock up during load.  And this happen when installing Debian Wheezy
4663 with encrypted disk, while the disk is being filled with random data.
4664 I also tested to install Ubuntu Raring, and it happen there too if I
4665 reenable the code to fill the disk with random data (it is disabled by
4666 default in Ubuntu).  And the bug with is already known.  It was
4667 reported to Debian as <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/691427">BTS
4668 report #691427 2012-10-25</a> (journal commit I/O error on brand-new
4669 Thinkpad T430s ext4 on lvm on SSD).  It is also reported to the Linux
4670 kernel developers as
4671 <a href="https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51861">Kernel bugzilla
4672 report #51861 2012-12-20</a> (Intel SSD 520 stops working under load
4673 (SSDSC2BW180A3L in Lenovo ThinkPad T430s)). It is also reported on the
4674 Lenovo forums, both for
4675 <a href="http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-and-newer-T-series/T430s-Intel-SSD-520-180GB-issue/m-p/1070549">T430
4676 2012-11-10</a> and for
4677 <a href="http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/X-Series-ThinkPad-Laptops/x230-SATA-errors-with-180GB-Intel-520-SSD-under-heavy-write-load/m-p/1068147">X230
4678 03-20-2013</a>.  The problem do not only affect installation.  The
4679 reports state that the disk lock up during use if many writes are done
4680 on the disk, so it is much no use to work around the installation
4681 problem and end up with a computer that can lock up at any moment.
4682 There is even a
4683 <a href="https://git.efficios.com/?p=test-ssd.git">small C program
4684 available</a> that will lock up the hard drive after running a few
4685 minutes by writing to a file.</p>
4686
4687 <p>I've contacted my supplier and asked how to handle this, and after
4688 contacting PCHELP Norway (request 01D1FDP) which handle support
4689 requests for Lenovo, his first suggestion was to upgrade the disk
4690 firmware.  Unfortunately there is no newer firmware available from
4691 Lenovo, as my disk already have the most recent one (version LF1i).  I
4692 hope to hear more from him today and hope the problem can be
4693 fixed. :)</p>
4694
4695       </div>
4696       <div class="tags">
4697
4698
4699         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>.
4700
4701
4702       </div>
4703     </div>
4704     <div class="padding"></div>
4705
4706     <div class="entry">
4707       <div class="title">
4708         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230.html">The Thinkpad is dead, long live the Thinkpad X230</a>
4709       </div>
4710       <div class="date">
4711          4th July 2013
4712       </div>
4713       <div class="body">
4714         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a replacement for my
4715 trusty old Thinkpad X41.  Unfortunately I did not have much time to
4716 spend on it, but today the replacement finally arrived.  I ended up
4717 picking a <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad
4718 X230</a> with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu
4719 Wheezy as a roaming workstation, and it worked flawlessly.  As I write
4720 this, it is installing what I hope will be a more final installation,
4721 with a encrypted hard drive to ensure any dope head stealing it end up
4722 with an expencive door stop.</p>
4723
4724 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
4725 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
4726 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
4727 feature at <ahref="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
4728 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
4729 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks, so I had
4730 to drop number of disks from my search parameters.</p>
4731
4732 <p>I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is significantly
4733 wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my hand a lot more
4734 to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly good and the
4735 individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope I will get
4736 used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really needed a
4737 new laptop now. :)</p>
4738
4739 <p>I look forward to figuring out how to turn off the touch pad.</p>
4740
4741       </div>
4742       <div class="tags">
4743
4744
4745         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>.
4746
4747
4748       </div>
4749     </div>
4750     <div class="padding"></div>
4751
4752     <div class="entry">
4753       <div class="title">
4754         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fourth_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Fourth alpha release of Debian Edu/Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
4755       </div>
4756       <div class="date">
4757          3rd July 2013
4758       </div>
4759       <div class="body">
4760         <p>The fourth wheezy based alpha release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
4761 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
4762
4763 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~alpha3 released
4764 2013-07-03</strong></p>
4765
4766 <p>These are the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
4767 7.1+edu0~alpha3, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
4768
4769 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
4770
4771 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
4772 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
4773 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
4774 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
4775 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
4776 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
4777 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
4778 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
4779 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
4780 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
4781 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
4782 desktop contains
4783 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
4784 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
4785 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
4786 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
4787
4788 <p>This is the fourth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
4789 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
4790 Squeeze release.</p>
4791
4792 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
4793 <ul>
4794   <li>Dropped ispell dictionaries from our default installation.</li>
4795   <li>Dropped menu-xdg from the KDE desktop option, to drop the Debian
4796     submenu.  It was not included with Gnome, LXDE or Xfce, so this
4797     brings KDE in line with the others.</li>
4798   <li>Dropped xdrawchem, xjig and xsok from our default installation as
4799     they don't have a desktop menu entry and thus won't show up in the
4800     menu now that menu-xdg was removed.</li>
4801   <li>Removed the killer system to kill left behind processes on
4802     multi-user machines, as it was no longer able to understand when a
4803     X display was in use and killed the processes of the active users
4804     too.</li>
4805   <li>Dropped the golearn (from goplay) package as the debtags in wheezy
4806     are too few to make the package useful.</li>
4807 </ul>
4808 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
4809 <ul>
4810   <li>Updated artwork matching http://wiki.debian.org/DebianArt/Themes/Joy
4811   <li>Multi-arch i386/amd64 USB stick ISO available.</li>
4812   <li>Got rid of ispell/wordlist related debconf questions that showed
4813     up for some language options.</li>
4814   <li>Switched to using http.debian.net as APT source by default.</li>
4815   <li>Fixed proxy configuration on Main Server installations.</li>
4816   <li>Changed LTSP setup to ask dpkg to use force-unsafe-io the same way
4817     d-i is doing it.</li>
4818   <li>Made sure root and user passwords were not left behind in the
4819     debconf database after installation on Main Server installations.</li>
4820   <li>Made Roaming Workstation dynamic setup more robust and added draft
4821     script setup-ad-client to hook a Roaming Workstation up to a
4822     Active Directory server instead of a Debian Edu Main Server.</li>
4823   <li>Update system to install needed firmware packages during
4824     installation, to work properly in Wheezy.</li>
4825   <li>Update system to handle hardware quirks (debian-edu-hwsetup).</li>
4826   <li>Corrected PXE installation setup to properly pass selected desktop
4827     and keymap settings to PXE installation clients.</li>
4828   <li>LTSP diskless workstations use sshfs by default, allowing them to
4829     work without adding them to DNS and NIS netgroups for NFS access.</li>
4830 </ul>
4831 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
4832 <ul>
4833   <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
4834     available yet (698840).</li>
4835   <li>Artwork not enabled for all desktops.</li>
4836 </ul>
4837 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
4838
4839 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
4840 <ul>
4841   <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso</a></li>
4842   <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso</a></li>
4843   <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso .</li>
4844 </ul>
4845
4846 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 2b161a99d2a848c376d8d04e3854e30c
4847 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 498922e9c508c0a7ee9dbe1dfe5bf830d779c3c8</p>
4848
4849 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
4850 <ul>
4851   <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso</a></li>
4852   <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso</a></li>
4853   <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso .</li>
4854 </ul>
4855
4856 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 25e808e403a4c15dbef1d13c37d572ac
4857 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 15ecfc93eb6b4f453b7eb0bc04b6a279262d9721</p>
4858
4859 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
4860
4861 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
4862
4863       </div>
4864       <div class="tags">
4865
4866
4867         Tags: <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>.
4868
4869
4870       </div>
4871     </div>
4872     <div class="padding"></div>
4873
4874     <div class="entry">
4875       <div class="title">
4876         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_locate_and_install_required_firmware_packages_on_Debian__Isenkram_0_4_.html">Automatically locate and install required firmware packages on Debian (Isenkram 0.4)</a>
4877       </div>
4878       <div class="date">
4879         25th June 2013
4880       </div>
4881       <div class="body">
4882         <p>It annoys me when the computer fail to do automatically what it is
4883 perfectly capable of, and I have to do it manually to get things
4884 working.  One such task is to find out what firmware packages are
4885 needed to get the hardware on my computer working.  Most often this
4886 affect the wifi card, but some times it even affect the RAID
4887 controller or the ethernet card.  Today I pushed version 0.4 of the
4888 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram package</a>
4889 including a new script isenkram-autoinstall-firmware handling the
4890 process of asking all the loaded kernel modules what firmware files
4891 they want, find debian packages providing these files and install the
4892 debian packages.  Here is a test run on my laptop:</p>
4893
4894 <p><pre>
4895 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
4896 info: kernel drivers requested extra firmware: ipw2200-bss.fw ipw2200-ibss.fw ipw2200-sniffer.fw
4897 info: fetching http://http.debian.net/debian/dists/squeeze/Contents-i386.gz
4898 info: locating packages with the requested firmware files
4899 info: Updating APT sources after adding non-free APT source
4900 info: trying to install firmware-ipw2x00
4901 firmware-ipw2x00
4902 firmware-ipw2x00
4903 Preconfiguring packages ...
4904 Selecting previously deselected package firmware-ipw2x00.
4905 (Reading database ... 259727 files and directories currently installed.)
4906 Unpacking firmware-ipw2x00 (from .../firmware-ipw2x00_0.28+squeeze1_all.deb) ...
4907 Setting up firmware-ipw2x00 (0.28+squeeze1) ...
4908 #
4909 </pre></p>
4910
4911 <p>When all the requested firmware is present, a simple message is
4912 printed instead:</p>
4913
4914 <p><pre>
4915 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
4916 info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules.  exiting
4917 #
4918 </pre></p>
4919
4920 <p>It could use some polish, but it is already working well and saving
4921 me some time when setting up new machines. :)</p>
4922
4923 <p>So, how does it work?  It look at the set of currently loaded
4924 kernel modules, and look up each one of them using modinfo, to find
4925 the firmware files listed in the module meta-information.  Next, it
4926 download the Contents file from a nearby APT mirror, and search for
4927 the firmware files in this file to locate the package with the
4928 requested firmware file.  If the package is in the non-free section, a
4929 non-free APT source is added and the package is installed using
4930 <tt>apt-get install</tt>.  The end result is a slightly better working
4931 machine.</p>
4932
4933 <p>I hope someone find time to implement a more polished version of
4934 this script as part of the hw-detect debian-installer module, to
4935 finally fix <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">BTS report
4936 #655507</a>.  There really is no need to insert USB sticks with
4937 firmware during a PXE install when the packages already are available
4938 from the nearby Debian mirror.</p>
4939
4940       </div>
4941       <div class="tags">
4942
4943
4944         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>.
4945
4946
4947       </div>
4948     </div>
4949     <div class="padding"></div>
4950
4951     <div class="entry">
4952       <div class="title">
4953         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_value_of_a_good_distro_wide_test_suite___.html">The value of a good distro wide test suite...</a>
4954       </div>
4955       <div class="date">
4956         22nd June 2013
4957       </div>
4958       <div class="body">
4959         <p>In the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
4960 Skolelinux</a> project, we include a post-installation test suite,
4961 which check that services are running, working, and return the
4962 expected results.  It runs automatically just after the first boot on
4963 test installations (using test ISOs), but not on production
4964 installations (using non-test ISOs).  It test that the LDAP service is
4965 operating, Kerberos is responding, DNS is replying, file systems are
4966 online resizable, etc, etc.  And it check that the PXE service is
4967 configured, which is the topic of this post.</p>
4968
4969 <p>The last week I've fixed the DVD and USB stick ISOs for our Debian
4970 Edu Wheezy release.  These ISOs are supposed to be able to install a
4971 complete system without any Internet connection, but for that to
4972 happen all the needed packages need to be on them.  Thanks to our test
4973 suite, I discovered that we had forgotten to adjust our PXE setup to
4974 cope with the new names and paths used by the netboot d-i packages.
4975 When Internet connectivity was available, the installer fall back to
4976 using wget to fetch d-i boot images, but when offline it require
4977 working packages to get it working.  And the packages changed name
4978 from debian-installer-6.0-netboot-$arch to
4979 debian-installer-7.0-netboot-$arch, we no longer pulled in the
4980 packages during installation.  Without our test suite, I suspect we
4981 would never have discovered this before release.  Now it is fixed
4982 right after we got the ISOs operational.</p>
4983
4984 <p>Another by-product of the test suite is that we can ask system
4985 administrators with problems getting Debian Edu to work, to run the
4986 test suite using <tt>/usr/sbin/debian-edu-test-install</tt> and see if
4987 any errors are detected.  This usually pinpoint the subsystem causing
4988 the problem.</p>
4989
4990 <p>If you want to help us help kids learn how to share and create,
4991 please join us on
4992 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu on
4993 irc.debian.org</a> and the
4994 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">debian-edu@</a> mailing
4995 list.</p>
4996
4997       </div>
4998       <div class="tags">
4999
5000
5001         Tags: <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>.
5002
5003
5004       </div>
5005     </div>
5006     <div class="padding"></div>
5007
5008     <div class="entry">
5009       <div class="title">
5010         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Victor_Ni_u.html">Debian Edu interview: Victor Nițu</a>
5011       </div>
5012       <div class="date">
5013         17th June 2013
5014       </div>
5015       <div class="body">
5016         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
5017 Skolelinux</a> distribution have users and contributors all around the
5018 globe.  And a while back, an enterprising young man showed up on
5019 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">our IRC channel
5020 #debian-edu</a> and started asking questions about how Debian Edu
5021 worked.  We answered as good as we could, and even convinced him to
5022 help us with translations.  And today I managed to get an interview
5023 with him, to learn more about him.</p>
5024
5025 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
5026
5027 <p>I'm a 25 year old free software enthusiast, living in Romania,
5028 which is also my country of origin. Back in 2009, at a New Year's Eve
5029 party, I had a very nice <strike>beer</strike> discussion with a
5030 friend, when we realized we have no organised Debian community in our
5031 country. A few days later, we put together the infrastructure for such
5032 community and even gathered a nice Debian-ish crowd. Since then, I
5033 began my quest as a free software hacker and activist and I am
5034 constantly trying to cover as much ground as possible on that
5035 field.</p>
5036
5037 <p>A few years ago I founded a small web development company, which
5038 provided me the flexible schedule I needed so much for my
5039 activities. For the last 13 months, I have been the Technical Director
5040 of <a href="http://ceata.org/">Fundația Ceata</a>, which is a free
5041 software activist organisation endorsed by the FSF and the FSFE, and
5042 the only one we have in our country.</p>
5043
5044 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
5045 project?</strong></p>
5046
5047 <p>The idea of participating in the Debian Edu project was a surprise
5048 even to me, since I never used it before I began getting involved in
5049 it. This year I had a great opportunity to deliver a talk on
5050 educational software, and I knew immediately where to look. It was a
5051 love at first sight, since I was previously involved with some of the
5052 technologies the project incorporates, and I rapidly found a lot of
5053 ways to contribute.</p>
5054
5055 <p>My first contributions consisted in translating the installer and
5056 configuration dialogs, then I found some bugs to squash (I still
5057 haven't fixed them yet though), and I even got my eyes on some other
5058 areas where I can prove myself helpful. Since the appetite for free
5059 software in my country is pretty low, I'll be happy to be the first
5060 one around here advocating for the project's adoption in educational
5061 environments, and maybe even get my hands dirty in creating a flavour
5062 for our own needs. I am not used to make very advanced plannings, so
5063 from now on, time will tell what I'll be doing next, but I think I
5064 have a pretty consistent starting point.</p>
5065
5066 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
5067 Edu?</strong></p>
5068
5069 <p>Not a long time ago, I was in the position of configuring and
5070 maintaining a LDAP server on some Debian derivative, and I must say it
5071 took me a while. A long time ago, I was maintaining a bigger
5072 Samba-powered infrastructure, and I must say I spent quite a lot of
5073 time on it. I have similar stories about many of the services included
5074 with Skolelinux, and the main advantage I see about it is the
5075 out-of-the box availability of them, making it quite competitive when
5076 it comes to managing a school's network, for example.</p>
5077
5078 <p>Of course, there is more to say about Skolelinux than the
5079 availability of the software included, its flexibility in various
5080 scenarios is something I can't wait to experiment "into the wild" (I
5081 only played with virtual machines so far). And I am sure there is a
5082 lot more I haven't discovered yet about it, being so new within the
5083 project.</p>
5084
5085 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
5086 Edu?</strong></p>
5087
5088 <p>As usual, when it comes to Debian Blends, I see as the biggest
5089 disadvantage the lack of a numerous team dedicated to the
5090 project. Every day I see the same names in the changelogs, and I have
5091 a constantly fear of the bus factor in this story.  I'd like to see
5092 Debian Edu advertised more as an entry point into the Debian
5093 ecosystem, especially amongst newcomers and students. IMHO there are a
5094 lot low-hanging fruits in terms of bug squashing, and enough
5095 opportunities to get the feeling of the Debian Project's dynamics. Not
5096 to mention it's a very fun blend to work on!</p>
5097
5098 <p>Derived from the previous statement, is the delay in catching up
5099 with the main Debian release and documentation. This is common though
5100 to all blends and derivatives, but it's an issue we can all work
5101 on.</p>
5102
5103 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
5104
5105 <p>I can hardly imagine myself spending a day without Vim, since my
5106 daily routine covers writing code and hacking configuration files. I
5107 am a fan of the Awesome window manager (but I also like the
5108 Enlightenment project a lot!),
5109 <a href="http://www.claws-mail.org/‎">Claws Mail</a> due to its ease of
5110 use and very configurable behaviour. Recently I fell in love with
5111 <a href="https://launchpad.net/redshift">Redshift</a>, which helps me
5112 get through the night without headaches. Of course, there is much more
5113 stuff in this bag, but I'll need a blog on my own for doing this!</p>
5114
5115 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
5116 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
5117
5118 <p>Well, on this field, I cannot do much more than experiment right
5119 now. So, being far from having a recipe for success, I can only assume
5120 that:</p>
5121
5122 <ul>
5123
5124 <li>schools would like to get rid of proprietary software</li>
5125
5126 <li>students will love the openness of the system, and will want to
5127     experiment with it - maybe we need to harvest the native curiosity
5128     of teenagers more?</li>
5129
5130 <li>there is no "right one" when it comes to strategies, but it would
5131     be useful to have some success stories published somewhere, so
5132     other can get some inspiration from them (I know I'd promote
5133     them!)</li>
5134
5135 <li>more active promotion - talks, conferences, even small school
5136     lectures can do magical things if they encounter at least one
5137     person interested. Who knows who that person might be? ;-)</li>
5138
5139 </ul>
5140
5141 <p>I also see some problems in getting Skolelinux into schools; for
5142 example, in our country we have a great deal of corruption issues, so
5143 it might be hard(er) to fight against proprietary solutions. Also,
5144 people who relied on commercial software for all their lives, would be
5145 very hard to convert against their will.</p>
5146
5147       </div>
5148       <div class="tags">
5149
5150
5151         Tags: <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/intervju">intervju</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/Debian_Edu_interview__Jonathan_Carter.html">Debian Edu interview: Jonathan Carter</a>
5161       </div>
5162       <div class="date">
5163         12th June 2013
5164       </div>
5165       <div class="body">
5166         <p>There is a certain cross-over between the
5167 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
5168 project</a> and <a href="http://www.edubuntu.org/">the Edubuntu
5169 project</a>, and for example the LTSP packages in Debian are a joint
5170 effort between the projects.  One person with a foot in both camps is
5171 Jonathan Carter, which I am now happy to present to you.</p>
5172
5173 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
5174
5175 <p>I'm a South-African free software geek who lives in Cape Town. My
5176 days vary quite a bit since I'm involved in too many things. As I'm
5177 getting older I'm learning how to focus a bit more :)</p>
5178
5179 <p>I'm also an Edubuntu contributor and I love when there are
5180 opportunities for the Edubuntu and Debian Edu projects to benefit from
5181 each other.</p>
5182
5183 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
5184 project?</strong></p>
5185
5186 <p>I've been somewhat familiar with the project before, but I think my
5187 first direct exposure to the project was when I met Petter
5188 [Reinholdtsen] and Knut [Yrvin] at the Edubuntu summit in 2005 in
5189 London. They provided great feedback that helped the bootstrapping of
5190 Edubuntu. Back then Edubuntu (and even Ubuntu) was still very new and
5191 it was great getting input from people who have been around longer. I
5192 was also still very excitable and said yes to everything and to this
5193 day I have a big todo list backlog that I'm catching up with. I think
5194 over the years the relationship between Edubuntu and Debian-Edu has
5195 been gradually improving, although I think there's a lot that we could
5196 still improve on in terms of working together on packages. I'm sure
5197 we'll get there one day.</p>
5198
5199 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
5200 Edu?</strong></p>
5201
5202 <p>Debian itself already has so many advantages. I could go on about
5203 it for pages, but in essence I love that it's a very honest project
5204 that puts its users first with no hidden agendas and also produces
5205 very high quality work.</p>
5206
5207 <p>I think the advantage of Debian Edu is that it makes many common
5208 set-up tasks simpler so that administrators can get up and running
5209 with a lot less effort and frustration. At the same time I think it
5210 helps to standardise installations in schools so that it's easier for
5211 community members and commercial suppliers to support.</p>
5212
5213 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
5214 Edu?</strong></p>
5215
5216 <p>I had to re-type this one a few times because I'm trying to
5217 separate "disadvantages" from "areas that need improvement" (which is
5218 what I originally rambled on about)</p>
5219
5220 <p>The biggest disadvantage I can think of is lack of manpower. The
5221 project could do so much more if there were more good contributors. I
5222 think some of the problems are external too. Free software and free
5223 content in education is a no-brainer but it takes some time to catch
5224 on. When you've been working with the same proprietary eco-system for
5225 years and have gotten used to it, it can be hard to adjust to some
5226 concepts in the free software world. It would be nice if there were
5227 more Debian Edu consultants across the world. I'd love to be one
5228 myself but I'm already so over-committed that it's just not possible
5229 currently.</p>
5230
5231 <p>I think the best short-term solution to that large-scale problem is
5232 for schools to be pro-active and share their experiences and grow
5233 their skills in-house. I'm often saddened to see how much money
5234 educational institutions spend on 3rd party solutions that they don't
5235 have access to after the service has ended and they could've gotten so
5236 much more value otherwise by being more self-sustainable and
5237 autonomous.</p>
5238
5239 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
5240
5241 <p>My main laptop dual-boots between Debian and Windows 7. I was
5242 Windows free for years but started dual-booting again last year for
5243 some games which help me focus and relax (Starcraft II in
5244 particular). Gaming support on Linux is improving in leaps and bounds
5245 so I suppose I'll soon be able to regain that disk space :)</p>
5246
5247 <p>Besides that I rely on Icedove, Chromium, Terminator, Byobu, irssi,
5248 git, Tomboy, KVM, VLC and LibreOffice. Recently I've been torn on
5249 which desktop environment I like and I'm taking some refuge in Xfce
5250 while I figure that out. I like tools that keep things simple. I enjoy
5251 Python and shell scripting. I went to an Arduino workshop recently and
5252 it was awesome seeing how easy and simple the IDE software was to get
5253 up and running in Debian compared to the users running Windows and OS
5254 X.</p>
5255
5256 <p>I also use mc which some people frown upon slightly. I got used to
5257 using Norton Commander in the early 90's and it stuck (I think the
5258 people who sneer at it is just jealous that they don't know how to use
5259 it :p)
5260
5261 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
5262 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
5263
5264 <p>I think trying to force it is unproductive. I also think that in
5265 many cases it's appropriate for schools to use non-free systems and I
5266 don't think that there's any particular moral or ethical problem with
5267 that.</p>
5268
5269 <p>I do think though that free software can already solve so so many
5270 problems in educational institutions and it's just a shame not taking
5271 advantage of that.</p>
5272
5273 <p>I also think that some curricula need serious review. For example,
5274 some areas of the world rely heavily on very specific versions of MS
5275 Office, teaching students to parrot menu items instead of learning the
5276 general concepts. I think that's very unproductive because firstly, MS
5277 Office's interface changes drastically every few years and on top of
5278 that it also locks in a generation to a product that might not be the
5279 best solution for them.</p>
5280
5281 <p>To answer your question, I believe that the right strategy is to
5282 educate and inform, giving someone the information they require to
5283 make a decision that would work for them.</p>
5284
5285       </div>
5286       <div class="tags">
5287
5288
5289         Tags: <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/intervju">intervju</a>.
5290
5291
5292       </div>
5293     </div>
5294     <div class="padding"></div>
5295
5296     <div class="entry">
5297       <div class="title">
5298         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fixing_the_Linux_black_screen_of_death_on_machines_with_Intel_HD_video.html">Fixing the Linux black screen of death on machines with Intel HD video</a>
5299       </div>
5300       <div class="date">
5301         11th June 2013
5302       </div>
5303       <div class="body">
5304         <p>When installing RedHat, Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu on some machines,
5305 the screen just turn black when Linux boot, either during installation
5306 or on first boot from the hard disk.  I've seen it once in a while the
5307 last few years, but only recently understood the cause.  I've seen it
5308 on HP laptops, and on my latest acquaintance the Packard Bell laptop.
5309 The reason seem to be in the wiring of some laptops.  The system to
5310 control the screen background light is inverted, so when Linux try to
5311 turn the brightness fully on, it end up turning it off instead.  I do
5312 not know which Linux drivers are affected, but this post is about the
5313 i915 driver used by the
5314 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
5315 EasyNote LV</a>, Thinkpad X40 and many other laptops.</p>
5316
5317 <p>The problem can be worked around two ways.  Either by adding
5318 i915.invert_brightness=1 as a kernel option, or by adding a file in
5319 /etc/modprobe.d/ to tell modprobe to add the invert_brightness=1
5320 option when it load the i915 kernel module.  On Debian and Ubuntu, it
5321 can be done by running these commands as root:</p>
5322
5323 <pre>
5324 echo options i915 invert_brightness=1 | tee /etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf
5325 update-initramfs -u -k all
5326 </pre>
5327
5328 <p>Since March 2012 there is
5329 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=4dca20efb1a9c2efefc28ad2867e5d6c3f5e1955">a
5330 mechanism in the Linux kernel</a> to tell the i915 driver which
5331 hardware have this problem, and get the driver to invert the
5332 brightness setting automatically.  To use it, one need to add a row in
5333 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c">the
5334 intel_quirks array</a> in the driver source
5335 <tt>drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c</tt> (look for "<tt>static
5336 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks</tt>"), specifying the PCI device
5337 number (vendor number 8086 is assumed) and subdevice vendor and device
5338 number.</p>
5339
5340 <p>My Packard Bell EasyNote LV got this output from <tt>lspci
5341 -vvnn</tt> for the video card in question:</p>
5342
5343 <p><pre>
5344 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation \
5345     3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller [8086:0156] \
5346     (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
5347  Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device [1025:0688]
5348  Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- \
5349     ParErr- Stepping- SE RR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
5350  Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- \
5351     <TAbort- <MAbort->SERR- <PERR- INTx-
5352  Latency: 0
5353  Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 42
5354  Region 0: Memory at c2000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
5355  Region 2: Memory at b0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
5356  Region 4: I/O ports at 4000 [size=64]
5357  Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled]
5358  Capabilities: <access denied>
5359  Kernel driver in use: i915
5360 </pre></p>
5361
5362 <p>The resulting intel_quirks entry would then look like this:</p>
5363
5364 <p><pre>
5365 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks[] = {
5366        ...
5367         /* Packard Bell EasyNote LV11HC needs invert brightness quirk */
5368         { 0x0156, 0x1025, 0x0688, quirk_invert_brightness },
5369        ...
5370 }
5371 </pre></p>
5372
5373 <p>According to the kernel module instructions (as seen using
5374 <tt>modinfo i915</tt>), information about hardware needing the
5375 invert_brightness flag should be sent to the
5376 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/dri-devel">dri-devel
5377 (at) lists.freedesktop.org</a> mailing list to reach the kernel
5378 developers.  But my email about the laptop sent 2013-06-03 have not
5379 yet shown up in
5380 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2013-June/thread.html">the
5381 web archive for the mailing list</a>, so I suspect they do not accept
5382 emails from non-subscribers.  Because of this, I sent my patch also to
5383 the Debian bug tracking system instead as
5384 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/710938">BTS report #710938</a>, to make
5385 sure the patch is not lost.</p>
5386
5387 <p>Unfortunately, it is not enough to fix the kernel to get Laptops
5388 with this problem working properly with Linux.  If you use Gnome, your
5389 worries should be over at this point.  But if you use KDE, there is
5390 something in KDE ignoring the invert_brightness setting and turning on
5391 the screen during login.  I've reported it to Debian as
5392 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/711237">BTS report #711237</a>, and
5393 have no idea yet how to figure out exactly what subsystem is doing
5394 this.  Perhaps you can help?  Perhaps you know what the Gnome
5395 developers did to handle this, and this can give a clue to the KDE
5396 developers?  Or you know where in KDE the screen brightness is changed
5397 during login?  If so, please update the BTS report (or get in touch if
5398 you do not know how to update BTS).</p>
5399
5400 <p>Update 2013-07-19: The correct fix for this machine seem to be
5401 acpi_backlight=vendor, to disable ACPI backlight support completely,
5402 as the ACPI information on the machine is trash and it is better to
5403 leave it to the intel video driver to control the screen
5404 backlight.</p>
5405
5406       </div>
5407       <div class="tags">
5408
5409
5410         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>.
5411
5412
5413       </div>
5414     </div>
5415     <div class="padding"></div>
5416
5417     <div class="entry">
5418       <div class="title">
5419         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Third alpha release of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
5420       </div>
5421       <div class="date">
5422         10th June 2013
5423       </div>
5424       <div class="body">
5425         <p>The third wheezy based alpha release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
5426 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
5427
5428 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.0.0 alpha2 released
5429 2013-06-10</strong></p>
5430
5431 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux 7.0.0 edu
5432 alpha2, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
5433
5434 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
5435
5436 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
5437 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
5438 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
5439 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
5440 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
5441 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
5442 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
5443 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
5444 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
5445 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
5446 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
5447 desktop contains
5448 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
5449 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
5450 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
5451 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
5452
5453 <p>This is the third test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
5454 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
5455 Squeeze release.</p>
5456
5457 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
5458
5459 <ul>
5460
5461 <li>Iceweasel was updated from 10 to 17. (DSA 2699-1)
5462 <li>Updated libxv (DSA-2674), libxvmc (DSA-2675), libxfixes (DSA-2676), libxrender (DSA-2677), mesa (DSA-2678), xserver-xorg-video-openchrome (DSA-2679), libxt (DSA-2680), libxcursor (DSA-2681), libxext (DSA-2682), libxi (DSA-2683), libxrandr (DSA-2684), libxp (DSA-2685), libxcb (DSA-2686), libfs (DSA-2687), libxres (DSA-2688), libxtst (DSA-2689), libxxf86dga (DSA-2690), libxinerama (DSA-2691), libxxf86vm (DSA-2692), libx11 (DSA-2693), chromium-browser (DSA-2695), gnutls26 (DSA-2697), wireshark (DSA-2700), krb5 (DSA-2701), telepathy-gabble (DSA-2702) and subversion (DSA-2703).
5463 <li>Switched xrdp on thin client servers to use tightvncserver instead of xvnc4.
5464 <li>Now install software oscilloscope xoscope by default.
5465 <li>Now install music tools gtick, lingot and pianobooster by default.
5466
5467 </ul>
5468
5469 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
5470
5471 <ul>
5472
5473 <li>The subnet-change script is now able to change all files needing a change on the main-server when changing the IP network used.
5474 <li>Updated translation of the installation.
5475 <li>New Romanian translation.
5476 <li>Fix security problem causing root and first user password to no longer show up in /var/cache/debconf/templates.dat.
5477 <li>Fix roaming workstation setup (Closed in libpam-mklocaluser/0.8, libpam-mklocaluser/0.8~deb7u1: #706753: libpam-mklocaluser: Fail to create local user during first login).
5478 <li>Made roaming workstation setup more robust in non-Debian Edu environments.
5479 <li>New script debian-edu-bless to transform a Debian installation to a Debian Edu profile.
5480 <li>Adjust Iceweasel setup to improve performance when $HOME is on NFS.
5481 <li>More testsuite tests.
5482 <li>Make automatic proxy configuration more robust.
5483 <li>Adjust GOsa² GUI configuration.
5484
5485 <li>Update thin client and diskless workstation setup to work with
5486 LTSP in Wheezy.</li>
5487
5488 <li>Diskless workstations now run out of the box -- no need to set
5489 them up with GOsa².</li>
5490
5491 <li>Update IMAP server setup. </li>
5492
5493 <li>Fix login into Skolelinux Backup Tool (Closed in
5494 slbackup-php/0.4.4-1: #700257: slbackup-php: Fails to submit correctly
5495 entered password). </li>
5496
5497 </ul>
5498
5499 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
5500
5501 <ul>
5502
5503 <li>DVD binary and source images are not yet ready.</li>
5504
5505 <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
5506 available yet (Open in gosa/2.7.4-4: #698840: gosa-plugin-ldapmanager:
5507 missing import feature).</li>
5508
5509 <li>Missing artwork for the KDE desktop (and probably a few others). </li>
5510
5511 <li>KDE Debian submenu lacks icons (Closed: #502192: menu-xdg: invents
5512 own icon names instead of using existing). This will remain
5513 unfixed.</li>
5514
5515 </ul>
5516
5517 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
5518
5519 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
5520
5521 <ul>
5522
5523 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso</a></li>
5524
5525 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso</a></li>
5526
5527 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso .</li>
5528
5529 </ul>
5530
5531 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 27bbcace407743382f3c42c08dbe8178
5532 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: e35f7d7908566cd3075375b3721fa10ee420d419</p>
5533
5534 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
5535
5536 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
5537
5538       </div>
5539       <div class="tags">
5540
5541
5542         Tags: <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>.
5543
5544
5545       </div>
5546     </div>
5547     <div class="padding"></div>
5548
5549     <div class="entry">
5550       <div class="title">
5551         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_there_a_PHP_expert_in_the_building___Debian_Edu_need_help_.html">Is there a PHP expert in the building?  Debian Edu need help!</a>
5552       </div>
5553       <div class="date">
5554          5th June 2013
5555       </div>
5556       <div class="body">
5557         <p>Here is a call for help from the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project.
5558 We have two problems blocking the release of the Wheezy version we
5559 hope to get released soon.  The two problems require some with PHP
5560 skills, and we seem to lack anyone with both time and PHP skills in
5561 the project:
5562
5563 <ol>
5564
5565 <li>It is impossible to log into the slbackup web interface
5566   (slbackup-php) using the root user and password.  This is
5567   <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/700257">BTS report #700257</a>.
5568   This used to work, but stopped working some time since Squeeze.
5569   Perhaps some obsolete PHP feature was used?</li>
5570
5571 <li>It is not possible to "mass import" user lists in Gosa, neither
5572   using ldif nor using CSV files.  The feature was disabled after a
5573   major rewrite of Gosa, and need to be ported to the new system.
5574   This is <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698840">BTS report
5575   #698840</a>.</li>
5576
5577 </ol>
5578
5579 <p>If you can help us, please join us on IRC
5580 (<a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu on
5581 irc.debian.org</a>) and provide patches via the BTS.</p>
5582
5583       </div>
5584       <div class="tags">
5585
5586
5587         Tags: <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>.
5588
5589
5590       </div>
5591     </div>
5592     <div class="padding"></div>
5593
5594     <div class="entry">
5595       <div class="title">
5596         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__C_dric_Boutillier.html">Debian Edu interview: Cédric Boutillier</a>
5597       </div>
5598       <div class="date">
5599          4th June 2013
5600       </div>
5601       <div class="body">
5602         <p>It has been a while since my last English
5603 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
5604 interview last November.  But the developers and translators are still
5605 pulling along to get the Wheezy based release out the door, and this
5606 time I managed to get an interview from one of the French translators
5607 in the project, Cédric Boutillier.</p>
5608
5609 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
5610
5611 <p>I am 34 year old. I live near Paris, France. I am an assistant
5612 professor in probability theory. I spend my daytime teaching
5613 mathematics at the university and doing fundamental research in
5614 probability in connexion with combinatorics and statistical physics.</p>
5615
5616 <p>I have been involved in the Debian project for a couple of years
5617 and became Debian Developer a few months ago. I am working on Ruby
5618 packaging, publicity and translation.</p>
5619
5620 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
5621 project?</strong></p>
5622
5623 <p>I came to the Debian Edu project after a call for translation of
5624 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Manuals">the
5625 Debian Edu manual</a> for the release of Debian Edu Squeeze. Since
5626 then, I have been working on updating the French translation of the
5627 manual.
5628
5629 <p>I had the opportunity to make an installation of Debian Edu in a
5630 virtual machine when I was preparing localised version of some screen
5631 shots for the manual. I was amazed to see it worked out of the box and
5632 how comprehensive the list of software installed by default was.</p>
5633
5634 <p>What amazed me was the complete network infrastructure directly
5635 ready to use, which can and the nice administration interface provided
5636 by <a href="https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/">GOsa²</a>.  What pleased
5637 me also was the fact that among the software installed by default,
5638 there were many "traditional" educative software to learn languages,
5639 to count, to program... but also software to develop creativity and
5640 artistic skills with music (<a href="http://ardour.org/">Ardour</a>,
5641 <a href="http://audacity.sourceforge.net/">Audacity</a>) and
5642 movies/animation (I was especially thinking of
5643 <a href="http://linuxstopmotion.sourceforge.net/">Stopmotion</a>).</p>
5644
5645 <p>I am following the development of Debian Edu and am hanging out on
5646 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu</a>.
5647 Unfortunately, I don't much time to get more involved in this
5648 beautiful project.</p>
5649
5650 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
5651 Edu?</strong></p>
5652
5653 <p>For me, the main advantages of Skolelinux/Debian Edu are its
5654 community of experts and its precise documentation, as well as the
5655 fact that it provides a solution ready to use.</p>
5656
5657 <p>I would add also the fact that it is based on the rock solid Debian
5658 distribution, which ensures stability and provides a huge collection
5659 of educational free software.</p>
5660
5661 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
5662 Edu?</strong></p>
5663
5664 <p>Maybe the lack of manpower to do lobbying on the
5665 project. Sometimes, people who need to take decisions concerning IT do
5666 not have all the elements to evaluate properly free software
5667 solutions. The fact that support by a company may be difficult to find
5668 is probably a problem if the school does not have IT personnel.</p>
5669
5670 <p>One can find support from a company by looking at
5671 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Help/ProfessionalHelp">the
5672 wiki dokumentation</a>, where some countries already have a number of
5673 companies providing support for Debian Edu, like Germany or
5674 Norway. This list is easy to find readily from the manual. However,
5675 for other countries, like France, the list is empty. I guess that
5676 consultants proposing support for Debian would be able to provide some
5677 support for Debian Edu as well.</p>
5678
5679 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
5680
5681 <p>I am using the KDE Plasma Desktop. But the pieces of software I use
5682 most runs in a terminal: Mutt and OfflineIMAP for emails, latex for
5683 scientific documents, mpd for music. VIM is my editor of choice.  I am
5684 also using the mathematical software
5685 <a href="http://www.scilab.org/en/scilab/about‎">Scilab</a> and
5686 <a href="http://www.sagemath.org/index.html‎">Sage</a> (built from
5687 source as not completely packaged for Debian, yet).
5688
5689 <p><strong>Do you have any suggestions for teachers interested in
5690 using the free software in Debian to teach mathematics and
5691 statistics?</strong></p>
5692
5693 <p>I do not have any "nice" recommendations for statistics. At our
5694 university, we use both <a href="http://www.r-project.org/‎">R</a> and
5695 Scilab to teach statistics and probabilistic simulations. For
5696 geometry, there are nice programs:</p>
5697
5698 <ul>
5699
5700 <li><a href="http://www.drgeo.eu/">drgeo</a> and
5701 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/applications/all/kig‎">kig</a> to do
5702 constructions in planar geometry
5703
5704 <li><a href="http://www.geom.uiuc.edu/software/download/kali.html">kali</a>
5705 to discover symmetry groups (the so-called wallpapers and frieze
5706 groups), although the interface looks a bit old.</li>
5707
5708 </ul>
5709
5710 <p>I like also
5711 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/applications/all/cantor">cantor</a>, which
5712 provides a uniform interface to SciLab, Sage,
5713 <a href="http://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Octave‎">Octave</a>, etc...</p>
5714
5715 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
5716 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
5717
5718 <p>My suggestions would be to</p>
5719
5720 <ul>
5721
5722 <li>advertise the reduction of costs when free software is used.</li>
5723
5724 <li>communicate about the quality of free software projects, using
5725     well known examples like Firefox, ThunderBird and
5726     OpenOffice.org/LibreOffice.</li>
5727
5728 <li>advertise the living and strong community around the project.</li>
5729
5730 <li>show that it is not more difficult to use than any other
5731     system.</li>
5732
5733 </ul>
5734
5735       </div>
5736       <div class="tags">
5737
5738
5739         Tags: <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/intervju">intervju</a>.
5740
5741
5742       </div>
5743     </div>
5744     <div class="padding"></div>
5745
5746     <div class="entry">
5747       <div class="title">
5748         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">Educational applications included in Debian Edu / Skolelinux (the screenshot collection :-)</a>
5749       </div>
5750       <div class="date">
5751          1st June 2013
5752       </div>
5753       <div class="body">
5754         <p>Included in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
5755 Skolelinux</a>, there are quite a lot of educational software.
5756 Created to help teachers teach, and pupils learn.  We have tried to
5757 tag them all using debtags use::learning and role::program, and using
5758 the debtags I was happy to be able to create a collage of the
5759 educational software packages installed by default, sorted by the
5760 debtag field.  Here it is.  Click on a image to learn more about the
5761 program.</p>
5762
5763 <!-- for f in $(debtags tagcat|grep field::|awk '{print $2}'); do   echo; echo "<p><strong>$f</strong></p>"; echo "<p>";   (     for p in $(debtags search --names "use::learning && interface::x11 && role::program && $f"); do img="<img src='http://screenshots.debian.net/thumbnail/$p' alt='$p'>"; if dpkg -s $p > /dev/null 2>&1; then           echo "<a href='http://packages.qa.debian.org/$p'>$img</a>"; fi;     done;   ) | LANG=C sort; echo "</p>"; done -->
5764
5765 <p><strong>field::arts</strong></p>
5766 <p>
5767 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=audacity'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/audacity.png' alt='audacity'></a>
5768 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=childsplay'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/childsplay.png' alt='childsplay'></a>
5769 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=denemo'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/denemo.png' alt='denemo'></a>
5770 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=freebirth'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/freebirth.png' alt='freebirth'></a>
5771 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
5772 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gimp'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gimp.png' alt='gimp'></a>
5773 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=hydrogen'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/hydrogen.png' alt='hydrogen'></a>
5774 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=lilypond'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/lilypond.png' alt='lilypond'></a>
5775 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=lmms'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/lmms.png' alt='lmms'></a>
5776 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=rosegarden'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/rosegarden.png' alt='rosegarden'></a>
5777 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=scribus'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/scribus.png' alt='scribus'></a>
5778 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=solfege'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/solfege.png' alt='solfege'></a>
5779 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=stopmotion'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/stopmotion.png' alt='stopmotion'></a>
5780 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=tuxpaint'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/tuxpaint.png' alt='tuxpaint'></a>
5781 </p>
5782
5783 <p><strong>field::astronomy</strong></p>
5784 <p>
5785 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=celestia-gnome'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/celestia-gnome.png' alt='celestia-gnome'></a>
5786 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gpredict'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gpredict.png' alt='gpredict'></a>
5787 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kstars'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kstars.png' alt='kstars'></a>
5788 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=planets'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/planets.png' alt='planets'></a>
5789 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=stellarium'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/stellarium.png' alt='stellarium'></a>
5790 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xplanet'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xplanet.png' alt='xplanet'></a>
5791 </p>
5792
5793 <p><strong>field::biology:structural</strong></p>
5794 <p>
5795 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=pymol'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/pymol.png' alt='pymol'></a>
5796 </p>
5797
5798 <p><strong>field::chemistry</strong></p>
5799 <p>
5800 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=atomix'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/atomix.png' alt='atomix'></a>
5801 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=chemtool'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/chemtool.png' alt='chemtool'></a>
5802 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=easychem'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/easychem.png' alt='easychem'></a>
5803 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gchempaint'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gchempaint.png' alt='gchempaint'></a>
5804 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gdis'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gdis.png' alt='gdis'></a>
5805 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=ghemical'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/ghemical.png' alt='ghemical'></a>
5806 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gperiodic'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gperiodic.png' alt='gperiodic'></a>
5807 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kalzium'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kalzium.png' alt='kalzium'></a>
5808 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=pymol'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/pymol.png' alt='pymol'></a>
5809 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=viewmol'>[viewmol]</a>
5810 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xdrawchem'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xdrawchem.png' alt='xdrawchem'></a>
5811 </p>
5812
5813 <p><strong>field::electronics</strong></p>
5814 <p>
5815 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
5816 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gpsim'>[gpsim]</a>
5817 </p>
5818
5819 <p><strong>field::geography</strong></p>
5820 <p>
5821 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kgeography'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kgeography.png' alt='kgeography'></a>
5822 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=marble'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/marble.png' alt='marble'></a>
5823 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xplanet'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xplanet.png' alt='xplanet'></a>
5824 </p>
5825
5826 <p><strong>field::linguistics</strong></p>
5827 <p>
5828 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
5829 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kanagram'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kanagram.png' alt='kanagram'></a>
5830 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=khangman'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/khangman.png' alt='khangman'></a>
5831 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=klettres'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/klettres.png' alt='klettres'></a>
5832 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=parley'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/parley.png' alt='parley'></a>
5833 </p>
5834
5835 <p><strong>field::mathematics</strong></p>
5836 <p>
5837 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=childsplay'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/childsplay.png' alt='childsplay'></a>
5838 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=drgeo'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/drgeo.png' alt='drgeo'></a>
5839 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
5840 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=geogebra'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/geogebra.png' alt='geogebra'></a>
5841 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=geomview'>[geomview]</a>
5842 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=grace'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/grace.png' alt='grace'></a>
5843 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=graphmonkey'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/graphmonkey.png' alt='graphmonkey'></a>
5844 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=graphthing'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/graphthing.png' alt='graphthing'></a>
5845 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kalgebra'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kalgebra.png' alt='kalgebra'></a>
5846 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kbruch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kbruch.png' alt='kbruch'></a>
5847 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kig'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kig.png' alt='kig'></a>
5848 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kmplot'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kmplot.png' alt='kmplot'></a>
5849 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=mathwar'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/mathwar.png' alt='mathwar'></a>
5850 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=rocs'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/rocs.png' alt='rocs'></a>
5851 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=scratch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/scratch.png' alt='scratch'></a>
5852 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=tuxmath'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/tuxmath.png' alt='tuxmath'></a>
5853 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xabacus'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xabacus.png' alt='xabacus'></a>
5854 </p>
5855
5856 <p><strong>field::physics</strong></p>
5857 <p>
5858 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
5859 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=step'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/step.png' alt='step'></a>
5860 </p>
5861
5862 <p><strong>field::TODO</strong></p>
5863 <p>
5864 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=blinken'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/blinken.png' alt='blinken'></a>
5865 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=cgoban'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/cgoban.png' alt='cgoban'></a>
5866 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=childsplay'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/childsplay.png' alt='childsplay'></a>
5867 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
5868 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gnuchess'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gnuchess.png' alt='gnuchess'></a>
5869 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gnugo'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gnugo.png' alt='gnugo'></a>
5870 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gtans'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gtans.png' alt='gtans'></a>
5871 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=ktouch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/ktouch.png' alt='ktouch'></a>
5872 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=librecad'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/librecad.png' alt='librecad'></a>
5873 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=scratch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/scratch.png' alt='scratch'></a>
5874 </p>
5875
5876 <p>In total, 61 applications.  3 of them lacked screen shots on
5877 <a href="http://screenshot.debian.net">screenshot.debian.net</a>.  If
5878 you know of some packages we should install by default, please let us
5879 know on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">IRC, #debian-edu
5880 on irc.debian.org</a>, or our
5881 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">mailing list
5882 debian-edu@</a>.</p>
5883
5884       </div>
5885       <div class="tags">
5886
5887
5888         Tags: <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>.
5889
5890
5891       </div>
5892     </div>
5893     <div class="padding"></div>
5894
5895     <div class="entry">
5896       <div class="title">
5897         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8.html">How to install Linux on a Packard Bell Easynote LV preinstalled with Windows 8</a>
5898       </div>
5899       <div class="date">
5900         27th May 2013
5901       </div>
5902       <div class="body">
5903         <p>Two days ago, I asked
5904 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_can_I_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8_.html">how
5905 I could install Linux on a Packard Bell EasyNote LV computer
5906 preinstalled with Windows 8</a>.  I found a solution, but am horrified
5907 with the obstacles put in the way of Linux users on a laptop with UEFI
5908 and Windows 8.</p>
5909
5910 <p>I never found out if the cause of my problems were the use of UEFI
5911 secure booting or fast boot.  I suspect fast boot was the problem,
5912 causing the firmware to boot directly from HD without considering any
5913 key presses and alternative devices, but do not know UEFI settings
5914 enough to tell.</p>
5915
5916 <p>There is no way to install Linux on the machine in question without
5917 opening the box and disconnecting the hard drive!  This is as far as I
5918 can tell, the only way to get access to the firmware setup menu
5919 without accepting the Windows 8 license agreement.  I am told (and
5920 found description on how to) that it is possible to configure the
5921 firmware setup once booted into Windows 8.  But as I believe the terms
5922 of that agreement are completely unacceptable, accepting the license
5923 was never an alternative.  I do not enter agreements I do not intend
5924 to follow.</p>
5925
5926 <p>I feared I had to return the laptops and ask for a refund, and
5927 waste many hours on this, but luckily there was a way to get it to
5928 work.  But I would not recommend it to anyone planning to run Linux on
5929 it, and I have become sceptical to Windows 8 certified laptops.  Is
5930 this the way Linux will be forced out of the market place, by making
5931 it close to impossible for "normal" users to install Linux without
5932 accepting the Microsoft Windows license terms?  Or at least not
5933 without risking to loose the warranty?</p>
5934
5935 <p>I've updated the
5936 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Linux Laptop
5937 wiki page for Packard Bell EasyNote LV</a>, to ensure the next person
5938 do not have to struggle as much as I did to get Linux into the
5939 machine.</p>
5940
5941 <p>Thanks to Bob Rosbag, Florian Weimer, Philipp Kern, Ben Hutching,
5942 Michael Tokarev and others for feedback and ideas.</p>
5943
5944       </div>
5945       <div class="tags">
5946
5947
5948         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>.
5949
5950
5951       </div>
5952     </div>
5953     <div class="padding"></div>
5954
5955     <div class="entry">
5956       <div class="title">
5957         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_can_I_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8_.html">How can I install Linux on a Packard Bell Easynote LV preinstalled with Windows 8?</a>
5958       </div>
5959       <div class="date">
5960         25th May 2013
5961       </div>
5962       <div class="body">
5963         <p>I've run into quite a problem the last few days.  I bought three
5964 new laptops for my parents and a few others.  I bought Packard Bell
5965 Easynote LV to run Kubuntu on and use as their home computer.  But I
5966 am completely unable to figure out how to install Linux on it.  The
5967 computer is preinstalled with Windows 8, and I suspect it uses UEFI
5968 instead of a BIOS to boot.</p>
5969
5970 <p>The problem is that I am unable to get it to PXE boot, and unable
5971 to get it to boot the Linux installer from my USB stick.  I have yet
5972 to try the DVD install, and still hope it will work.  when I turn on
5973 the computer, there is no information on what buttons to press to get
5974 the normal boot menu.  I expect to get some boot menu to select PXE or
5975 USB stick booting.  When booting, it first ask for the language to
5976 use, then for some regional settings, and finally if I will accept the
5977 Windows 8 terms of use.  As these terms are completely unacceptable to
5978 me, I have no other choice but to turn off the computer and try again
5979 to get it to boot the Linux installer.</p>
5980
5981 <p>I have gathered my findings so far on a Linlap page about the
5982 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
5983 EasyNote LV</a> model.  If you have any idea how to get Linux
5984 installed on this machine, please get in touch or update that wiki
5985 page.  If I can't find a way to install Linux, I will have to return
5986 the laptop to the seller and find another machine for my parents.</p>
5987
5988 <p>I wonder, is this the way Linux will be forced out of the market
5989 using UEFI and "secure boot" by making it impossible to install Linux
5990 on new Laptops?</p>
5991
5992       </div>
5993       <div class="tags">
5994
5995
5996         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>.
5997
5998
5999       </div>
6000     </div>
6001     <div class="padding"></div>
6002
6003     <div class="entry">
6004       <div class="title">
6005         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_transform_a_Debian_based_system_to_a_Debian_Edu_installation.html">How to transform a Debian based system to a Debian Edu installation</a>
6006       </div>
6007       <div class="date">
6008         17th May 2013
6009       </div>
6010       <div class="body">
6011         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is
6012 an operating system based on Debian intended for use in schools.  It
6013 contain a turn-key solution for the computer network provided to
6014 pupils in the primary schools.  It provide both the central server,
6015 network boot servers and desktop environments with heaps of
6016 educational software.  The project was founded almost 12 years ago,
6017 2001-07-02.  If you want to support the project, which is in need for
6018 cash to fund developer gatherings and other project related activity,
6019 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">please
6020 donate some money</a>.
6021
6022 <p>A topic that come up again and again on the Debian Edu mailing
6023 lists and elsewhere, is the question on how to transform a Debian or
6024 Ubuntu installation into a Debian Edu installation.  It isn't very
6025 hard, and last week I wrote a script to replicate the steps done by
6026 the Debian Edu installer.</p>
6027
6028 <p>The script,
6029 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/branches/wheezy/debian-edu-config/share/debian-edu-config/tools/debian-edu-bless?view=markup">debian-edu-bless<a/>
6030 in the debian-edu-config package, will go through these six steps and
6031 transform an existing Debian Wheezy or Ubuntu (untested) installation
6032 into a Debian Edu Workstation:</p>
6033
6034 <ol>
6035
6036 <li>Add skolelinux related APT sources.</li>
6037 <li>Create /etc/debian-edu/config with the wanted configuration.</li>
6038 <li>Install debian-edu-install to load preseeding values and pull in
6039     our configuration.</li>
6040 <li>Preseed debconf database with profile setup in
6041     /etc/debian-edu/config, and run tasksel to install packages
6042     according to the profile specified in the config above,
6043     overriding some of the Debian automation machinery.</li>
6044 <li>Run debian-edu-cfengine-D installation to configure everything
6045     that could not be done using preseeding.</li>
6046 <li>Ask for a reboot to enable all the configuration changes.</li>
6047
6048 </ol>
6049
6050 <p>There are some steps in the Debian Edu installation that can not be
6051 replicated like this.  Disk partitioning and LVM setup, for example.
6052 So this script just assume there is enough disk space to install all
6053 the needed packages.</p>
6054
6055 <p>The script was created to help a Debian Edu student working on
6056 setting up <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org">Raspberry Pi</a> as a
6057 Debian Edu client, and using it he can take the existing
6058 <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/FrontPage‎">Raspbian</a> installation and
6059 transform it into a fully functioning Debian Edu Workstation (or
6060 Roaming Workstation, or whatever :).</p>
6061
6062 <p>The default setting in the script is to create a KDE Workstation.
6063 If a LXDE based Roaming workstation is wanted instead, modify the
6064 PROFILE and DESKTOP values at the top to look like this instead:</p>
6065
6066 <p><pre>
6067 PROFILE="Roaming-Workstation"
6068 DESKTOP="lxde"
6069 </pre></p>
6070
6071 <p>The script could even become useful to set up Debian Edu servers in
6072 the cloud, by starting with a virtual Debian installation at some
6073 virtual hosting service and setting up all the services on first
6074 boot.</p>
6075
6076       </div>
6077       <div class="tags">
6078
6079
6080         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>.
6081
6082
6083       </div>
6084     </div>
6085     <div class="padding"></div>
6086
6087     <div class="entry">
6088       <div class="title">
6089         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Second alpha release of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
6090       </div>
6091       <div class="date">
6092         14th May 2013
6093       </div>
6094       <div class="body">
6095         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
6096 project</a> is making great progress and made its second Wheezy based
6097 release today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
6098
6099 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.0.0 alpha1 released
6100 2013-05-14</strong></p>
6101
6102 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux 7.0.0 edu
6103 alpha1, based on <a href="http://www.debian.org">Debian</a> with
6104 codename "Wheezy".</p>
6105
6106 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
6107
6108 <p>Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based
6109 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
6110 configured school network. Immediatly after installation a school
6111 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
6112 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
6113 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
6114 initial installation of the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all
6115 other machines can be installed via the network.</p>
6116
6117 <p>This is the first test release based on Wheezy (which currently is
6118 not released yet). Basically this is an updated and slightly improved
6119 version compared to the Squeeze release.</p>
6120
6121 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
6122 <ul>
6123   <li>Install freemind (0.9.0) by default, and stop installing vym by
6124     default.</li>
6125   <li>Install chromium (26.0.1410.43) by default.</li>
6126   <li>Install goplay (0.5-1.1) to make golearn available by default.</li>
6127   <li>Updated support for Japanese input methods, now based on
6128     ibus-anthy.</li>
6129 </ul>
6130
6131 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
6132 <ul>
6133
6134   <li>Switched default file system from ext3 to ext4 for speed and
6135     reliability improvements.</li>
6136   <li>Got rid of unwanted winbind daemon and PAM setup activated because
6137     of <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/706434">706434</a>.</li>
6138   <li>Extended and improved the testsuite tests to detect more possible
6139     problems.</li>
6140   <li>Corrected proxy handling to not set http_proxy to a bogus
6141     direct:// URL.</li>
6142   <li>Corrected proxy setup for diskless workstations.</li>
6143   <li>Corrected PXE setup to use our updated udebs during installation.</li>
6144   <li>Made installation handling of low entropy level more robust.</li>
6145   <li>Create larger partitions for Roaming workstations and Thin client
6146     servers, to make room for all the software installed.</li>
6147   <li>Fix bug in Roaming workstation PAM setup, making it impossible to
6148     log in (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/706753">706753</a>).</li>
6149 </ul>
6150
6151 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
6152 <ul>
6153
6154   <li>IP resolution for the local hostname give useless IPv6 address
6155     (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/705900">705900</a>).  Only install
6156     libnss-myhostname on roaming workstations until it is fixed.</li>
6157   <li>DVD images are not yet ready.</li>
6158   <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
6159     available yet (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698840">698840</a>).</li>
6160   <li>Missing artwork for the KDE desktop (and probably a few others).</li>
6161   <li>KDE Debian submenu lacks icons.</li>
6162   <li>LXDE menu lacks entry for changing GOsa password
6163     (website). Installing gosa-desktop will be an option.</li>
6164   <li>Backup configuration via web interface is impossible due to
6165     password submission problem
6166     (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/700257">700257</a>).</li>
6167
6168 </ul>
6169
6170 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
6171
6172 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
6173 <ul>
6174
6175   <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso</a></li>
6176   <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso</a></li>
6177   <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso</li>
6178
6179 </ul>
6180
6181 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 685ed76c1aa8e44b12d3fde21faf450b</p>
6182
6183 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 6c874de157024da13e115bab29c068080a11ec4c</p>
6184
6185 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
6186
6187 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
6188
6189       </div>
6190       <div class="tags">
6191
6192
6193         Tags: <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>.
6194
6195
6196       </div>
6197     </div>
6198     <div class="padding"></div>
6199
6200     <div class="entry">
6201       <div class="title">
6202         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian__the_Linux_distribution_of_choice_for_LEGO_designers_.html">Debian, the Linux distribution of choice for LEGO designers?</a>
6203       </div>
6204       <div class="date">
6205         11th May 2013
6206       </div>
6207       <div class="body">
6208         <P>In January,
6209 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">I
6210 announced a</a> new <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">IRC
6211 channel #debian-lego</a>, for those of us in the Debian and Linux
6212 community interested in <a href="http://www.lego.com/">LEGO</a>, the
6213 marvellous construction system from Denmark.  We also created
6214 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">a wiki page</a> to have
6215 a place to take notes and write down our plans and hopes.  And several
6216 people showed up to help.  I was very happy to see the effect of my
6217 call.  Since the small start, we have a debtags tag
6218 <a href="http://debtags.debian.net/search/bytag?wl=hardware::hobby:lego">hardware::hobby:lego</a>
6219 tag for LEGO related packages, and now count 10 packages related to
6220 LEGO and <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/">Mindstorms</a>:</p>
6221
6222 <p><table>
6223 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/brickos">brickos</a></td><td>alternative OS for LEGO Mindstorms RCX. Supports development in C/C++</td></tr>
6224 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/leocad">leocad</a></td><td>virtual brick CAD software</td></tr>
6225 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libnxt">libnxt</a></td><td>utility library for talking to the LEGO Mindstorms NX</td></tr>
6226 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/lnpd">lnpd</a></td><td>daemon for LNP communication with BrickOS</td></tr>
6227 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nbc">nbc</a></td><td>compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks</td></tr>
6228 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nqc">nqc</a></td><td>Not Quite C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms RCX</td></tr>
6229 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/python-nxt">python-nxt</a></td><td>python driver/interface/wrapper for the Lego Mindstorms NXT robot</td></tr>
6230 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/python-nxt-filer">python-nxt-filer</a></td><td>simple GUI to manage files on a LEGO Mindstorms NXT</td></tr>
6231 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/scratch">scratch</a></td><td>easy to use programming environment for ages 8 and up</td></tr>
6232 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/t2n">t2n</a></td><td>simple command-line tool for Lego NXT</td></tr>
6233 </table></p>
6234
6235 <p>Some of these are available in Wheezy, and all but one are
6236 currently available in Jessie/testing.  leocad is so far only
6237 available in experimental.</p>
6238
6239 <p>If you care about LEGO in Debian, please join us on IRC and help
6240 adding the rest of the great free software tools available on Linux
6241 for LEGO designers.</p>
6242
6243       </div>
6244       <div class="tags">
6245
6246
6247         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>.
6248
6249
6250       </div>
6251     </div>
6252     <div class="padding"></div>
6253
6254     <div class="entry">
6255       <div class="title">
6256         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Wheezy_is_out___and_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_should_soon_follow___newinwheezy.html">Debian Wheezy is out - and Debian Edu / Skolelinux should soon follow! #newinwheezy</a>
6257       </div>
6258       <div class="date">
6259          5th May 2013
6260       </div>
6261       <div class="body">
6262         <p>When I woke up this morning, I was very happy to see that the
6263 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130504">release announcement
6264 for Debian Wheezy</a> was waiting in my mail box.  This is a great
6265 Debian release, and I expect to move my machines at home over to it fairly
6266 soon.</p>
6267
6268 <p>The new debian release contain heaps of new stuff, and one program
6269 in particular make me very happy to see included.  The
6270 <a href="http://scratch.mit.edu/">Scratch</a> program, made famous by
6271 the <a href="http://www.code.org/">Teach kids code</a> movement, is
6272 included for the first time.  Alongside similar programs like
6273 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/kturtle/">kturtle</a> and
6274 <a href="http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Turtle_Art">turtleart</a>,
6275 it allow for visual programming where syntax errors can not happen,
6276 and a friendly programming environment for learning to control the
6277 computer.  Scratch will also be included in the next release of Debian
6278 Edu.</a>
6279
6280 <p>And now that Wheezy is wrapped up, we can wrap up the next Debian
6281 Edu/Skolelinux release too.  The
6282 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/04/msg00132.html">first
6283 alpha release</a> went out last week, and the next should soon
6284 follow.<p>
6285
6286       </div>
6287       <div class="tags">
6288
6289
6290         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>.
6291
6292
6293       </div>
6294     </div>
6295     <div class="padding"></div>
6296
6297     <div class="entry">
6298       <div class="title">
6299         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">First alpha release of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
6300       </div>
6301       <div class="date">
6302         26th April 2013
6303       </div>
6304       <div class="body">
6305         <p>The Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is still going strong and made
6306 its first Wheezy based release today.  This is the release
6307 announcement:</p>
6308
6309 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu ~7.0.0 alpha0 released
6310 2013-04-26</strong></p>
6311
6312 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux ~7.0.0
6313 edu alpha0, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
6314
6315 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
6316
6317 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
6318 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
6319 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
6320 network. Immediatly after installation a school server running all
6321 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
6322 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
6323 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
6324 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
6325 installed via the network.</p>
6326
6327 <p>This is the first test release based on Wheezy (which currently is
6328 not released yet). Basically this is an updated and slightly improved
6329 version compared to the Squeeze release.</p>
6330
6331 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
6332
6333 <ul>
6334 <li>Everything which is new in Debian Wheezy, eg:
6335   <ul>
6336      <li>Linux kernel 3.2.x</li>
6337      <li>Desktop environments KDE "Plasma" 4.8.4, GNOME 3.4, and LXDE 4
6338          (KDE is installed by default; to choose GNOME or LXDE: see
6339          manual.)</li>
6340      <li>Web browser Iceweasel 10 ESR</li>
6341      <li>LibreOffice 3.5.4</li>
6342      <li>LTSP 5.4.2</li>
6343      <li>GOsa 2.7.4</li>
6344      <li>CUPS print system 1.5.3</li>
6345      <li>Educational toolbox GCompris 12.01</li>
6346      <li>Music creator Rosegarden 12.04</li>
6347      <li>Image editor Gimp 2.8.2</li>
6348      <li>Virtual universe Celestia 1.6.1</li>
6349      <li>Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.11.3</li>
6350      <li>Scratch visual programming environment 1.4.0.6</li>
6351      <li>New version of debian-installer from Debian Wheezy, see
6352          <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/installmanual">installation
6353          manual</a> for more details.</li>
6354      <li>Debian Wheezy includes about 37000 packages available for
6355          installation.</li>
6356      <li>More information about Debian Wheezy 7.0 is provided in the
6357          <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/releasenotes">release notes</a> and the <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/installmanual">installation manual</a>.</li>
6358   </ul></li>
6359 </ul>
6360
6361 <p><strong>Documentation</strong></p>
6362 <ul>
6363 <li>The (<a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy">English</a>) Debian Edu Wheezy Manual is fully translated to
6364     German, French, Italian and Danish. Partly translated versions exist
6365     for Norwegian Bokmal and Spanish.</li>
6366 </ul>
6367
6368 <p><Strong>LDAP related changes</strong></p>
6369 <ul>
6370 <li>Slight changes to some objects and acls to have more types to
6371     choose from when adding systems in GOsa. Now systems can be of type
6372     server, workstation, printer, terminal or netdevice.</li>
6373 </ul>
6374
6375 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
6376 <ul>
6377 <li>LTSP clients start as diskless workstation / thin client can be
6378     configured via command line argument -- or individually adding an
6379     entry in lts.conf or LDAP.<li>
6380 <li>GOsa gui: Now some options that seemed to be available, but are non
6381     functional, are greyed out (or are not clickable). Some tabs are
6382     completely hidden to the end user, others even to the GOsa admin.</li>
6383 </ul>
6384
6385 <p><strong>Regressions</strong></p>
6386 <ul>
6387 <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv) available
6388     yet.</li>
6389 </ul>
6390
6391 <p><strong>No updated artwork</strong></p>
6392
6393 <ul>
6394 <li>Updated artwork which is visible during installation, in the login
6395     screen and as desktop wallpaper is still missing or the same as we
6396     had for our Squeeze based release.</li>
6397 </ul>
6398
6399 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
6400
6401 To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use
6402 <ul>
6403 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</a></li>
6404 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</a></li>
6405 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</li>
6406 </ul>
6407
6408 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: c5e773ddafdaa4f48c409c682f598b6c</p>
6409
6410 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 25934fabb9b7d20235499a0a51f08ce6c54215f2</p>
6411
6412 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
6413
6414 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
6415
6416       </div>
6417       <div class="tags">
6418
6419
6420         Tags: <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>.
6421
6422
6423       </div>
6424     </div>
6425     <div class="padding"></div>
6426
6427     <div class="entry">
6428       <div class="title">
6429         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_developer_gathering_in_2013_take_place_in_Trondheim.html">First Debian Edu / Skolelinux developer gathering in 2013 take place in Trondheim</a>
6430       </div>
6431       <div class="date">
6432         16th April 2013
6433       </div>
6434       <div class="body">
6435         <p>This years first <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux /
6436 Debian Edu</a> developer gathering take place the coming weekend in Trondheim.
6437 Details about the gathering can be found
6438 <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2013-04-19-21-Trondheim">on
6439 the FRiSK wiki</a>.  The dates are 19-21th of April 2013, and online
6440 participation for those unable to make it in person is very welcome,
6441 and I plan to participate online myself as I could not leave Oslo this
6442 weekend.</p>
6443
6444 <p>The focus of the gathering is to work on the web pages and project
6445 infrastructure, and to continue the work on the Wheezy based Debian
6446 Edu release.</p>
6447
6448 <p>See you on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">IRC, #debian-edu on irc.debian.org,</a> then?</p>
6449
6450       </div>
6451       <div class="tags">
6452
6453
6454         Tags: <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>.
6455
6456
6457       </div>
6458     </div>
6459     <div class="padding"></div>
6460
6461     <div class="entry">
6462       <div class="title">
6463         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Isenkram_0_2_finally_in_the_Debian_archive.html">Isenkram 0.2 finally in the Debian archive</a>
6464       </div>
6465       <div class="date">
6466          3rd April 2013
6467       </div>
6468       <div class="body">
6469         <p>Today the <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram
6470 package</a> finally made it into the archive, after lingering in NEW
6471 for many months.  I uploaded it to the Debian experimental suite
6472 2013-01-27, and today it was accepted into the archive.</p>
6473
6474 <p>Isenkram is a system for suggesting to users what packages to
6475 install to work with a pluggable hardware device.  The suggestion pop
6476 up when the device is plugged in.  For example if a Lego Mindstorm NXT
6477 is inserted, it will suggest to install the program needed to program
6478 the NXT controller.  Give it a go, and report bugs and suggestions to
6479 BTS. :)</p>
6480
6481       </div>
6482       <div class="tags">
6483
6484
6485         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>.
6486
6487
6488       </div>
6489     </div>
6490     <div class="padding"></div>
6491
6492     <div class="entry">
6493       <div class="title">
6494         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Change_the_font__save_the_world__and_save_some_money_in_the_process_.html">Change the font, save the world (and save some money in the process)</a>
6495       </div>
6496       <div class="date">
6497         26th March 2013
6498       </div>
6499       <div class="body">
6500         <p>Would you like to help the environment and save money at the same
6501 time, without much sacrifice?  A small step could be to change the
6502 font you use when printing.</p>
6503
6504 <p>Three years ago,
6505 <a href="http://arstechnica.com/business/2010/04/last-year-printer-comparison-website/">Ars
6506 Technica</a> reported how the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay
6507 changed their default front from
6508 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arial">Arial</a> to
6509 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_Gothic">Century
6510 Gothic</a> to save money.  The Century Gothic font uses 30% less toner
6511 than Arial to print the same text.  In other word, you could cut your
6512 toner costs by 30% (or actually, increase your toner supply life time
6513 by more than 30%), by simply changing the default font used in your
6514 prints.</p>
6515
6516 <p>But it is not quite obvious how much one will save by switching.
6517 The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay said it used $100,000 per year
6518 on ink and toner cartridges, according to
6519 <a href="http://www.twincities.com/ci_14833097">a report from
6520 TwinCities.com</a>, and expected to save between $5,000 and $10,000
6521 per year by asking staff and students to use a different font.  Not
6522 all PDFs and documents are created internally, and those from external
6523 sources will most likely still use a different font.  Also, the
6524 Century Gothic font is slightly wider than Arial, and thus might use
6525 more sheets of paper to print the same text, so the total saving
6526 depend on the documents printed.</p>
6527
6528 <p>But it is definitely something to consider, if you want to reduce
6529 the amount of trash, decrease the amount of toner used in the world,
6530 and save some money in the process.</p>
6531
6532 <p>Update 2013-04-10: If you want to know how much ink/toner could be
6533 saved when switching between fonts, Inkfarm got a
6534 <a href="http://www.inkfarm.com/What-the-Font">service to calculate the
6535 difference between font pairs</a>.  They also
6536 <a href="http://www.inkfarm.com/Recommended-Ink-Saving-Fonts---">recommend
6537 which fonts to use</a> to save ink.  Check it out. :) While updating
6538 this blog post, I also came across a blog post from InkCloners,
6539 <a href="http://inkcloners.com/blog/ink-cartridges/change-fonts-to-save-ink-costs/">listing
6540 the fonts they recommend</a>, with Centory Gothic at the top.</p>
6541
6542       </div>
6543       <div class="tags">
6544
6545
6546         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6547
6548
6549       </div>
6550     </div>
6551     <div class="padding"></div>
6552
6553     <div class="entry">
6554       <div class="title">
6555         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Typesetting_a_short_story_using_docbook_for_PDF__HTML_and_EPUB.html">Typesetting a short story using docbook for PDF, HTML and EPUB</a>
6556       </div>
6557       <div class="date">
6558         24th March 2013
6559       </div>
6560       <div class="body">
6561         <p>A few days ago, during a discussion in
6562 <a href="http://www.efn.no/">EFN</a> about interesting books to read
6563 about copyright and the data retention directive, a suggestion to read
6564 the 1968 short story Kodémus by
6565 <a href="http://web2.gyldendal.no/toraage/">Tore Åge Bringsværd</a>
6566 came up.  The text was only available in old paper books, and thus not
6567 easily available for current and future generations.  Some of the
6568 people participating in the discussion contacted the author, and
6569 reported back 2013-03-19 that the author was OK with releasing the
6570 short story using a <a href="http://www.creativecommons.org/">Creative
6571 Commons</a> license.  The text was quickly scanned and OCR-ed, and we
6572 were ready to start on the editing and typesetting.</p>
6573
6574 <p>As I already had some experience formatting text in my project to
6575 provide a Norwegian version of the Free Culture book by Lawrence
6576 Lessig, I chipped in and set up a
6577 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">DocBook</a> processing framework to
6578 generate PDF, HTML and EPUB version of the short story.  The tools to
6579 transform DocBook to different formats are already in my Linux
6580 distribution of choice, <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>, so
6581 all I had to do was to use the
6582 <a href="http://dblatex.sourceforge.net/">dblatex</a>,
6583 <a href="http://docbook.sourceforge.net/release/xsl/current/epub/README">dbtoepub</a>
6584 and <a href="https://fedorahosted.org/xmlto/">xmlto</a> tools to do the
6585 conversion.  After a few days, we decided to replace dblatex with
6586 xsltproc/fop (aka
6587 <a href="http://wiki.docbook.org/DocBookXslStylesheets">docbook-xsl</a>),
6588 to get the copyright information to show up in the PDF and to get a
6589 nicer &lt;variablelist&gt; typesetting, but that is just a minor
6590 technical detail.</p>
6591
6592 <p>There were a few challenges, of course.  We want to typeset the
6593 short story to look like the original, and that require fairly good
6594 control over the layout.  The original short story have three
6595 parts/scenes separated by a single horizontally centred star (*), and
6596 the paragraphs do not contain only flowing text, but dialogs and text
6597 that started on a new line in the middle of the paragraph.</p>
6598
6599 <p>I initially solved the first challenge by using a paragraph with a
6600 single star in it, ie &lt;para&gt;*&lt;/para&gt;, but it made sure a
6601 placeholder indicated where the scene shifted.  This did not look too
6602 good without the centring.  The next approach was to create a new
6603 preprocessor directive &lt;?newscene?&gt;, mapping to "&lt;hr/&gt;"
6604 for HTML and "&lt;fo:block text-align="center"&gt;&lt;fo:leader
6605 leader-pattern="rule" rule-thickness="0.5pt"/&gt;&lt;/fo:block&gt;"
6606 for FO/PDF output (did not try to implement this in dblatex, as we had
6607 switched at this time).  The HTML XSL file looked like this:</p>
6608
6609 <p><blockquote><pre>
6610 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
6611 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
6612   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('newscene')"&gt;
6613     &lt;hr/&gt;
6614   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
6615 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
6616 </pre></blockquote></p>
6617
6618 <p>And the FO/PDF XSL file looked like this:</p>
6619
6620 <p><blockquote><pre>
6621 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
6622 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
6623   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('newscene')"&gt;
6624     &lt;fo:block text-align="center"&gt;
6625       &lt;fo:leader leader-pattern="rule" rule-thickness="0.5pt"/&gt;
6626     &lt;/fo:block&gt;
6627   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
6628 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
6629 </pre></blockquote></p>
6630
6631 <p>Finally, I came across the &lt;bridgehead&gt; tag, which seem to be
6632 a good fit for the task at hand, and I replaced &lt;?newscene?&gt;
6633 with &lt;bridgehead&gt;*&lt;/bridgehead&gt;.  It isn't centred, but we
6634 can fix it with some XSL rule if the current visual layout isn't
6635 enough.</p>
6636
6637 <p>I did not find a good DocBook compliant way to solve the
6638 linebreak/paragraph challenge, so I ended up creating a new processor
6639 directive &lt;?linebreak?&gt;, mapping to &lt;br/&gt; in HTML, and
6640 &lt;fo:block/&gt; in FO/PDF.  I suspect there are better ways to do
6641 this, and welcome ideas and patches on github.  The HTML XSL file now
6642 look like this:</p>
6643
6644 <p><blockquote><pre>
6645 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
6646 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
6647   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('linebreak)"&gt;
6648     &lt;br/&gt;
6649   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
6650 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
6651 </pre></blockquote></p>
6652
6653 <p>And the FO/PDF XSL file looked like this:</p>
6654
6655 <p><blockquote><pre>
6656 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
6657 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'
6658   xmlns:fo="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Format"&gt;
6659   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('linebreak)"&gt;
6660     &lt;fo:block/&gt;
6661   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
6662 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
6663 </pre></blockquote></p>
6664
6665 <p>One unsolved challenge is our wish to expose different ISBN numbers
6666 per publication format, while keeping all of them in some conditional
6667 structure in the DocBook source.  No idea how to do this, so we ended
6668 up listing all the ISBN numbers next to their format in the colophon
6669 page.</p>
6670
6671 <p>If you want to check out the finished result, check out the
6672 <a href="https://github.com/sickel/kodemus">source repository at
6673 github</a>
6674 (<a href="https://github.com/EFN/kodemus">future/new/official
6675 repository</a>).  We expect it to be ready and announced in a few
6676 days.</p>
6677
6678       </div>
6679       <div class="tags">
6680
6681
6682         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
6683
6684
6685       </div>
6686     </div>
6687     <div class="padding"></div>
6688
6689     <div class="entry">
6690       <div class="title">
6691         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_6_got_a_video_review_from_Pcwizz.html">Skolelinux 6 got a video review from Pcwizz</a>
6692       </div>
6693       <div class="date">
6694         17th March 2013
6695       </div>
6696       <div class="body">
6697         <p>Via
6698 <a href="https://twitter.com/pcwizz/status/313044373262716930">twitter</a>
6699 I just discovered that <a href="http://pcwizz.net/">Pcwizz</a> have
6700 done a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPzTZ61Pcuc">video
6701 review</a> on Youtube of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
6702 / Debian Edu</a> version 6.  He installed the standalone profile and
6703 the video show a walk-through of of the menu content, demonstration of
6704 a few programs and his view of our distribution.</p>
6705
6706 <p>There is also some really nice quotes (transcribed by me, might
6707 have heard wrong).  While looking thought the Graphics menu:</p>
6708
6709 <blockquote>
6710 "Basically everything you ever need in a school environment."
6711 </blockquote>
6712
6713 <p>And as a general evaluation of the entire distribution:</p>
6714
6715 <blockquote>
6716 "So, yeah, a bit bloated.  It kept all the Debian stuff in there, just
6717 to keep it nice and GNU.  So, I do not want to go on about it, but
6718 lets give it 7 out of 10.  I am not going to use it.  That is because
6719 I am not deploying a school network.  There may be some mythical
6720 feature to help you deploy Skolelinux on a school network."
6721 </blockquote>
6722
6723 <p>To bad he did not test the server profile, and discovered the PXE
6724 installation option.  It make it possible to install only the main
6725 server from CD, and the rest of the machines via the net, and might be
6726 considered the mythical feature he talk about. :)</p>
6727
6728 <p>While looking through the menus, there is also this funny comment
6729 about the part of the K menu generated from the Debian menu subsystem:
6730
6731 <blockquote>
6732 "[The K menu] have a special Debian section for software that no-one
6733 is going to look at, because it contain lots of junky stuff that you
6734 actually don't need in the education distribution, but have just been
6735 included because it isn't stripped out for some reason."
6736 </blockquote>
6737
6738 <p>I guess it is yet another argument for merging the Debian menu and
6739 Gnome/KDE desktop menu entries into
6740 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/Proposals/DebianMenuUsingDesktopEntries">one
6741 consistent menu system</a> instead of two incomplete and partly
6742 inconsistent menu systems.</p>
6743
6744 <p>The entire video is available below for those accepting iframe
6745 embedding:</p>
6746
6747 <iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/wPzTZ61Pcuc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
6748
6749       </div>
6750       <div class="tags">
6751
6752
6753         Tags: <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/video">video</a>.
6754
6755
6756       </div>
6757     </div>
6758     <div class="padding"></div>
6759
6760     <div class="entry">
6761       <div class="title">
6762         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_update_released.html">First Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze update released</a>
6763       </div>
6764       <div class="date">
6765          8th March 2013
6766       </div>
6767       <div class="body">
6768         <p>Last Sunday, 2013-03-03,, Holger Levsen announced the first update
6769 of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
6770 based on Debian Squeeze.  This is the first update since
6771 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">the
6772 initial release 2012-03-11</a>.  This is the
6773 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2013/03/msg00000.html">release
6774 announcement email from Holger</a>:</p>
6775
6776 <blockquote><p>Hi,</p>
6777
6778 <p>it's my pleasure to announce the immediate availability of Debian
6779 Edu 6.0.7+r1 ("Debian Edu Squeeze").</p>
6780
6781 <p>Debian Edu 6.0.7+r1 is an incremental update to Debian Edu
6782 6.0.4+r0, containing all the changes between Debian 6.0.4 and 6.0.7 as
6783 well Debian Edu specific bugfixes and enhancements. See below (in this
6784 mail) for the full list of (edu) changes.  Please see
6785 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311">http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311</a>
6786 for more information on "Debian Edu Squeeze".</p>
6787
6788 <p>Images are available for download at
6789 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/</a></p>
6790
6791 <p>md5sums:
6792 <br>1fe79eb4f0f9ae1c58fc318e26cc1e2e  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-CD.iso
6793 <br>a6ddd924a8bd9a1b5ca122e8fe1c34ec  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-DVD.iso
6794 <br>ac6c72cd7925ccec51bfbf58e2a7c69c  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-source-DVD.iso</p>
6795
6796 <p>sha1sums:
6797 <br>a4b58233b672a99c7df8dc24fb6de3327654a5c3  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-CD.iso
6798 <br>9b524915e0ff2aa793f13d93123e5bd2bab2dbaa  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-DVD.iso
6799 <br>43997614893fc5e9e59ad6ce066b05d07fd836fa  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-source-DVD.iso</p>
6800
6801 <p>These images are suitable for amd64+i386.</p>
6802
6803 <p>Changes for Debian Edu 6.0.7+r1 Codename "Squeeze", released
6804 2013-03-03:</p>
6805
6806 <ul>
6807   <li>sitesummary was updated from 0.1.3 to 0.1.8
6808   <ul>
6809         <li>Make Nagios configuration more robust and efficient</li>
6810         <li>Comply with 3.X kernel</li>
6811   </ul></li>
6812   <li>debian-edu-doc from 1.4~20120310~6.0.4+r0 to 1.4~20130228~6.0.7+r1
6813   <ul>
6814         <li>Minor updates from the wiki</li>
6815         <li>Danish translation now complete</li>
6816   </ul></li>
6817   <li>debian-edu-config from 1.453 to 1.455
6818      <ul>
6819         <li>Fix /etc/hosts for LTSP diskless workstations. Closes: #699880</li>
6820         <li>Make ltsp_local_mount script work for multiple devices.</li>
6821         <li>Correct Kerberos user policy: don't expire password after 2 days.
6822                 Closes: #664596</li>
6823         <li>Handle '#' characters in the root or first users password.
6824                 Closes: #664976</li>
6825         <li>Fixes for gosa-sync:
6826            <ul>
6827                 <li>Don't fail if password contains "</li>
6828                 <li>Don't disclose new password string in syslog</li>
6829            </ul></li>
6830         <li>Fixes for gosa-create:
6831            <ul>
6832                 <li>Invalidate libnss cache before applying changes</li>
6833                 <li>Multiple failures during mass user import into GOsa²</li>
6834                 <li>gosa-netgroups plugin: don't erase entries of attribute type
6835                          "memberNisNetgroup". Closes: #687256</li>
6836                 <li>First user now uses the same Kerberos policy as all other users</li>
6837            </ul></li>
6838         <li>Add Danish web page</li>
6839     </ul>
6840   <li>debian-edu-install from 1.528 to 1.530
6841     <ul>
6842         <li>Improve preseeding support and documentation</li>
6843     </ul></li>
6844 </ul>
6845
6846 <p>End-user documentation in English is available at
6847 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/</a>
6848 - translations to French, Italian, Danish and German are available in
6849 the debian-edu-doc package. (Other languages could use your help!)</p>
6850
6851 <p>If you want to contribute to Debian Edu, please join our
6852 mailinglist
6853 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">debian-edu@lists.debian.org</a>!
6854 </p></blockquote>
6855
6856 <p>I am very happy to see the fruits of a year of hard work. :)</p>
6857
6858       </div>
6859       <div class="tags">
6860
6861
6862         Tags: <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>.
6863
6864
6865       </div>
6866     </div>
6867     <div class="padding"></div>
6868
6869     <div class="entry">
6870       <div class="title">
6871         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Frikanalen___Complete_TV_station_organised_using_the_web.html">Frikanalen - Complete TV station organised using the web</a>
6872       </div>
6873       <div class="date">
6874          3rd March 2013
6875       </div>
6876       <div class="body">
6877         <p>Do you want to set up your own TV station, schedule videos and
6878 broadcast them on the air?  Using free software?  With video on demand
6879 support using
6880 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and
6881 open standards</a>?  Included a web based video stream as well?  And
6882 administrate it all in your web browser from anywhere in the world?  A
6883 few years now the Norwegian public access TV-channel
6884 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a> have been building a
6885 system to do just this.  The source code for the solution is licensed
6886 using the GNU LGPL, and
6887 <a href="http://github.com/Frikanalen">available from github</a>.</p>
6888
6889 <p>The idea is simple.  You upload a video file over the web, and
6890 attach meta information to the file.  You select a time slot in the
6891 program schedule, and when the time come it is played on the air and
6892 in the web stream.  It is also made available in a video on demand
6893 solution for anyone to see it also outside its scheduled time.  All
6894 you need to run a TV station - using your web browser.</p>
6895
6896 <p>There are several parts to this web based solution.  I'll mention
6897 the three most important ones.  The first part is the database of
6898 videos and the schedule.  This is written in Django and include a REST
6899 API.  The current database is SQLite, but the plan is to migrate it to
6900 PostgreSQL.  At the moment this system can be tested on
6901 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/">beta.frikanalen.tv</a>.  The
6902 second part is the video playout, taking the schedule information from
6903 the database and providing a video stream to broadcast.  This is done
6904 using <a href="http://www.casparcg.com/">CasparCG from SVT</a> and
6905 <a href="http://www.mltframework.org/">Media Lovin' Toolkit</a>.  Video
6906 signal distribution is handled using
6907 <a href="http://www.ob-encoder.com/">Open Broadcast Encoder</a>.  The
6908 third part is the converter, handling the transformation of uploaded
6909 video files to a format useful for broadcasting, streaming and video
6910 on demand.  It is still very much work in progress, so it is not yet
6911 decided what it will end up using.  Note that the source of the latter
6912 two parts are not yet pushed to github.  The lead author want to clean
6913 them up a bit more first.</p>
6914
6915 <p>The development is coordinated on the
6916 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23frikanalen">#frikanalen IRC
6917 channel</a> (irc.freenode.net), and discussed on
6918 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/frikanalen">the
6919 frikanalen mailing list</a>. The lead developer is Benjamin Bruheim
6920 (phed on IRC).  Anyone is welcome to participate in the
6921 development.</p>
6922
6923       </div>
6924       <div class="tags">
6925
6926
6927         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
6928
6929
6930       </div>
6931     </div>
6932     <div class="padding"></div>
6933
6934     <div class="entry">
6935       <div class="title">
6936         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dr__Richard_Stallman__founder_of_Free_Software_Foundation__give_a_talk_in_Oslo_March_1st_2013.html">Dr. Richard Stallman, founder of Free Software Foundation, give a talk in Oslo March 1st 2013</a>
6937       </div>
6938       <div class="date">
6939         27th February 2013
6940       </div>
6941       <div class="body">
6942         <p>Dr. <a href="http://www.stallman.org/">Richard Stallman</a>,
6943 founder of <a href="http://www.fsf.org/">Free Software Foundation</a>,
6944 is giving <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20130301-rms/">a
6945 talk in Oslo March 1st 2013 17:00 to 19:00</a>.  The event is public
6946 and organised by <a href="">Norwegian Unix Users Group (NUUG)</a>
6947 (where I am the chair of the board) and
6948 <a href="http://www.friprog.no/">The Norwegian Open Source Competence
6949 Center</a>.  The title of the talk is «The Free Software Movement and
6950 GNU», with this description:
6951
6952 <p><blockquote>
6953 The Free Software Movement campaigns for computer users' freedom to
6954 cooperate and control their own computing. The Free Software Movement
6955 developed the GNU operating system, typically used together with the
6956 kernel Linux, specifically to make these freedoms possible.
6957 </blockquote></p>
6958
6959 <p>The meeting is open for everyone.  Due to space limitations, the
6960 doors opens for NUUG members at 16:15, and everyone else at 16:45.  I
6961 am really curious how many will show up.  See
6962 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20130301-rms/">the event
6963 page</a> for the location details.</p>
6964
6965       </div>
6966       <div class="tags">
6967
6968
6969         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</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>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
6970
6971
6972       </div>
6973     </div>
6974     <div class="padding"></div>
6975
6976     <div class="entry">
6977       <div class="title">
6978         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Frikart___Free_Garmin_maps_for_European_countries_based_on_OpenStreetmap.html">Frikart - Free Garmin maps for European countries based on OpenStreetmap</a>
6979       </div>
6980       <div class="date">
6981         15th February 2013
6982       </div>
6983       <div class="body">
6984         <p>If you, like me, want an updated a map for your Garmin GPS, there is
6985 now a great source of free maps available from
6986 <a href="http://www.frikart.no/garmin/index.html">Frikart</a>.  To
6987 download a map, just click on the country you are interested in, and
6988 download the map type you want.  There are 8 different maps available,
6989 using different colours and data selection.  Pick one of Roadmap, Topo
6990 Summer, Topo Winter, Roadmap II, Topo Summer II, Topo Winter II,
6991 "Trails - overlay map" and "Cross country - overlay map" (see the web
6992 page for descriptions).</p>
6993
6994 <p>The maps are updated weekly, so if you find something wrong in the
6995 map you can just edit the
6996 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> map source
6997 (anyone can contribute) and fetch a fixed map a week later. :)</p>
6998
6999       </div>
7000       <div class="tags">
7001
7002
7003         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart</a>.
7004
7005
7006       </div>
7007     </div>
7008     <div class="padding"></div>
7009
7010     <div class="entry">
7011       <div class="title">
7012         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/_Electronic__paper_invoices___using_vCard_in_a_QR_code.html">"Electronic" paper invoices - using vCard in a QR code</a>
7013       </div>
7014       <div class="date">
7015         12th February 2013
7016       </div>
7017       <div class="body">
7018         <p>Here in Norway, electronic invoices are spreading, and the
7019 <a href="http://www.anskaffelser.no/e-handel/faktura">solution promoted
7020 by the Norwegian government</a> require that invoices are sent through
7021 one of the approved facilitators, and it is not possible to send
7022 electronic invoices without an agreement with one of these
7023 facilitators.  This seem like a needless limitation to be able to
7024 transfer invoice information between buyers and sellers.  My preferred
7025 solution would be to just transfer the invoice information directly
7026 between seller and buyer, for example using SMTP, or some HTTP based
7027 protocol like REST or SOAP.  But this might also be overkill, as the
7028 "electronic" information can be transferred using paper invoices too,
7029 using a simple bar code.  My bar code encoding of choice would be QR
7030 codes, as this encoding can be read by any smart phone out there.  The
7031 content of the code could be anything, but I would go with
7032 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VCard">the vCard format</a>, as
7033 it too is supported by a lot of computer equipment these days.</p>
7034
7035 <p>The vCard format support extentions, and the invoice specific
7036 information can be included using such extentions.  For example an
7037 invoice from SLX Debian Labs (picked because we
7038 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">ask
7039 for donations to the Debian Edu project</a> and thus have bank account
7040 information publicly available) for NOK 1000.00 could have these extra
7041 fields:</p>
7042
7043 <p><pre>
7044 X-INVOICE-NUMBER:1
7045 X-INVOICE-AMOUNT:NOK1000.00
7046 X-INVOICE-KID:123412341234
7047 X-INVOICE-MSG:Donation to Debian Edu
7048 X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER:16040884339
7049 X-BANK-IBAN-NUMBER:NO8516040884339
7050 X-BANK-SWIFT-NUMBER:DNBANOKKXXX
7051 </pre></p>
7052
7053 <p>The X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER field was proposed in a stackoverflow
7054 answer regarding
7055 <a href="http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10045664/storing-bank-account-in-vcard-file">how
7056 to put bank account information into a vCard</a>.  For payments in
7057 Norway, either X-INVOICE-KID (payment ID) or X-INVOICE-MSG could be
7058 used to pass on information to the seller when paying the invoice.</p>
7059
7060 <p>The complete vCard could look like this:</p>
7061
7062 <p><pre>
7063 BEGIN:VCARD
7064 VERSION:2.1
7065 ORG:SLX Debian Labs Foundation
7066 ADR;WORK:;;Gunnar Schjelderups vei 29D;OSLO;;0485;Norway
7067 URL;WORK:http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/
7068 EMAIL;PREF;INTERNET:sdl-styret@rt.nuug.no
7069 REV:20130212T095000Z
7070 X-INVOICE-NUMBER:1
7071 X-INVOICE-AMOUNT:NOK1000.00
7072 X-INVOICE-MSG:Donation to Debian Edu
7073 X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER:16040884339
7074 X-BANK-IBAN-NUMBER:NO8516040884339
7075 X-BANK-SWIFT-NUMBER:DNBANOKKXXX
7076 END:VCARD
7077 </pre></p>
7078
7079 <p>The resulting QR code created using
7080 <a href="http://fukuchi.org/works/qrencode/">qrencode</a> would look
7081 like this, and should be readable (and thus checkable) by any smart
7082 phone, or for example the <a href="http://zbar.sourceforge.net/">zbar
7083 bar code reader</a> and feed right into the approval and accounting
7084 system.</p>
7085
7086 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-02-12-qr-invoice.png"></p>
7087
7088 <p>The extension fields will most likely not show up in any normal
7089 vCard reader, so those parts would have to go directly into a system
7090 handling invoices.  I am a bit unsure how vCards without name parts
7091 are handled, but a simple test indicate that this work just fine.</p>
7092
7093 <p><strong>Update 2013-02-12 11:30</strong>: Added KID to the proposal
7094 based on feedback from Sturle Sunde.</p>
7095
7096       </div>
7097       <div class="tags">
7098
7099
7100         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
7101
7102
7103       </div>
7104     </div>
7105     <div class="padding"></div>
7106
7107     <div class="entry">
7108       <div class="title">
7109         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sleep_until_morning___home_automation_for_the_kids.html">Sleep until morning - home automation for the kids</a>
7110       </div>
7111       <div class="date">
7112         10th February 2013
7113       </div>
7114       <div class="body">
7115         <p><img align="left" style="margin-right:25px;" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-02-10-morning-light.jpeg"></p>
7116
7117 <p>With kids in the house, one challenge is getting them to sleep
7118 during the night and wake up when it is morning.  I mean, when I
7119 believe it is morning, and not two hours earlier.  In our household we
7120 have decided that 07:00 is the turning point, but getting the kids to
7121 sleep until 07:00 is a small challenge every day.  They have adapted
7122 quite well, and rarely wake up at 05:00 any more, but some times wake
7123 up at times like 05:50, 06:15, 06:30 or 06:45, and it is hard to put
7124 the awake one to bed again without disturbing and waking the rest.
7125 And I understand perfectly well that they fail to sleep until 07:00
7126 some times, as there is no way for them to know if it is before or
7127 after the magic moment without coming and asking us parents.</p>
7128
7129 <p>But yesterday I came up with a method to solve this problem.  It
7130 involve home automation.  A few years ago I bought a
7131 <a href="http://www.telldus.se/products/tellstick">Tellstick</a> and RF
7132 switches at the local <a href="http://www.clasohlson.com/">Clas
7133 Ohlson</a> shop, allowing me to control lights and other electrical
7134 gadgets using my Linux server.  When I moved from the old flat to a
7135 small house, I put away all this equipment as most of the lighting in
7136 the house was not using wall sockets and thus not easy to connect to
7137 the gadgets I had.  But recently I bought a
7138 <a href="http://www.telldus.se/products/tellstick_net">Tellstick
7139 Net</a> to be able to read sensor input as well as control power
7140 sockets.  I want to control ovens in the basement to avoid the pipes
7141 to freeze, and monitor the humidity to detect flooding.  The default
7142 setup for Tellstick Net is to be controlled by the vendor web service,
7143 which to me is a security problem, but it is also possible to build
7144 ones own
7145 <a href="http://developer.telldus.com/blog/2012/03/02/help-us-develop-local-access-using-tellstick-net-build-your-own-firmware">firmware
7146 with local access</A> instead of being controlled by a Swedish
7147 company, thanks to the release of the GPL licensed firmware source
7148 code.  I plan to get that running before I let it control anything
7149 important.  But while working on this, one idea to make it easier for
7150 the kids came to me yesterday.  We can set up a night light controlled
7151 by the computer, and turn it automatically on at 07:00.  The kids can
7152 then check the light in the morning to know if they are supposed to
7153 get up or not.  They joined me in setting everything up, and I
7154 repeated the concept several times before bed times to make sure they
7155 remembered to check the light before getting up in the morning.</p>
7156
7157 <p>We tested it this morning, and all the kids stayed in bed until
7158 after 07:00, and every one of them commented on the fact that the
7159 "morning light" was turned on and signalled that the morning had
7160 arrived.  So this look like a success, and I am excited to see how
7161 this develops the next few days. :) I really hope this can allow us
7162 all to sleep a bit longer in the morning.</p>
7163
7164 <p>A nice advantage of this setup is that we can remote control when
7165 to tell the kids to get up.  We do not have to wait until 07:00, and
7166 can also delay it if we want to.</p>
7167
7168       </div>
7169       <div class="tags">
7170
7171
7172         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7173
7174
7175       </div>
7176     </div>
7177     <div class="padding"></div>
7178
7179     <div class="entry">
7180       <div class="title">
7181         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Bitcoin_GUI_now_available_from_Debian_unstable__and_Ubuntu_raring_.html">Bitcoin GUI now available from Debian/unstable (and Ubuntu/raring)</a>
7182       </div>
7183       <div class="date">
7184          2nd February 2013
7185       </div>
7186       <div class="body">
7187         <p>My
7188 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">last
7189 bitcoin related blog post</a> mentioned that the new
7190 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin package</a> for
7191 Debian was waiting in NEW.  It was accepted by the Debian ftp-masters
7192 2013-01-19, and have been available in unstable since then.  It was
7193 automatically copied to Ubuntu, and is available in their Raring
7194 version too.</p>
7195
7196 <p>But there is a strange problem with the build that block this new
7197 version from being available on the i386 and kfreebsd-i386
7198 architectures.  For some strange reason, the autobuilders in Debian
7199 for these architectures fail to run the test suite on these
7200 architectures (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/672524">BTS #672524</a>).
7201 We are so far unable to reproduce it when building it manually, and
7202 no-one have been able to propose a fix.  If you got an idea what is
7203 failing, please let us know via the BTS.</p>
7204
7205 <p>One feature that is annoying me with of the bitcoin client, because
7206 I often run low on disk space, is the fact that the client will exit
7207 if it run short on space (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/696715">BTS
7208 #696715</a>).  So make sure you have enough disk space when you run
7209 it. :)</p>
7210
7211 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
7212 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
7213 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
7214
7215       </div>
7216       <div class="tags">
7217
7218
7219         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>.
7220
7221
7222       </div>
7223     </div>
7224     <div class="padding"></div>
7225
7226     <div class="entry">
7227       <div class="title">
7228         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">Welcome to the world, Isenkram!</a>
7229       </div>
7230       <div class="date">
7231         22nd January 2013
7232       </div>
7233       <div class="body">
7234         <p>Yesterday, I
7235 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">asked
7236 for testers</a> for my prototype for making Debian better at handling
7237 pluggable hardware devices, which I
7238 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">set
7239 out to create</a> earlier this month.  Several valuable testers showed
7240 up, and caused me to really want to to open up the development to more
7241 people.  But before I did this, I want to come up with a sensible name
7242 for this project.  Today I finally decided on a new name, and I have
7243 renamed the project from hw-support-handler to this new name.  In the
7244 process, I moved the source to git and made it available as a
7245 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/isenkram.git">collab-maint</a>
7246 repository in Debian.  The new name?  It is <strong>Isenkram</strong>.
7247 To fetch and build the latest version of the source, use</p>
7248
7249 <pre>
7250 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/collab-maint/isenkram.git
7251 cd isenkram && git-buildpackage -us -uc
7252 </pre>
7253
7254 <p>I have not yet adjusted all files to use the new name yet.  If you
7255 want to hack on the source or improve the package, please go ahead.
7256 But please talk to me first on IRC or via email before you do major
7257 changes, to make sure we do not step on each others toes. :)</p>
7258
7259 <p>If you wonder what 'isenkram' is, it is a Norwegian word for iron
7260 stuff, typically meaning tools, nails, screws, etc.  Typical hardware
7261 stuff, in other words.  I've been told it is the Norwegian variant of
7262 the German word eisenkram, for those that are familiar with that
7263 word.</p>
7264
7265 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-26</strong>: Added -us -us to build
7266 instructions, to avoid confusing people with an error from the signing
7267 process.</p>
7268
7269 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-27</strong>: Switch to HTTP URL for the git
7270 clone argument to avoid the need for authentication.</p>
7271
7272       </div>
7273       <div class="tags">
7274
7275
7276         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>.
7277
7278
7279       </div>
7280     </div>
7281     <div class="padding"></div>
7282
7283     <div class="entry">
7284       <div class="title">
7285         <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>
7286       </div>
7287       <div class="date">
7288         21st January 2013
7289       </div>
7290       <div class="body">
7291         <p>Early this month I set out to try to
7292 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">improve
7293 the Debian support for pluggable hardware devices</a>.  Now my
7294 prototype is working, and it is ready for a larger audience.  To test
7295 it, fetch the
7296 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">source
7297 from the Debian Edu subversion repository</a>, build and install the
7298 package.  You might have to log out and in again activate the
7299 autostart script.</p>
7300
7301 <p>The design is simple:</p>
7302
7303 <ul>
7304
7305 <li>Add desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ causing a program
7306 hw-support-handlerd to start when the user log in.</li>
7307
7308 <li>This program listen for kernel events about new hardware (directly
7309 from the kernel like udev does), not using HAL dbus events as I
7310 initially did.</li>
7311
7312 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware modalias in
7313 the APT database, a database
7314 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=markup">available
7315 via HTTP</a> and a database available as part of the package.</li>
7316
7317 <li>If a package is mapped to the hardware in question, the package
7318 isn't installed yet and this is the first time the hardware was
7319 plugged in, show a desktop notification suggesting to install the
7320 package or packages.</li>
7321
7322 <li>If the user click on the 'install package now' button, ask
7323 aptdaemon via the PackageKit API to install the requrired package.</li>
7324
7325 <li>aptdaemon ask for root password or sudo password, and install the
7326 package while showing progress information in a window.</li>
7327
7328 </ul>
7329
7330 <p>I still need to come up with a better name for the system.  Here
7331 are some screen shots showing the prototype in action.  First the
7332 notification, then the password request, and finally the request to
7333 approve all the dependencies.  Sorry for the Norwegian Bokmål GUI.</p>
7334
7335 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-1-notification.png">
7336 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-2-password.png">
7337 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-3-dependencies.png">
7338 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-4-installing.png">
7339 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-5-installing-details.png" width="70%"></p>
7340
7341 <p>The prototype still need to be improved with longer timeouts, but
7342 is already useful.  The database of hardware to package mappings also
7343 need more work.  It is currently compatible with the Ubuntu way of
7344 storing such information in the package control file, but could be
7345 changed to use other formats instead or in addition to the current
7346 method.  I've dropped the use of discover for this mapping, as the
7347 modalias approach is more flexible and easier to use on Linux as long
7348 as the Linux kernel expose its modalias strings directly.</p>
7349
7350 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-21 16:50</strong>: Due to popular demand,
7351 here is the command required to check out and build the source: Use
7352 '<tt>svn checkout
7353 svn://svn.debian.org/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/; cd
7354 hw-support-handler; debuild</tt>'.  If you lack debuild, install the
7355 devscripts package.</p>
7356
7357 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-23 12:00</strong>: The project is now
7358 renamed to Isenkram and the source moved from the Debian Edu
7359 subversion repository to a Debian collab-maint git repository.  See
7360 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">build
7361 instructions</a> for details.</p>
7362
7363       </div>
7364       <div class="tags">
7365
7366
7367         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>.
7368
7369
7370       </div>
7371     </div>
7372     <div class="padding"></div>
7373
7374     <div class="entry">
7375       <div class="title">
7376         <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>
7377       </div>
7378       <div class="date">
7379         19th January 2013
7380       </div>
7381       <div class="body">
7382         <p>This Christmas my trusty old laptop died.  It died quietly and
7383 suddenly in bed.  With a quiet whimper, it went completely quiet and
7384 black.  The power button was no longer able to turn it on.  It was a
7385 IBM Thinkpad X41, and the best laptop I ever had.  Better than both
7386 Thinkpads X30, X31, X40, X60, X61 and X61S.  Far better than the
7387 Compaq I had before that.  Now I need to find a replacement.  To keep
7388 going during Christmas, I moved the one year old SSD disk to my old
7389 X40 where it fitted (only one I had left that could use it), but it is
7390 not a durable solution.
7391
7392 <p>My laptop needs are fairly modest.  This is my wishlist from when I
7393 got a new one more than 10 years ago.  It still holds true.:)</p>
7394
7395 <ul>
7396
7397 <li>Lightweight (around 1 kg) and small volume (preferably smaller
7398   than A4).</li>
7399 <li>Robust, it will be in my backpack every day.</li>
7400 <li>Three button mouse and a mouse pin instead of touch pad.</li>
7401 <li>Long battery life time.  Preferable a week.</li>
7402 <li>Internal WIFI network card.</li>
7403 <li>Internal Twisted Pair network card.</li>
7404 <li>Some USB slots (2-3 is plenty)</li>
7405 <li>Good keyboard - similar to the Thinkpad.</li>
7406 <li>Video resolution at least 1024x768, with size around 12" (A4 paper
7407 size).</li>
7408 <li>Hardware supported by Debian Stable, ie the default kernel and
7409   X.org packages.</li>
7410 <li>Quiet, preferably fan free (or at least not using the fan most of
7411   the time).
7412
7413 </ul>
7414
7415 <p>You will notice that there are no RAM and CPU requirements in the
7416 list.  The reason is simply that the specifications on laptops the
7417 last 10-15 years have been sufficient for my needs, and I have to look
7418 at other features to choose my laptop.  But are there still made as
7419 robust laptops as my X41?  The Thinkpad X60/X61 proved to be less
7420 robust, and Thinkpads seem to be heading in the wrong direction since
7421 Lenovo took over.  But I've been told that X220 and X1 Carbon might
7422 still be useful.</p>
7423
7424 <p>Perhaps I should rethink my needs, and look for a pad with an
7425 external keyboard?  I'll have to check the
7426 <a href="http://www.linux-laptop.net/">Linux Laptops site</a> for
7427 well-supported laptops, or perhaps just buy one preinstalled from one
7428 of the vendors listed on the <a href="http://linuxpreloaded.com/">Linux
7429 Pre-loaded site</a>.</p>
7430
7431       </div>
7432       <div class="tags">
7433
7434
7435         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>.
7436
7437
7438       </div>
7439     </div>
7440     <div class="padding"></div>
7441
7442     <div class="entry">
7443       <div class="title">
7444         <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>
7445       </div>
7446       <div class="date">
7447         18th January 2013
7448       </div>
7449       <div class="body">
7450         <p>Some times I try to figure out which Iceweasel browser plugin to
7451 install to get support for a given MIME type.  Thanks to
7452 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Plugins">specifications
7453 done by Ubuntu</a> and Mozilla, it is possible to do this in Debian.
7454 Unfortunately, not very many packages provide the needed meta
7455 information, Anyway, here is a small script to look up all browser
7456 plugin packages announcing ther MIME support using this specification:</p>
7457
7458 <pre>
7459 #!/usr/bin/python
7460 import sys
7461 import apt
7462 def pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
7463     cache = apt.Cache()
7464     cache.open(None)
7465     thepkgs = []
7466     for pkg in cache:
7467         version = pkg.candidate
7468         if version is None:
7469             version = pkg.installed
7470         if version is None:
7471             continue
7472         record = version.record
7473         if not record.has_key('Npp-MimeType'):
7474             continue
7475         mime_types = record['Npp-MimeType'].split(',')
7476         for t in mime_types:
7477             t = t.rstrip().strip()
7478             if t == mimetype:
7479                 thepkgs.append(pkg.name)
7480     return thepkgs
7481 mimetype = "audio/ogg"
7482 if 1 < len(sys.argv):
7483     mimetype = sys.argv[1]
7484 print "Browser plugin packages supporting %s:" % mimetype
7485 for pkg in pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
7486     print "  %s" %pkg
7487 </pre>
7488
7489 <p>It can be used like this to look up a given MIME type:</p>
7490
7491 <pre>
7492 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype
7493 Browser plugin packages supporting audio/ogg:
7494   gecko-mediaplayer
7495 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype application/x-shockwave-flash
7496 Browser plugin packages supporting application/x-shockwave-flash:
7497   browser-plugin-gnash
7498 %
7499 </pre>
7500
7501 <p>In Ubuntu this mechanism is combined with support in the browser
7502 itself to query for plugins and propose to install the needed
7503 packages.  It would be great if Debian supported such feature too.  Is
7504 anyone working on adding it?</p>
7505
7506 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-18 14:20</strong>: The Debian BTS
7507 request for icweasel support for this feature is
7508 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/484010">#484010</a> from 2008 (and
7509 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698426">#698426</a> from today).  Lack
7510 of manpower and wish for a different design is the reason thus feature
7511 is not yet in iceweasel from Debian.</p>
7512
7513       </div>
7514       <div class="tags">
7515
7516
7517         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>.
7518
7519
7520       </div>
7521     </div>
7522     <div class="padding"></div>
7523
7524     <div class="entry">
7525       <div class="title">
7526         <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>
7527       </div>
7528       <div class="date">
7529         16th January 2013
7530       </div>
7531       <div class="body">
7532         <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/AppStreamDebianProposal">DEP-11
7533 proposal to add AppStream information to the Debian archive</a>, is a
7534 proposal to make it possible for a Desktop application to propose to
7535 the user some package to install to gain support for a given MIME
7536 type, font, library etc. that is currently missing.  With such
7537 mechanism in place, it would be possible for the desktop to
7538 automatically propose and install leocad if some LDraw file is
7539 downloaded by the browser.</p>
7540
7541 <p>To get some idea about the current content of the archive, I decided
7542 to write a simple program to extract all .desktop files from the
7543 Debian archive and look up the claimed MIME support there.  The result
7544 can be found on the
7545 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/pub/AppStreamTest">Skolelinux FTP
7546 site</a>.  Using the collected information, it become possible to
7547 answer the question in the title.  Here are the 20 most supported MIME
7548 types in Debian stable (Squeeze), testing (Wheezy) and unstable (Sid).
7549 The complete list is available from the link above.</p>
7550
7551 <p><strong>Debian Stable:</strong></p>
7552
7553 <pre>
7554   count MIME type
7555   ----- -----------------------
7556      32 text/plain
7557      30 audio/mpeg
7558      29 image/png
7559      28 image/jpeg
7560      27 application/ogg
7561      26 audio/x-mp3
7562      25 image/tiff
7563      25 image/gif
7564      22 image/bmp
7565      22 audio/x-wav
7566      20 audio/x-flac
7567      19 audio/x-mpegurl
7568      18 video/x-ms-asf
7569      18 audio/x-musepack
7570      18 audio/x-mpeg
7571      18 application/x-ogg
7572      17 video/mpeg
7573      17 audio/x-scpls
7574      17 audio/ogg
7575      16 video/x-ms-wmv
7576 </pre>
7577
7578 <p><strong>Debian Testing:</strong></p>
7579
7580 <pre>
7581   count MIME type
7582   ----- -----------------------
7583      33 text/plain
7584      32 image/png
7585      32 image/jpeg
7586      29 audio/mpeg
7587      27 image/gif
7588      26 image/tiff
7589      26 application/ogg
7590      25 audio/x-mp3
7591      22 image/bmp
7592      21 audio/x-wav
7593      19 audio/x-mpegurl
7594      19 audio/x-mpeg
7595      18 video/mpeg
7596      18 audio/x-scpls
7597      18 audio/x-flac
7598      18 application/x-ogg
7599      17 video/x-ms-asf
7600      17 text/html
7601      17 audio/x-musepack
7602      16 image/x-xbitmap
7603 </pre>
7604
7605 <p><strong>Debian Unstable:</strong></p>
7606
7607 <pre>
7608   count MIME type
7609   ----- -----------------------
7610      31 text/plain
7611      31 image/png
7612      31 image/jpeg
7613      29 audio/mpeg
7614      28 application/ogg
7615      27 image/gif
7616      26 image/tiff
7617      26 audio/x-mp3
7618      23 audio/x-wav
7619      22 image/bmp
7620      21 audio/x-flac
7621      20 audio/x-mpegurl
7622      19 audio/x-mpeg
7623      18 video/x-ms-asf
7624      18 video/mpeg
7625      18 audio/x-scpls
7626      18 application/x-ogg
7627      17 audio/x-musepack
7628      16 video/x-ms-wmv
7629      16 video/x-msvideo
7630 </pre>
7631
7632 <p>I am told that PackageKit can provide an API to access the kind of
7633 information mentioned in DEP-11.  I have not yet had time to look at
7634 it, but hope the PackageKit people in Debian are on top of these
7635 issues.</p>
7636
7637 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-16 13:35</strong>: Updated numbers after
7638 discovering a typo in my script.</p>
7639
7640       </div>
7641       <div class="tags">
7642
7643
7644         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>.
7645
7646
7647       </div>
7648     </div>
7649     <div class="padding"></div>
7650
7651     <div class="entry">
7652       <div class="title">
7653         <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>
7654       </div>
7655       <div class="date">
7656         15th January 2013
7657       </div>
7658       <div class="body">
7659         <p>Yesterday, I wrote about the
7660 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">modalias
7661 values provided by the Linux kernel</a> following my hope for
7662 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">better
7663 dongle support in Debian</a>.  Using this knowledge, I have tested how
7664 modalias values attached to package names can be used to map packages
7665 to hardware.  This allow the system to look up and suggest relevant
7666 packages when I plug in some new hardware into my machine, and replace
7667 discover and discover-data as the database used to map hardware to
7668 packages.</p>
7669
7670 <p>I create a modaliases file with entries like the following,
7671 containing package name, kernel module name (if relevant, otherwise
7672 the package name) and globs matching the relevant hardware
7673 modalias.</p>
7674
7675 <p><blockquote>
7676 Package: package-name
7677 <br>Modaliases: module(modaliasglob, modaliasglob, modaliasglob)</p>
7678 </blockquote></p>
7679
7680 <p>It is fairly trivial to write code to find the relevant packages
7681 for a given modalias value using this file.</p>
7682
7683 <p>An entry like this would suggest the video and picture application
7684 cheese for many USB web cameras (interface bus class 0E01):</p>
7685
7686 <p><blockquote>
7687 Package: cheese
7688 <br>Modaliases: cheese(usb:v*p*d*dc*dsc*dp*ic0Eisc01ip*)</p>
7689 </blockquote></p>
7690
7691 <p>An entry like this would suggest the pcmciautils package when a
7692 CardBus bridge (bus class 0607) PCI device is present:</p>
7693
7694 <p><blockquote>
7695 Package: pcmciautils
7696 <br>Modaliases: pcmciautils(pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc06sc07i*)
7697 </blockquote></p>
7698
7699 <p>An entry like this would suggest the package colorhug-client when
7700 plugging in a ColorHug with USB IDs 04D8:F8DA:</p>
7701
7702 <p><blockquote>
7703 Package: colorhug-client
7704 <br>Modaliases: colorhug-client(usb:v04D8pF8DAd*)</p>
7705 </blockquote></p>
7706
7707 <p>I believe the format is compatible with the format of the Packages
7708 file in the Debian archive.  Ubuntu already uses their Packages file
7709 to store their mappings from packages to hardware.</p>
7710
7711 <p>By adding a XB-Modaliases: header in debian/control, any .deb can
7712 announce the hardware it support in a way my prototype understand.
7713 This allow those publishing packages in an APT source outside the
7714 Debian archive as well as those backporting packages to make sure the
7715 hardware mapping are included in the package meta information.  I've
7716 tested such header in the pymissile package, and its modalias mapping
7717 is working as it should with my prototype.  It even made it to Ubuntu
7718 Raring.</p>
7719
7720 <p>To test if it was possible to look up supported hardware using only
7721 the shell tools available in the Debian installer, I wrote a shell
7722 implementation of the lookup code.  The idea is to create files for
7723 each modalias and let the shell do the matching.  Please check out and
7724 try the
7725 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/hw-support-lookup?view=co">hw-support-lookup</a>
7726 shell script.  It run without any extra dependencies and fetch the
7727 hardware mappings from the Debian archive and the subversion
7728 repository where I currently work on my prototype.</p>
7729
7730 <p>When I use it on a machine with a yubikey inserted, it suggest to
7731 install yubikey-personalization:</p>
7732
7733 <p><blockquote>
7734 % ./hw-support-lookup
7735 <br>yubikey-personalization
7736 <br>%
7737 </blockquote></p>
7738
7739 <p>When I run it on my Thinkpad X40 with a PCMCIA/CardBus slot, it
7740 propose to install the pcmciautils package:</p>
7741
7742 <p><blockquote>
7743 % ./hw-support-lookup
7744 <br>pcmciautils
7745 <br>%
7746 </blockquote></p>
7747
7748 <p>If you know of any hardware-package mapping that should be added to
7749 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=co">my
7750 database</a>, please tell me about it.</p>
7751
7752 <p>It could be possible to generate several of the mappings between
7753 packages and hardware.  One source would be to look at packages with
7754 kernel modules, ie packages with *.ko files in /lib/modules/, and
7755 extract their modalias information.  Another would be to look at
7756 packages with udev rules, ie packages with files in
7757 /lib/udev/rules.d/, and extract their vendor/model information to
7758 generate a modalias matching rule.  I have not tested any of these to
7759 see if it work.</p>
7760
7761 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
7762 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
7763 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
7764 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
7765
7766       </div>
7767       <div class="tags">
7768
7769
7770         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>.
7771
7772
7773       </div>
7774     </div>
7775     <div class="padding"></div>
7776
7777     <div class="entry">
7778       <div class="title">
7779         <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>
7780       </div>
7781       <div class="date">
7782         14th January 2013
7783       </div>
7784       <div class="body">
7785         <p>While looking into how to look up Debian packages based on hardware
7786 information, to find the packages that support a given piece of
7787 hardware, I refreshed my memory regarding modalias values, and decided
7788 to document the details.  Here are my findings so far, also available
7789 in
7790 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
7791 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>:
7792
7793 <p><strong>Modalias decoded</strong></p>
7794
7795 <p>This document try to explain what the different types of modalias
7796 values stands for.  It is in part based on information from
7797 &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias">https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias</a> &gt;,
7798 &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;,
7799 &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
7800 &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;.
7801
7802 <p>The modalias entries for a given Linux machine can be found using
7803 this shell script:</p>
7804
7805 <pre>
7806 find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u
7807 </pre>
7808
7809 <p>The supported modalias globs for a given kernel module can be found
7810 using modinfo:</p>
7811
7812 <pre>
7813 % /sbin/modinfo psmouse | grep alias:
7814 alias:          serio:ty05pr*id*ex*
7815 alias:          serio:ty01pr*id*ex*
7816 %
7817 </pre>
7818
7819 <p><strong>PCI subtype</strong></p>
7820
7821 <p>A typical PCI entry can look like this.  This is an Intel Host
7822 Bridge memory controller:</p>
7823
7824 <p><blockquote>
7825 pci:v00008086d00002770sv00001028sd000001ADbc06sc00i00
7826 </blockquote></p>
7827
7828 <p>This represent these values:</p>
7829
7830 <pre>
7831  v   00008086  (vendor)
7832  d   00002770  (device)
7833  sv  00001028  (subvendor)
7834  sd  000001AD  (subdevice)
7835  bc  06        (bus class)
7836  sc  00        (bus subclass)
7837  i   00        (interface)
7838 </pre>
7839
7840 <p>The vendor/device values are the same values outputted from 'lspci
7841 -n' as 8086:2770.  The bus class/subclass is also shown by lspci as
7842 0600.  The 0600 class is a host bridge.  Other useful bus values are
7843 0300 (VGA compatible card) and 0200 (Ethernet controller).</p>
7844
7845 <p>Not sure how to figure out the interface value, nor what it
7846 means.</p>
7847
7848 <p><strong>USB subtype</strong></p>
7849
7850 <p>Some typical USB entries can look like this.  This is an internal
7851 USB hub in a laptop:</p>
7852
7853 <p><blockquote>
7854 usb:v1D6Bp0001d0206dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00
7855 </blockquote></p>
7856
7857 <p>Here is the values included in this alias:</p>
7858
7859 <pre>
7860  v    1D6B  (device vendor)
7861  p    0001  (device product)
7862  d    0206  (bcddevice)
7863  dc     09  (device class)
7864  dsc    00  (device subclass)
7865  dp     00  (device protocol)
7866  ic     09  (interface class)
7867  isc    00  (interface subclass)
7868  ip     00  (interface protocol)
7869 </pre>
7870
7871 <p>The 0900 device class/subclass means hub.  Some times the relevant
7872 class is in the interface class section.  For a simple USB web camera,
7873 these alias entries show up:</p>
7874
7875 <p><blockquote>
7876 usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc01ip00
7877 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc02ip00
7878 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc01ip00
7879 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc02ip00
7880 </blockquote></p>
7881
7882 <p>Interface class 0E01 is video control, 0E02 is video streaming (aka
7883 camera), 0101 is audio control device and 0102 is audio streaming (aka
7884 microphone).  Thus this is a camera with microphone included.</p>
7885
7886 <p><strong>ACPI subtype</strong></p>
7887
7888 <p>The ACPI type is used for several non-PCI/USB stuff.  This is an IR
7889 receiver in a Thinkpad X40:</p>
7890
7891 <p><blockquote>
7892 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
7893 </blockquote></p>
7894
7895 <p>The values between the colons are IDs.</p>
7896
7897 <p><strong>DMI subtype</strong></p>
7898
7899 <p>The DMI table contain lots of information about the computer case
7900 and model.  This is an entry for a IBM Thinkpad X40, fetched from
7901 /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/modalias:</p>
7902
7903 <p><blockquote>
7904 dmi:bvnIBM:bvr1UETB6WW(1.66):bd06/15/2005:svnIBM:pn2371H4G:pvrThinkPadX40:rvnIBM:rn2371H4G:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
7905 </blockquote></p>
7906
7907 <p>The values present are</p>
7908
7909 <pre>
7910  bvn  IBM            (BIOS vendor)
7911  bvr  1UETB6WW(1.66) (BIOS version)
7912  bd   06/15/2005     (BIOS date)
7913  svn  IBM            (system vendor)
7914  pn   2371H4G        (product name)
7915  pvr  ThinkPadX40    (product version)
7916  rvn  IBM            (board vendor)
7917  rn   2371H4G        (board name)
7918  rvr  NotAvailable   (board version)
7919  cvn  IBM            (chassis vendor)
7920  ct   10             (chassis type)
7921  cvr  NotAvailable   (chassis version)
7922 </pre>
7923
7924 <p>The chassis type 10 is Notebook.  Other interesting values can be
7925 found in the dmidecode source:</p>
7926
7927 <pre>
7928   3 Desktop
7929   4 Low Profile Desktop
7930   5 Pizza Box
7931   6 Mini Tower
7932   7 Tower
7933   8 Portable
7934   9 Laptop
7935  10 Notebook
7936  11 Hand Held
7937  12 Docking Station
7938  13 All In One
7939  14 Sub Notebook
7940  15 Space-saving
7941  16 Lunch Box
7942  17 Main Server Chassis
7943  18 Expansion Chassis
7944  19 Sub Chassis
7945  20 Bus Expansion Chassis
7946  21 Peripheral Chassis
7947  22 RAID Chassis
7948  23 Rack Mount Chassis
7949  24 Sealed-case PC
7950  25 Multi-system
7951  26 CompactPCI
7952  27 AdvancedTCA
7953  28 Blade
7954  29 Blade Enclosing
7955 </pre>
7956
7957 <p>The chassis type values are not always accurately set in the DMI
7958 table.  For example my home server is a tower, but the DMI modalias
7959 claim it is a desktop.</p>
7960
7961 <p><strong>SerIO subtype</strong></p>
7962
7963 <p>This type is used for PS/2 mouse plugs.  One example is from my
7964 test machine:</p>
7965
7966 <p><blockquote>
7967 serio:ty01pr00id00ex00
7968 </blockquote></p>
7969
7970 <p>The values present are</p>
7971
7972 <pre>
7973   ty  01  (type)
7974   pr  00  (prototype)
7975   id  00  (id)
7976   ex  00  (extra)
7977 </pre>
7978
7979 <p>This type is supported by the psmouse driver.  I am not sure what
7980 the valid values are.</p>
7981
7982 <p><strong>Other subtypes</strong></p>
7983
7984 <p>There are heaps of other modalias subtypes according to
7985 file2alias.c.  There is the rest of the list from that source: amba,
7986 ap, bcma, ccw, css, eisa, hid, i2c, ieee1394, input, ipack, isapnp,
7987 mdio, of, parisc, pcmcia, platform, scsi, sdio, spi, ssb, vio, virtio,
7988 vmbus, x86cpu and zorro.  I did not spend time documenting all of
7989 these, as they do not seem relevant for my intended use with mapping
7990 hardware to packages when new stuff is inserted during run time.</p>
7991
7992 <p><strong>Looking up kernel modules using modalias values</strong></p>
7993
7994 <p>To check which kernel modules provide support for a given modalias,
7995 one can use the following shell script:</p>
7996
7997 <pre>
7998   for id in $(find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u); do \
7999     echo "$id" ; \
8000     /sbin/modprobe --show-depends "$id"|sed 's/^/  /' ; \
8001   done
8002 </pre>
8003
8004 <p>The output can look like this (only the first few entries as the
8005 list is very long on my test machine):</p>
8006
8007 <pre>
8008   acpi:ACPI0003:
8009     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/acpi/ac.ko
8010   acpi:device:
8011   FATAL: Module acpi:device: not found.
8012   acpi:IBM0068:
8013     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/char/nvram.ko
8014     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/leds/led-class.ko
8015     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko
8016     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.ko
8017   acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
8018     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/lib/crc-ccitt.ko
8019     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/irda/irda.ko
8020     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/net/irda/nsc-ircc.ko
8021   [...]
8022 </pre>
8023
8024 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
8025 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
8026 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
8027 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
8028
8029 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-15:</strong> Rewrite "cat $(find ...)" to
8030 "find ... -print0 | xargs -0 cat" to make sure it handle directories
8031 in /sys/ with space in them.</p>
8032
8033       </div>
8034       <div class="tags">
8035
8036
8037         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>.
8038
8039
8040       </div>
8041     </div>
8042     <div class="padding"></div>
8043
8044     <div class="entry">
8045       <div class="title">
8046         <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>
8047       </div>
8048       <div class="date">
8049         10th January 2013
8050       </div>
8051       <div class="body">
8052         <p>As part of my investigation on how to improve the support in Debian
8053 for hardware dongles, I dug up my old Mark and Spencer USB Rocket
8054 Launcher and updated the Debian package
8055 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">pymissile</a> to make
8056 sure udev will fix the device permissions when it is plugged in.  I
8057 also added a "Modaliases" header to test it in the Debian archive and
8058 hopefully make the package be proposed by jockey in Ubuntu when a user
8059 plug in his rocket launcher.  In the process I moved the source to a
8060 git repository under collab-maint, to make it easier for any DD to
8061 contribute.  <a href="http://code.google.com/p/pymissile/">Upstream</a>
8062 is not very active, but the software still work for me even after five
8063 years of relative silence.  The new git repository is not listed in
8064 the uploaded package yet, because I want to test the other changes a
8065 bit more before I upload the new version.  If you want to check out
8066 the new version with a .desktop file included, visit the
8067 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/pymissile.git">gitweb
8068 view</a> or use "<tt>git clone
8069 git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/pymissile.git</tt>".</p>
8070
8071       </div>
8072       <div class="tags">
8073
8074
8075         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>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
8076
8077
8078       </div>
8079     </div>
8080     <div class="padding"></div>
8081
8082     <div class="entry">
8083       <div class="title">
8084         <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>
8085       </div>
8086       <div class="date">
8087          9th January 2013
8088       </div>
8089       <div class="body">
8090         <p>One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
8091 general, is that there is a great package management system with the
8092 ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
8093 from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
8094 install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
8095 machine.  Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
8096 Linux distribution.  When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
8097 suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
8098 I need to talk to it.  When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
8099 yubikey-personalization package.  The information required to do this
8100 is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.</p>
8101
8102 <p>Some years ago, I proposed to
8103 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg01206.html">use
8104 the discover subsystem to implement this</a>.  The idea is fairly
8105 simple:
8106
8107 <ul>
8108
8109 <li>Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
8110   starting when a user log in.</li>
8111
8112 <li>Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
8113   hardware is inserted into the computer.</li>
8114
8115 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
8116   database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
8117   packages.</li>
8118
8119 <li>Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
8120   package, and make it easy to install it.</li>
8121
8122 </ul>
8123
8124 <p>I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
8125 initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
8126 discover database to find packages and
8127 <a href="http://www.packagekit.org/">PackageKit</a> to install
8128 packages.</p>
8129
8130 <p>Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
8131 draft package is now checked into
8132 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
8133 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>.  In the process, I updated the
8134 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html">discover-data</a>
8135 package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
8136 the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
8137 2.2013.01.09 to unstable.  I also discovered that the current
8138 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html">discover</a>
8139 package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
8140 /proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present.  I ported it to use
8141 libusb as a fall back option to get it working.  The fixed package
8142 version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn't upload it to unstable
8143 because of the freeze).</p>
8144
8145 <p>With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
8146 desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
8147 inserted):</p>
8148
8149 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-09-hw-autoinstall.png"></p>
8150
8151 <p>For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
8152 install the proposed packages by pressing the "Please install
8153 program(s)" button should to be implemented.</p>
8154
8155 <p>If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
8156 happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
8157 from hardware to Debian packages.  Check if 'discover-pkginstall -l'
8158 list the package you would like to have installed when a given
8159 hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
8160 reportbug if it isn't.  Or, if you know of a better way to provide
8161 such mapping, please let me know.</p>
8162
8163 <p>This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
8164 should be considered before it is ready for production use.  Is dbus
8165 the correct way to detect new hardware?  At the moment I look for HAL
8166 dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
8167 on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop.  Are there better events to use?
8168 How should the user be notified?  Is the desktop notification
8169 mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
8170 popup instead?  How should packages be installed?  When should they
8171 not be installed?</p>
8172
8173 <p>If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
8174 please send me an email. :)</p>
8175
8176       </div>
8177       <div class="tags">
8178
8179
8180         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>.
8181
8182
8183       </div>
8184     </div>
8185     <div class="padding"></div>
8186
8187     <div class="entry">
8188       <div class="title">
8189         <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>
8190       </div>
8191       <div class="date">
8192          2nd January 2013
8193       </div>
8194       <div class="body">
8195         <p>During Christmas, I have worked a bit on the Debian support for
8196 <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx">LEGO Mindstorm
8197 NXT</a>.  My son and I have played a bit with my NXT set, and I
8198 discovered I had to build all the tools myself because none were
8199 already in Debian Squeeze.  If Debian support for LEGO is something
8200 you care about, please join me on the IRC channel
8201 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego</a> (server
8202 irc.debian.org).  There is a lot that could be done to improve the
8203 Debian support for LEGO designers.  For example both CAD software
8204 and Mindstorm compilers are missing. :)</p>
8205
8206 <p>Update 2012-01-03: A
8207 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">project page</a>
8208 including links to Lego related packages is now available.</p>
8209
8210       </div>
8211       <div class="tags">
8212
8213
8214         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>.
8215
8216
8217       </div>
8218     </div>
8219     <div class="padding"></div>
8220
8221     <div class="entry">
8222       <div class="title">
8223         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Christmas_present_for_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu.html">A Christmas present for Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
8224       </div>
8225       <div class="date">
8226         28th December 2012
8227       </div>
8228       <div class="body">
8229         <p>I was happy to discover a few days ago that the
8230 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
8231 project also this year received a Christmas present from Another
8232 Agency in Trondheim.  NOK 1000,- showed up on our donation account
8233 December 24th.  I want to express our thanks for this very welcome
8234 present.  As the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is very short on
8235 funding these days, and thus lack the money to do regular developer
8236 gatherings, this donation was most welcome.  One developer gathering
8237 cost around NOK 15&nbsp;000,-, so we need quite a lot more to keep the
8238 development pace we want.  Thus, I hope their example this year is
8239 followed by many others. :)</p>
8240
8241 <p>The public list of donors can be found on
8242 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">the
8243 donation page</a> for the project, which also contain instructions if
8244 you want to donate to the project.</p>
8245
8246       </div>
8247       <div class="tags">
8248
8249
8250         Tags: <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>.
8251
8252
8253       </div>
8254     </div>
8255     <div class="padding"></div>
8256
8257     <div class="entry">
8258       <div class="title">
8259         <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>
8260       </div>
8261       <div class="date">
8262         25th December 2012
8263       </div>
8264       <div class="body">
8265         <p>Let me start by wishing you all marry Christmas and a happy new
8266 year!  I hope next year will prove to be a good year.</p>
8267
8268 <p><a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">Bitcoin</a>, the digital
8269 decentralised "currency" that allow people to transfer bitcoins
8270 between each other with minimal overhead, is a very interesting
8271 experiment.  And as I wrote a few days ago, the bitcoin situation in
8272 <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> is about to improve a bit.
8273 The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">new debian source
8274 package</a> (version 0.7.2-2) was uploaded yesterday, and is waiting
8275 in <a href="http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the NEW queue</A>
8276 for one of the ftpmasters to approve the new bitcoin-qt package
8277 name.</p>
8278
8279 <p>And thanks to the great work of Jonas and the rest of the bitcoin
8280 team in Debian, you can easily test the package in Debian Squeeze
8281 using the following steps to get a set of working packages:</p>
8282
8283 <blockquote><pre>
8284 git clone git://git.debian.org/git/collab-maint/bitcoin
8285 cd bitcoin
8286 DEB_MAINTAINER_MODE=1 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp fakeroot debian/rules clean
8287 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp git-buildpackage --git-ignore-new
8288 </pre></blockquote>
8289
8290 <p>You might have to install some build dependencies as well.  The
8291 list of commands should give you two packages, bitcoind and
8292 bitcoin-qt, ready for use in a Squeeze environment.  Note that the
8293 client will download the complete set of bitcoin "blocks", which need
8294 around 5.6 GiB of data on my machine at the moment.  Make sure your
8295 ~/.bitcoin/ directory have lots of spare room if you want to download
8296 all the blocks.  The client will warn if the disk is getting full, so
8297 there is not really a problem if you got too little room, but you will
8298 not be able to get all the features out of the client.</p>
8299
8300 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
8301 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
8302 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
8303
8304       </div>
8305       <div class="tags">
8306
8307
8308         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>.
8309
8310
8311       </div>
8312     </div>
8313     <div class="padding"></div>
8314
8315     <div class="entry">
8316       <div class="title">
8317         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html">A word on bitcoin support in Debian</a>
8318       </div>
8319       <div class="date">
8320         21st December 2012
8321       </div>
8322       <div class="body">
8323         <p>It has been a while since I wrote about
8324 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>, the decentralised
8325 peer-to-peer based crypto-currency, and the reason is simply that I
8326 have been busy elsewhere.  But two days ago, I started looking at the
8327 state of <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin in
8328 Debian</a> again to try to recover my old bitcoin wallet.  The package
8329 is now maintained by a
8330 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-bitcoin/">team of
8331 people</a>, and the grunt work had already been done by this team.  We
8332 owe a huge thank you to all these team members. :)
8333 But I was sad to discover that the bitcoin client is missing in
8334 Wheezy.  It is only available in Sid (and an outdated client from
8335 backports).  The client had several RC bugs registered in BTS blocking
8336 it from entering testing.  To try to help the team and improve the
8337 situation, I spent some time providing patches and triaging the bug
8338 reports.  I also had a look at the bitcoin package available from Matt
8339 Corallo in a
8340 <a href="https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin">PPA for
8341 Ubuntu</a>, and moved the useful pieces from that version into the
8342 Debian package.</p>
8343
8344 <p>After checking with the main package maintainer Jonas Smedegaard on
8345 IRC, I pushed several patches into the collab-maint git repository to
8346 improve the package.  It now contains fixes for the RC issues (not from
8347 me, but fixed by Scott Howard), build rules for a Qt GUI client
8348 package, konqueror support for the bitcoin: URI and bash completion
8349 setup.  As I work on Debian Squeeze, I also created
8350 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-bitcoin-devel/Week-of-Mon-20121217/000041.html">a
8351 patch to backport</a> the latest version.  Jonas is going to look at
8352 it and try to integrate it into the git repository before uploading a
8353 new version to unstable.
8354
8355 <p>I would very much like bitcoin to succeed, to get rid of the
8356 centralized control currently exercised in the monetary system.  I
8357 find it completely unacceptable that the USA government is collecting
8358 transaction data for almost all international money transfers (most are done in USD and transaction logs shipped to the spooks), and
8359 that the major credit card companies can block legal money
8360 transactions to Wikileaks.  But for bitcoin to succeed, more people
8361 need to use bitcoins, and more people need to accept bitcoins when
8362 they sell products and services.  Improving the bitcoin support in
8363 Debian is a small step in the right direction, but not enough.
8364 Unfortunately the user experience when browsing the web and wanting to
8365 pay with bitcoin is still not very good.  The bitcoin: URI is a step
8366 in the right direction, but need to work in most or every browser in
8367 use.  Also the bitcoin-qt client is too heavy to fire up to do a
8368 quick transaction.  I believe there are other clients available, but
8369 have not tested them.</p>
8370
8371 <p>My
8372 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">experiment
8373 with bitcoins</a> showed that at least some of my readers use bitcoin.
8374 I received 20.15 BTC so far on the address I provided in my blog two
8375 years ago, as can be
8376 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">seen
8377 on the blockexplorer service</a>.  Thank you everyone for your
8378 donation.  The blockexplorer service demonstrates quite well that
8379 bitcoin is not quite anonymous and untracked. :) I wonder if the
8380 number of users have gone up since then.  If you use bitcoin and want
8381 to show your support of my activity, please send Bitcoin donations to
8382 the same address as last time,
8383 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
8384
8385       </div>
8386       <div class="tags">
8387
8388
8389         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>.
8390
8391
8392       </div>
8393     </div>
8394     <div class="padding"></div>
8395
8396     <div class="entry">
8397       <div class="title">
8398         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ledger___double_entry_accounting_using_text_based_storage_format.html">Ledger - double-entry accounting using text based storage format</a>
8399       </div>
8400       <div class="date">
8401         18th December 2012
8402       </div>
8403       <div class="body">
8404         <p>A few days ago I came across
8405 <a href="http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/hledger/">a blog post from Joey
8406 Hess</a> describing <a href="http://ledger-cli.org/">ledger</a> and
8407 hledger, a text based system for double-entry accounting.  I found it
8408 interesting, as I am involved with several organizations where
8409 accounting is an issue, and I have not really become too friendly with
8410 the different web based systems we use.  I find it hard to find what I
8411 look for in the menus and even harder try to get sensible data out of
8412 the systems.  Ledger seem different.  The accounting data is kept in
8413 text files that can be stored in a version control system, and there
8414
8415 are at least <a href="https://github.com/ledger/ledger/wiki/Ports">five
8416 different implementations</a> able to read the format.  An example
8417 entry look like this, and is simple enough that it will be trivial to
8418 generate entries based on CVS files fetched from the bank:</p>
8419
8420 <blockquote><pre>
8421 2004-05-27 Book Store
8422       Expenses:Books                 $20.00
8423       Liabilities:Visa
8424 </pre></blockquote>
8425
8426 <p>The concept seemed interesting enough for me to check it out and
8427 look for others using it.  I found blog posts from
8428 <a href="http://blog.spang.cc/posts/hledger_rocks_my_world/">Christine
8429 Spang</a>,
8430 <a href="http://bugsplat.info/2010-05-23-keeping-finances-with-ledger.html">Pete
8431 Keen</a>,
8432 <a href="http://blog.andrewcantino.com/blog/2010/11/06/command-line-accounting-with-ledger-and-reckon/">Andrew
8433 Cantino</a> and
8434 <a href="http://blog.iphoting.com/blog/2012/11/29/command-line-double-entry-accounting/">Ronald
8435 Ip</a> describing how they use it, as well as a post from
8436 <a href="https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/ledger-cli/r0oWjwbQ9Bo">Bradley
8437 M. Kuhn</a> at the Software Freedom Conservancy.  All seemed like good
8438 recommendations fitting my need.</p>
8439
8440 <p>The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/l/ledger.html">ledger</a>
8441 package is available in Debian Squeeze, while the
8442 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/h/haskell-hledger.html">hledger</a>
8443 package only is available in Debian Sid.  As I use Squeeze, ledger
8444 seemed the best choice to get started.</p>
8445
8446 <p>To get some real data to test on, I wrote a
8447 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/tools/lodo2ledger">web scraper</a> for
8448 <a href="http://www.lodo.no/">LODO</a>, the accounting system used by
8449 the <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a> association, and started to
8450 play with the data set.  I'm not really deeply into accounting, but I
8451 am able to get a simple balance and accounting status for example
8452 using the "<tt>ledger balance</tt>" command.  But I will have to
8453 gather more experience before I know if the ledger way is a good fit
8454 for the organisations I am involved in.</p>
8455
8456       </div>
8457       <div class="tags">
8458
8459
8460         Tags: <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>.
8461
8462
8463       </div>
8464     </div>
8465     <div class="padding"></div>
8466
8467     <div class="entry">
8468       <div class="title">
8469         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Scripting_the_Cerebrum_bofhd_user_administration_system_using_XML_RPC.html">Scripting the Cerebrum/bofhd user administration system using XML-RPC</a>
8470       </div>
8471       <div class="date">
8472          6th December 2012
8473       </div>
8474       <div class="body">
8475         <p>Where I work at the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of
8476 Oslo</a>, we use the
8477 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/cerebrum/">Cerebrum user
8478 administration system</a> to maintain users, groups, DNS, DHCP, etc.
8479 I've known since the system was written that the server is providing
8480 an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML-RPC">XML-RPC</a> API, but
8481 I have never spent time to try to figure out how to use it, as we
8482 always use the bofh command line client at work.  Until today.  I want
8483 to script the updating of DNS and DHCP to make it easier to set up
8484 virtual machines.  Here are a few notes on how to use it with
8485 Python.</p>
8486
8487 <p>I started by looking at the source of the Java
8488 <a href="http://cerebrum.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/cerebrum/trunk/cerebrum/clients/jbofh/">bofh
8489 client</a>, to figure out how it connected to the API server.  I also
8490 googled for python examples on how to use XML-RPC, and found
8491 <a href="http://tldp.org/HOWTO/XML-RPC-HOWTO/xmlrpc-howto-python.html">a
8492 simple example in</a> the XML-RPC howto.</p>
8493
8494 <p>This simple example code show how to connect, get the list of
8495 commands (as a JSON dump), and how to get the information about the
8496 user currently logged in:</p>
8497
8498 <blockquote><pre>
8499 #!/usr/bin/env python
8500 import getpass
8501 import xmlrpclib
8502 server_url = 'https://cerebrum-uio.uio.no:8000';
8503 username = getpass.getuser()
8504 password = getpass.getpass()
8505 server = xmlrpclib.Server(server_url);
8506 #print server.get_commands(sessionid)
8507 sessionid = server.login(username, password)
8508 print server.run_command(sessionid, "user_info", username)
8509 result = server.logout(sessionid)
8510 print result
8511 </pre></blockquote>
8512
8513 <p>Armed with this knowledge I can now move forward and script the DNS
8514 and DHCP updates I wanted to do.</p>
8515
8516       </div>
8517       <div class="tags">
8518
8519
8520         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin</a>.
8521
8522
8523       </div>
8524     </div>
8525     <div class="padding"></div>
8526
8527     <div class="entry">
8528       <div class="title">
8529         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_the_value_of_copyright_taxed_.html">Why isn't the value of copyright taxed?</a>
8530       </div>
8531       <div class="date">
8532         17th November 2012
8533       </div>
8534       <div class="body">
8535         <p>While working on a
8536 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">Norwegian
8537 translation of the Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig</a> (76% done),
8538 which cover the problems with todays copyright law and how it stifles
8539 creativity, one idea occurred to me.  The idea is to get the tax
8540 office to help make more works enter the public domain and also help
8541 make it easier to clear rights for using copyrighted works.</p>
8542
8543 <p>I mentioned this idea briefly during Yesterdays
8544 <a href="http://www.farmann.no/2012/11/14/john-perry-barlow-in-oslo-friday-nov-16
8545 -15-30-19-00/">presentation
8546 by John Perry Barlow</a>, and concluded that it was best to put it
8547 in writing for a wider audience.  The idea is not really based on the
8548 argument that copyrighted works are "intellectual property", as the
8549 core requirement is that copyrighted work have value for the copyright
8550 holder and the tax office like to collect their share from any value
8551 controlled by the citizens in a country.  I'm sharing the idea here to
8552 let others consider it and perhaps shoot it down with a fresh set of
8553 arguments.</p>
8554
8555 <p>Most valuables are taxed by the government.  At least here in
8556 Norway, the amount of money you have, the value of our land property,
8557 the value of your house, the value of your car, the value of our
8558 stocks and other valuables are all added together.  If the tax value
8559 of these values exceed your debt, you have to pay the tax office some
8560 taxes for these values.  And copyrighted work have value.  It have
8561 value for the rights holder, who can earn money selling access to the
8562 work.  But it is not included in the tax calculations?  Why not?</p>
8563
8564 <p>If the government want to tax copyrighted works, it would want to
8565 maintain a database of all the copyrighted works and who are the
8566 rights holders for a given works, to be able to associate the works
8567 value to the right citizen or company for tax purposes.  If such
8568 database exist, it will become a lot easier to find out who to talk to
8569 for clearing permissions to use a copyrighted work, which is a very
8570 hard operation with todays copyright law.  To ensure that copyright
8571 holders keep the database up-to-date, it would have to become a
8572 requirement to be able to collect money for granting access to
8573 copyrighted works that the work is listed in the database with the
8574 correct right holder.</p>
8575
8576 <p>If copyright causes copyright holders to have to pay more taxes,
8577 they will have a small incentive to "disown" their copyright, and let
8578 the work enter the public domain. For works with several right holders
8579 one of the right holders could state (and get it registered in the
8580 database) that she do not need to be consulted when clearing rights to
8581 use the work in question and thus will not get any income from that
8582 work.  Stating this would have to be impossible to revert and stop the
8583 tax office from adding the value of that work to the given citizens
8584 tax calculation.  I assume the copyright law would stay the same,
8585 allowing creators to pick a license of their choosing, and also
8586 allowing them to put their work directly in the public domain.  The
8587 existence of such database will make it even easier to clear rights,
8588 and if the right holders listed in the database is taxed, this system
8589 would increase the amount of works that enter the public domain.</p>
8590
8591 <p>The effect would be that the tax office help to make it easier to
8592 get rights to use the works that have not yet entered the public
8593 domain and help to get more work into the public domain and .</p>
8594
8595 <p>Why have such taxing not happened yet?  I am sure the tax office
8596 would like to tax copyrighted work values if they could.</p>
8597
8598       </div>
8599       <div class="tags">
8600
8601
8602         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
8603
8604
8605       </div>
8606     </div>
8607     <div class="padding"></div>
8608
8609     <div class="entry">
8610       <div class="title">
8611         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Angela_Fu_.html">Debian Edu interview: Angela Fuß</a>
8612       </div>
8613       <div class="date">
8614         14th November 2012
8615       </div>
8616       <div class="body">
8617         <p>Here is another interview with one of the people in the <a
8618 href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
8619 community.  I am running short on people willing to be interviewed, so
8620 if you know about someone I should interview, Please send me an email.
8621 After asking for many months, I finally managed to lure another one of
8622 the people behind the German
8623 "<a href="http://wiki.it-zukunft-schule.de/">IT-Zukunft Schule</a>"
8624 project out from maternity leave to conduct an interview.  Give a warm
8625 welcome to Angela Fuß. :)</p>
8626
8627 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
8628
8629 <p>I am a 39-year-old woman living in the very north of Germany near
8630 Denmark. I live in a patchwork family with "my man" Mike Gabriel, my
8631 two daughters, Mikes daughter and Mikes and my rather newborn son.
8632
8633 <p>At the moment - because of our little baby - I am spending most of
8634 the day by being a caring and organising mom for all the kids.
8635 Besides that I am really involved into and occupied with several inner
8636 growth processes: New born souls always bring the whole familiar
8637 system into movement and that needs time and focus ;-).  We are also
8638 in the middle of buying a house and moving to it.</p>
8639
8640 <p>In 2013 I will work again in my job in a German foundation for
8641 nature conservation. I am doing public relation work there.  Besides
8642 that - and that is the connection to Skolelinux / Debian Edu - I am
8643 working in our own school project "IT-Zukunft Schule" in North
8644 Germany. I am responsible for the quality assurance, the customer
8645 relationship management and the communication processes in the
8646 project.</p>
8647
8648 <p>Since 2001 I constantly have been training myself in communication
8649 and leadership. Besides that I am a forester, a landscaping gardener
8650 and a yoga teacher.</p>
8651
8652 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
8653 project?</strong></p>
8654
8655 <p>I fell in love with Mike ;-).</p>
8656
8657 <p>Very soon after getting to know him I was completely enrolled into
8658 Free Software.  At this time Mike did IT-services for one newly
8659 founded school in Kiel. Other schools in Kiel needed concepts for
8660 their IT environment.  Often when Mike came home from working at the
8661 newly founded school I found myself listening to his complaints about
8662 several points where the communication with the schools head or the
8663 teachers did not work.  So we were clear that he would not work for
8664 one more school if we did not set up a structure for communication
8665 between him, the schools head, the teachers, the students and the
8666 parents.</p>
8667
8668 <p>Together with our friend and hardware supplier Andreas Buchholz we
8669 started to get an overview of free software solutions suitable for
8670 schools. One day before Christmas 2010 Mike and I had a date with Kurt
8671 Gramlich in Gütersloh. As Kurt and I are really interested in building
8672 networks of people and in being in communication we dived into
8673 Skolelinux and brought it to the first grammar schools in Northern
8674 Germany.</p>
8675
8676 <p>For information about our school project you can read
8677 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html">the
8678 interview with Mike Gabriel</a>.</p>
8679
8680 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
8681 Edu?</strong></p>
8682
8683 <p>First I have to say: I cannot answer this question technically. My
8684 answer comes rather from a social point of view.</p>
8685
8686 <p>The biggest advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu I see is the large
8687 and strong international community of Debian Developers in the
8688 background which is very alive and connected over mailinglists, blogs
8689 and meetings. My constant feeling for the Debian Community is: If
8690 something does not work they will somehow fix it. All is well
8691 ;-). This is of course a user experience.  What I also get as a big
8692 advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu is that everybody who uses it and
8693 works with it can also contribute to it - that includes students,
8694 teachers, parents...</p>
8695
8696 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
8697 Edu?</strong></p>
8698
8699 <p>I will answer this question relating to the internal structure of
8700 Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
8701
8702 <p>What I see as a major disadvantage is that there is a gap between
8703 the group of developers for Debian Edu and the people who make the
8704 marketing, that means the people that bring Skolelinux to the
8705 schools. There is a lack of communication between these two groups and
8706 I think that does not really work for Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
8707
8708 <p>Further I appreciate that Skolelinux / Debian Edu is known as a
8709 do-ocracy. Nevertheless I keep asking myself if at some points a
8710 democracy or some kind of hierarchical project structure would be good
8711 and helpful.  I am also missing some kind of contact between the
8712 Skolelinux / Debian Edu communities in Europe or on an international
8713 level. I think it would be good if there was more sharing between the
8714 different countries using Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
8715
8716 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
8717
8718 <p>On my laptop I am still using an Ubuntu 10.04 with a Gnome Desktop
8719 on.  As applications I use Openoffice.org, Gedit, Firefox, Pidgin,
8720 LaTeX and GnuCash. For mails I am using Horde. And I am really fond of
8721 my N900 running with Maemo.</p>
8722
8723 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
8724 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
8725
8726 <p>I am really convinced that in our school project "IT-Zukunft
8727 Schule" we have developed (and keep developing) a great way to get
8728 schools to use Free Software. We have written a detailed concept for
8729 that so I cannot explain the whole thing here. But in a nutshell the
8730 strategy has three crucial pillars:</p>
8731
8732 <ul>
8733
8734 <li>We really take time to get what sort of stories, questions and
8735 concerns the schools head and the teachers have about using different
8736 kinds of IT and we take time to enrol them into Free Software.</li>
8737
8738 <li>Our solution for schools is never just technical. In the centre
8739 are always the people who are going to use the software. From the very
8740 beginning of the planning for a school, we tell the schools head that
8741 they are paying us not only for a technical solution for their school,
8742 they also pay us for leading all the communication processes
8743 needed. If they do not want that, we are not working with them because
8744 we cannot give a guarantee for the quality of our work then.</li>
8745
8746 <li>Another focus lies in the training of teachers and students in
8747 co-administrating the IT-System at their school. They start getting in
8748 contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu community and they get the
8749 offer to become more and more independent from us.</li>
8750
8751 </ul>
8752
8753       </div>
8754       <div class="tags">
8755
8756
8757         Tags: <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/intervju">intervju</a>.
8758
8759
8760       </div>
8761     </div>
8762     <div class="padding"></div>
8763
8764     <div class="entry">
8765       <div class="title">
8766         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_European_Central_Bank__ECB__take_a_look_at_bitcoin.html">The European Central Bank (ECB) take a look at bitcoin</a>
8767       </div>
8768       <div class="date">
8769          4th November 2012
8770       </div>
8771       <div class="body">
8772         <p>Slashdot just ran a story about the European Central Bank (ECB)
8773 <a href="http://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/other/virtualcurrencyschemes201210en.pdf">releasing
8774 a report (PDF)</a> about virtual currencies and
8775 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>.  It is interesting to
8776 see how a member of the bitcoin community
8777 <a href="http://blog.bitinstant.com/blog/2012/10/30/the-ecb-report-on-bitcoin-and-virtual-currencies.html">receive
8778 the report</a>.  As for the future, I suspect the central banks and
8779 the governments will outlaw bitcoin if it gain any popularity, to avoid
8780 competition.  My thoughts go to the
8781 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wörgl">Wörgl experiment</a> with
8782 negative inflation on cash which was such a success that it was
8783 terminated by the Austrian National Bank in 1933.  A successful
8784 alternative would be a threat to the current money system and gain
8785 powerful forces to work against it.</p>
8786
8787 <p>While checking out the current status of bitcoin, I also discovered
8788 that the community already seem to have
8789 <a href="http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/27/3271637/bitcoin-savings-trust-pyramid-scheme-shuts-down">experienced
8790 its first pyramid game / Ponzi scheme</a>.  Not very surprising, given
8791 how members of "small" communities tend to trust each other.  I guess
8792 enterprising crocks will try again and again, as they do anywhere
8793 wealth is available.</p>
8794
8795       </div>
8796       <div class="tags">
8797
8798
8799         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</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>.
8800
8801
8802       </div>
8803     </div>
8804     <div class="padding"></div>
8805
8806     <div class="entry">
8807       <div class="title">
8808         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/12_years_of_outages___summarised_by_Stuart_Kendrick.html">12 years of outages - summarised by Stuart Kendrick</a>
8809       </div>
8810       <div class="date">
8811         26th October 2012
8812       </div>
8813       <div class="body">
8814         <p>I work at the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a>
8815 looking after the computers, mostly on the unix side, but in general
8816 all over the place.  I am also a member (and currently leader) of
8817 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the NUUG association</a>, which in turn
8818 make me a member of <a href="http://www.usenix.org/">USENIX</a>.  NUUG
8819 is an member organisation for us in Norway interested in free
8820 software, open standards and unix like operating systems, and USENIX
8821 is a US based member organisation with similar targets.  And thanks to
8822 these memberships, I get all issues of the great USENIX magazine
8823 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login">;login:</a> in the
8824 mail several times a year.  The magazine is great, and I read most of
8825 it every time.</p>
8826
8827 <p>In the last issue of the USENIX magazine ;login:, there is an
8828 article by <a href="http://www.skendric.com/">Stuart Kendrick</a> from
8829 Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center titled
8830 "<a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/october-2012-volume-37-number-5/what-takes-us-down">What
8831 Takes Us Down</a>" (longer version also
8832 <a href="http://www.skendric.com/problem/incident-analysis/2012-06-30/What-Takes-Us-Down.pdf">available
8833 from his own site</a>), where he report what he found when he
8834 processed the outage reports (both planned and unplanned) from the
8835 last twelve years and classified them according to cause, time of day,
8836 etc etc.  The article is a good read to get some empirical data on
8837 what kind of problems affect a data centre, but what really inspired
8838 me was the kind of reporting they had put in place since 2000.<p>
8839
8840 <p>The centre set up a mailing list, and started to send fairly
8841 standardised messages to this list when a outage was planned or when
8842 it already occurred, to announce the plan and get feedback on the
8843 assumtions on scope and user impact.  Here is the two example from the
8844 article: First the unplanned outage:
8845
8846 <blockquote><pre>
8847 Subject:     Exchange 2003 Cluster Issues
8848 Severity:    Critical (Unplanned)
8849 Start:       Monday, May 7, 2012, 11:58
8850 End:         Monday, May 7, 2012, 12:38
8851 Duration:    40 minutes
8852 Scope:       Exchange 2003
8853 Description: The HTTPS service on the Exchange cluster crashed, triggering
8854              a cluster failover.
8855
8856 User Impact: During this period, all Exchange users were unable to
8857              access e-mail. Zimbra users were unaffected.
8858 Technician:  [xxx]
8859 </pre></blockquote>
8860
8861 Next the planned outage:
8862
8863 <blockquote><pre>
8864 Subject:     H Building Switch Upgrades
8865 Severity:    Major (Planned)
8866 Start:       Saturday, June 16, 2012, 06:00
8867 End:         Saturday, June 16, 2012, 16:00
8868 Duration:    10 hours
8869 Scope:       H2 Transport
8870 Description: Currently, Catalyst 4006s provide 10/100 Ethernet to end-
8871              stations. We will replace these with newer Catalyst
8872              4510s.
8873 User Impact: All users on H2 will be isolated from the network during
8874              this work. Afterward, they will have gigabit
8875              connectivity.
8876 Technician:  [xxx]
8877 </pre></blockquote>
8878
8879 <p>He notes in his article that the date formats and other fields have
8880 been a bit too free form to make it easy to automatically process them
8881 into a database for further analysis, and I would have used ISO 8601
8882 dates myself to make it easier to process (in other words I would ask
8883 people to write '2012-06-16 06:00 +0000' instead of the start time
8884 format listed above).  There are also other issues with the format
8885 that could be improved, read the article for the details.</p>
8886
8887 <p>I find the idea of standardising outage messages seem to be such a
8888 good idea that I would like to get it implemented here at the
8889 university too.  We do register
8890 <a href="http://www.uio.no/tjenester/it/aktuelt/planlagte-tjenesteavbrudd/">planned
8891 changes and outages in a calendar</a>, and report the to a mailing
8892 list, but we do not do so in a structured format and there is not a
8893 report to the same location for unplanned outages.  Perhaps something
8894 for other sites to consider too?</p>
8895
8896       </div>
8897       <div class="tags">
8898
8899
8900         Tags: <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>.
8901
8902
8903       </div>
8904     </div>
8905     <div class="padding"></div>
8906
8907     <div class="entry">
8908       <div class="title">
8909         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Amazon_steal_books_from_customer_and_throw_out_her_out_without_any_explanation.html">Amazon steal books from customer and throw out her out without any explanation</a>
8910       </div>
8911       <div class="date">
8912         22nd October 2012
8913       </div>
8914       <div class="body">
8915         <p>A blog post from Martin Bekkelund today tell the story of
8916 <a href="http://www.bekkelund.net/2012/10/22/outlawed-by-amazon-drm/">how
8917 Amazon erased the books from a customer's kindle, locked the account
8918 and refuse to tell the customer why</a>.  If a real book store did
8919 this to a customer, it would be called breaking into private property
8920 and theft.  The story has spread around the net today.  A bit more
8921 background information is available in Norwegian from
8922 <a href="http://www.digi.no/904658/hun-ble-kastet-ut-av-amazon">digi.no</a>.
8923 It is no surprise that digital restriction mechanisms (DRM) are used
8924 this way, as it has been warned about such abuse since DRM was
8925 introduced many years back.  And Amazon proved in 2009 that it was
8926 willing to
8927 <a href="http://boingboing.net/2009/07/20/amazons-orwellian-de.html">
8928 break into customers equipment and remove the books</a> people had
8929 bought, when it removed the book 1984 by George Orwell from all the
8930 customers who had bought it.  From the official comments, it even
8931 sounded like
8932 <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html">Amazon
8933 would never do that again</a>.  And here we are, three years
8934 later.</p>
8935
8936 <p>And thought this action is
8937 <a href="http://www.itavisen.no/904648/forbrukerraadet-helt-haarreisende">against
8938 Norwegian regulations and law</a>, it is according to the terms of use
8939 as written by Amazon, and it is hard to hold Amazon accountable to
8940 Norwegian laws.  It is just yet another example of unacceptable terms
8941 of use on the web, and how they are used to remove customer
8942 rights.</p>
8943
8944 <p>Luckily for electronic books, there are alternatives without
8945 unacceptable terms.  For example
8946 <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/">Project Gutenberg</a> (about 40,000
8947 books), <a href="http://runeberg.org/">Project Runenberg</a> (1,652
8948 books) and <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/texts">The Internet
8949 Archive</a> (3,641,797 books) have heaps of books without DRM, which
8950 can read by anyone and shared with anyone.</p>
8951
8952 <p>Update 2012-10-23: This story broke in the morning on Monday. In
8953 the evening after the story had spread all across the Internet, Amazon
8954 restored the account of the user, as reported by
8955 <a href="http://www.digi.no/904675/helomvending-fra-amazon">digi.no</a>
8956 and <a href="http://nrk.no/kultur-og-underholdning/1.8368487">NRK</a>.
8957 Apparently public pressure work.  The story from Martin have seen
8958 several twitter messages per minute the last 24 hours, which is quite
8959 a lot, and is still drawing a lot of attention.  But even when the
8960 account is restored, the fundamental problem still exist.  I recommend
8961 reading two opinions from
8962 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2012/10/rights-you-have-no-right-to-your-ebooks/index.htm">Simon
8963 Phipps</a> and
8964 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/10/is-amazon-playing-fair/index.htm">Glen
8965 Moody</a> if you want to learn more about the fundamentals and more
8966 details about the original story.</p>
8967
8968       </div>
8969       <div class="tags">
8970
8971
8972         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</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>.
8973
8974
8975       </div>
8976     </div>
8977     <div class="padding"></div>
8978
8979     <div class="entry">
8980       <div class="title">
8981         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_fight_for_freedom_and_privacy.html">The fight for freedom and privacy</a>
8982       </div>
8983       <div class="date">
8984         18th October 2012
8985       </div>
8986       <div class="body">
8987         <p>Civil liberties and privacy in the western world are going down the
8988 drain, and it is hard to fight against it.  I try to do my best, but
8989 time is limited.  I hope you do your best too.  A few years ago I came
8990 across a marvellous drawing by
8991 <a href="http://www.claybennett.com/about.html">Clay Bennett</a>
8992 visualising some of what is going on.
8993
8994 <p><a href="http://www.claybennett.com/pages/security_fence.html">
8995 <img src="http://www.claybennett.com/images/archivetoons/security_fence.jpg"></a></p>
8996
8997 <blockquote>
8998 «They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
8999 safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.» - Benjamin Franklin
9000 </blockquote>
9001
9002 <p>Do you feel safe at the airport?  I do not.  Do you feel safe when
9003 you see a surveillance camera?  I do not.  Do you feel safe when you
9004 leave electronic traces of your behaviour and opinions?  I do not.  I
9005 just remember <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon">the
9006 Panopticon</a>, and can not help to think that we are slowly
9007 transforming our society to a huge Panopticon on our own.</p>
9008
9009       </div>
9010       <div class="tags">
9011
9012
9013         Tags: <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>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
9014
9015
9016       </div>
9017     </div>
9018     <div class="padding"></div>
9019
9020     <div class="entry">
9021       <div class="title">
9022         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ColonHelp_produser_sue_WordPress_to_silence_critic.html">ColonHelp produser sue WordPress to silence critic</a>
9023       </div>
9024       <div class="date">
9025         12th October 2012
9026       </div>
9027       <div class="body">
9028         <p>Thanks to a blog post by
9029 <a href="http://ramblingfoo.blogspot.no/2012/10/a-shitstorm-is-comming.html">Eddy
9030 Petrișor</a>, I became aware of yet another "alternative medicine"
9031 company using legal intimidation tactics to scare off critics.
9032 According to the originating blog post about the detox "cure"
9033 <a href="http://insulaindoielii.wordpress.com/2012/10/11/colon-help-sues-wordpress/">ColonHelp
9034 and its producers Zenyth Pharmaceuticals actions</a>, the producer
9035 sues Wordpress to get rid of the critical information.  To check if
9036 the story was for real, I contacted Automattic, the company behind
9037 wordpress.com, and they reply was "We can confirm that Zenyth is
9038 seeking a court order against WordPress / Automattic.  However, we
9039 don't believe the Terms of Service have been violated in this
9040 matter".</p>
9041
9042 <p>The story seem to be simply that a blogger checked the scientific
9043 foundation for a popular health product in Rumania, ColonHelp, and
9044 reported that there was no reason at all to believe it improved the
9045 health of its users.  This caused the company behind the product,
9046 Zenyth Pharmaceuticals, to use legal intimidation to try to silence
9047 the critic, instead of presenting its views and scientific foundation
9048 to argue its side.</p>
9049
9050 <p>This is the usual story, and the Zenyth Pharmaceuticals company
9051 deserve everyone to know how it failed to act properly.  Lets hope the
9052 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect">Streisand
9053 effect</a> can make it rethink its strategy.</p>
9054
9055 <p>What is the harm, you might think.  I suggest you take a look at
9056 <a href="http://www.whatstheharm.net/detoxification.html">a list of
9057 victims of detoxification</a>.</p>
9058
9059       </div>
9060       <div class="tags">
9061
9062
9063         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis</a>.
9064
9065
9066       </div>
9067     </div>
9068     <div class="padding"></div>
9069
9070     <div class="entry">
9071       <div class="title">
9072         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_is_your_local_library_collecting_the__wrong__computer_books_.html">Why is your local library collecting the "wrong" computer books?</a>
9073       </div>
9074       <div class="date">
9075          3rd October 2012
9076       </div>
9077       <div class="body">
9078         <p>I just read the blog post from Tim Retout
9079 <a href="http://retout.co.uk/blog/2012/10/02/the-library-challenge">about
9080 the computer science book collection available in his local
9081 library</a>, and just wanted to share my comment on his theory about
9082 computer books becoming obsolete so soon.  That is part of the reason
9083 why the selection is so sad in almost any local library (it is in mine
9084 too), but I believe the major contributing factor is that the people
9085 buying books to the library have no way to know a good and future
9086 computer classic from trash.  And they need to know which one will
9087 become a classic in the future, as they would normally buy one of the
9088 recently published books.</p>
9089
9090 <p>During my university years, I worked for a while at the university
9091 library, and even there the person in charge of buying computer
9092 related books (and in fact any natural science related book), did not
9093 know enough about computers to make a good educated guess.  Once, just
9094 before Christmas, they had some leftover money on the book budget and
9095 I was asked if I could pick out a lot of computer books in the
9096 university book store, for the library to buy for their collection.  I
9097 had a great time picking all the books I dreamt of buying and reading,
9098 and the books I knew were classics (like most of the
9099 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Richard_Stevens">Stevens
9100 collection</a>).  I picked several of the generic O'Reilly books (ie
9101 documenting protocols, formats and systems, not specific versions of
9102 products) and stayed away from the 'teach yourself X in N days' class.
9103 I had a great time, and probably picked out more than a hundred books
9104 for the library that evening.</p>
9105
9106 <p>The sad fact is that there is no way a overworked librarian is
9107 going to know that for example
9108 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Practice_of_Programming">The
9109 Practice of Programming</a> is a must-have in any computer library,
9110 and they will most of the time end up picking the wrong books to buy.
9111 Perhaps you can help your local library make better choices by giving
9112 the suggestions for books to get?  I know they would love to hear from
9113 you, even if their budget might block them from getting your favourite
9114 book right away.</p>
9115
9116       </div>
9117       <div class="tags">
9118
9119
9120         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9121
9122
9123       </div>
9124     </div>
9125     <div class="padding"></div>
9126
9127     <div class="entry">
9128       <div class="title">
9129         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Seventy_percent_done_with_Norwegian_docbook_version_of_Free_Culture.html">Seventy percent done with Norwegian docbook version of Free Culture</a>
9130       </div>
9131       <div class="date">
9132         23rd September 2012
9133       </div>
9134       <div class="body">
9135         <p>Since this summer, I have worked in my spare time on a Norwegian <a
9136 href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book <a
9137 href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
9138 The reason is that this book is a great primer on what problems exist
9139 in the current copyright laws, and I want it to be available also for
9140 those that are reluctant do read an English book.
9141
9142 When I started, I
9143 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">called
9144 for volunteers</a> to help me, but too few have volunteered so far,
9145 and progress is a bit slow.  Anyway, today I broken the 70 percent
9146 mark for the first rough translation.  At the moment, less than 700
9147 strings (paragraphs, index terms, titles) are left to translate.  With
9148 my current progress of 10-20 strings per day, it will take a while to
9149 complete the translation.  This graph show the updated progress:</p>
9150
9151 <img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png">
9152
9153 <p>Progress have slowed down lately due to family and work
9154 commitments.  If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out
9155 the project files currently available from
9156 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
9157
9158 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
9159 the updated
9160 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
9161 and
9162 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
9163 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
9164 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
9165 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
9166
9167       </div>
9168       <div class="tags">
9169
9170
9171         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
9172
9173
9174       </div>
9175     </div>
9176     <div class="padding"></div>
9177
9178     <div class="entry">
9179       <div class="title">
9180         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Giorgio_Pioda.html">Debian Edu interview: Giorgio Pioda</a>
9181       </div>
9182       <div class="date">
9183         17th September 2012
9184       </div>
9185       <div class="body">
9186         <p>After a long break in my row of interviews with people in the
9187 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
9188 community, I finally found time to wrap up another.  This time it is
9189 Giorgio Pioda, which showed up on the mailing list at the start of
9190 this year, asking questions and inspiring us to improve the first time
9191 administrators experience with Skolelinux. :) The interview was
9192 conduced in May, but I only found time to publish it now.</p>
9193
9194 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
9195
9196 <p>I have a PhD in chemistry but since several years I work as teacher
9197 in secondary (15-18 year old students) and tertiary (a kind of "light"
9198 university) schools. Five years ago I started to manage a Learning
9199 Management Service server and slowly I got more and more involved with
9200 IT. 3 years ago the graduating schools moved completely to Linux and I
9201 got the head of the IT for this. The experience collected in chemistry
9202 labs computers (for example NMR analysis of protein folding) and in
9203 the IT-courses during university where sufficient to start. Self
9204 training is anyway very important</p>
9205
9206 <p>I live in the Italian speaking part of Switzerland, and the
9207 <a href="http://www.spse.ch/">SPSE school</a> (secondary) is a very
9208 special sport school for young people who try to became sport pro (for
9209 all sports, we have dozens of disciplines represented) and we are
9210 recognised by the Olympic Swiss Organisation.
9211
9212 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
9213 project?</strong></p>
9214
9215 <p>Looking for Linux / Primary Domain Controller (PDC) I found it
9216 already several years ago. But since the system was still not
9217 Kerberized and since our schools relies strongly on laptops I didn't
9218 use it. I plan to introduce it in the next future, probably for the
9219 next school year, since the squeeze release solved this security
9220 hole.</p>
9221
9222 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
9223 Edu?</strong></p>
9224
9225 <p>Many. First of all there is a strong and living community that is
9226 very generous for help and hints.  Chat help is crucial, together with
9227 the mailing list.  Second. With Skolelinux you get an already well
9228 engineered platform and you don't have to start to build up your PDC
9229 and your clients from GNU/scratch; I've already done this once and I
9230 can tell it, it is hard. Third, since Skolelinux is a standard
9231 platform, it is way easier to educate other IT people and even if the
9232 head IT is sick another one could pick up the task without too much
9233 hassle.</p>
9234
9235 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
9236 Edu?</strong></p>
9237
9238 <p>The only real problem I see is that it is a little too less
9239 flexible at client level. Debian stable is rocky and desirable, but
9240 there are many reasons that force for another choice. For example the
9241 need of new drivers for new PC, or the need for a specific OS for some
9242 devices that have specific software packages for another specific
9243 distribution (I have such a case for whiteboards that have only
9244 Ubuntu packages). Thus, I prepared compatibility packages educlient
9245 and eduroaming, hoping not to use them ;-)</p>
9246
9247 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
9248
9249 <p>I have a Debian Stable PDC at school (Kerberos, NIS, NFS) with
9250 mixed Debian and Ubuntu clients. If you think that this triad
9251 combination is exotic... well I discovered right yesterday that
9252 <a href="http://moo.nac.uci.edu/~hjm/Perceus-Report.html">Perceus</a>
9253 has the same...</p>
9254
9255 <p>For myself I run Debian wheezy/sid, but this combination is good
9256 only I you have enough competence to fix stuff for yourself, if
9257 something breaks.  Daily I use texmacs, gnumeric, a little bit of R
9258 statistics, kmplot, and less frequently OpenOffice.org.</p>
9259
9260 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
9261 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
9262
9263 <P>I think that the only real argument that school managers "hear" is
9264 cost reduction. They don't give too much weight on quality, stability,
9265 just because they are normally not open to change.</p>
9266
9267 <p>Students adapts very quickly to GNU/Linux (and for them being able
9268 to switch between different OS is a plus value); teachers and managers
9269 don't.</p>
9270
9271 <p>We decided to move to Linux because students at our school have own
9272 laptop and we have the responsibility to keep the laptop ready to use;
9273 we were really unsatisfied with Microsoft since every Monday we had 20
9274 machine to fix for viral infections... With Linux this has been
9275 reduced to zero, since people installs almost only from official
9276 repositories. I think that our special needs brought us to Linux.
9277 Those who don't have such needs will hardly move to Linux.</p>
9278
9279       </div>
9280       <div class="tags">
9281
9282
9283         Tags: <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/intervju">intervju</a>.
9284
9285
9286       </div>
9287     </div>
9288     <div class="padding"></div>
9289
9290     <div class="entry">
9291       <div class="title">
9292         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_activity_to_standardise_video_codec.html">IETF activity to standardise video codec</a>
9293       </div>
9294       <div class="date">
9295         15th September 2012
9296       </div>
9297       <div class="body">
9298         <p>After the
9299 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html">Opus
9300 codec made</a> it into <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">IETF</a> as
9301 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716">RFC 6716</a>, I had a look
9302 to see if there is any activity in IETF to standardise a video codec
9303 too, and I was happy to discover that there is some activity in this
9304 area.  A non-"working group" mailing list
9305 <a href="https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/video-codec">video-codec</a>
9306 was
9307 <a href="http://ietf.10.n7.nabble.com/New-Non-WG-Mailing-List-video-codec-Video-codec-BoF-discussion-list-td119548.html">created 2012-08-20</a>.  It is intended to discuss the topic and if a
9308 formal working group should be formed.</p>
9309
9310 <p>I look forward to see how this plays out.  There is already
9311 <a href="http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/video-codec/current/msg00003.html">an
9312 email from someone</a> in the MPEG group at ISO asking people to
9313 participate in the ISO group.  Given how ISO failed with OOXML and given
9314 that it so far (as far as I can remember) only have produced
9315 multimedia formats requiring royalty payments, I suspect
9316 joining the ISO group would be a complete waste of time, but I am not
9317 involved in any codec work and my opinion will not matter much.</p>
9318
9319 <p>If one of my readers is involved with codec work, I hope she will
9320 join this work to standardise a royalty free video codec within
9321 IETF.</p>
9322
9323       </div>
9324       <div class="tags">
9325
9326
9327         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</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>.
9328
9329
9330       </div>
9331     </div>
9332     <div class="padding"></div>
9333
9334     <div class="entry">
9335       <div class="title">
9336         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html">IETF standardize its first multimedia codec: Opus</a>
9337       </div>
9338       <div class="date">
9339         12th September 2012
9340       </div>
9341       <div class="body">
9342         <p>Yesterday, <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">IETF</a> announced the
9343 publication of of
9344 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716">RFC 6716, the Definition
9345 of the Opus Audio Codec</a>, a low latency, variable bandwidth, codec
9346 intended for both VoIP, film and music.  This is the first time, as
9347 far as I know, that IETF have standardized a multimedia codec.  In
9348 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3533">RFC 3533</a>, IETF
9349 standardized the OGG container format, and it has proven to be a great
9350 royalty free container for audio, video and movies.  I hope IETF will
9351 continue to standardize more royalty free codeces, after ISO and MPEG
9352 have proven incapable of securing everyone equal rights to publish
9353 multimedia content on the Internet.</p>
9354
9355 <p>IETF require two interoperating independent implementations to
9356 ratify a standard, and have so far ensured to only standardize royalty
9357 free specifications.  Both are key factors to allow everyone (rich and
9358 poor), to compete on equal terms on the Internet.</p>
9359
9360 <p>Visit the <a href="http://opus-codec.org/">Opus project page</a> if
9361 you want to learn more about the solution.</p>
9362
9363       </div>
9364       <div class="tags">
9365
9366
9367         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</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>.
9368
9369
9370       </div>
9371     </div>
9372     <div class="padding"></div>
9373
9374     <div class="entry">
9375       <div class="title">
9376         <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>
9377       </div>
9378       <div class="date">
9379          7th September 2012
9380       </div>
9381       <div class="body">
9382         <p>As I
9383 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">mentioned
9384 this summer</a>, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
9385 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
9386 <a href="https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook">Gitorious
9387 repository for the project</a>.</p>
9388
9389 <p>If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
9390 to the HTML version.  To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
9391 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
9392 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.</p>
9393
9394 <p>Want to sing?  You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
9395 PostScript formats at
9396 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's Computer
9397 Science Songbook</a>.</p>
9398
9399       </div>
9400       <div class="tags">
9401
9402
9403         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>.
9404
9405
9406       </div>
9407     </div>
9408     <div class="padding"></div>
9409
9410     <div class="entry">
9411       <div class="title">
9412         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_software_forced_Microsoft_to_open_Office__and_don_t_forget_Officeshots_.html">Free software forced Microsoft to open Office (and don't forget Officeshots)</a>
9413       </div>
9414       <div class="date">
9415         23rd August 2012
9416       </div>
9417       <div class="body">
9418         <p>I came across a great comment from Simon Phipps today, about how
9419 <a href="http://www.infoworld.com/d/open-source-software/how-microsoft-was-forced-open-office-200233">Microsoft
9420 have been forced to open Office</a>, and it made me remember and
9421 revisit the great site
9422 <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">officeshots</a> which allow you
9423 to check out how different programs present the ODF file format.  I
9424 recommend both to those of my readers interested in ODF. :)</p>
9425
9426       </div>
9427       <div class="tags">
9428
9429
9430         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
9431
9432
9433       </div>
9434     </div>
9435     <div class="padding"></div>
9436
9437     <div class="entry">
9438       <div class="title">
9439         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Half_way_there_with_translated_docbook_version_of_Free_Culture.html">Half way there with translated docbook version of Free Culture</a>
9440       </div>
9441       <div class="date">
9442         17th August 2012
9443       </div>
9444       <div class="body">
9445         <p>In my spare time, I currently work on a Norwegian
9446 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
9447 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
9448 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with the copyright law
9449 I can give to my parents and others that are reluctant to read an
9450 English book.  It is a marvellous set of examples on how the ever
9451 expanding copyright regulations hurt culture and society.  When the
9452 translation is done, I hope to find funding to print and ship a copy
9453 to all the members of the Norwegian parliament, before they sit down
9454 to debate the latest revisions to the Norwegian copyright law.  This
9455 summer I
9456 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">called
9457 for volunteers</a> to help me, and I have been able to secure the
9458 valuable contribution from at least one other Norwegian.</p>
9459
9460 <p>Two days ago, we finally broke the 50% mark.  Then more than 50% of
9461 the number of strings to translate (normally paragraphs, but also
9462 titles and index entries are also counted).  All parts from the
9463 beginning up to and including chapter four is translated.  So is
9464 chapters six, seven and the conclusion.  I created a graph to show the
9465 progress:</p>
9466
9467 <img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png">
9468
9469 <p>The number of strings to translate increase as I insert the index
9470 entries into the docbook.  They were missing with the docbook version
9471 I initially started with.  There are still quite a few index entries
9472 missing, but everyone starting with A, B, O, Z and Y are done.  I
9473 currently focus on completing the index entries, to get a complete
9474 english version of the docbook source.</p>
9475
9476 <p>There is still need for translators and people with docbook
9477 knowledge, to be able to get a good looking book (I still struggle
9478 with dblatex, xmlto and docbook-xsl) as well as to do the draft
9479 translation and proof reading.  And I would like the figures to be
9480 redrawn as SVGs to make it easy to translate them.  Any SVG master
9481 around?  I am sure there are some legal terms that are unfamiliar to
9482 me.  If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out the
9483 project files currently available from <a
9484 href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
9485
9486 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
9487 the updated
9488 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
9489 and
9490 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
9491 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
9492 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
9493 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
9494
9495       </div>
9496       <div class="tags">
9497
9498
9499         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
9500
9501
9502       </div>
9503     </div>
9504     <div class="padding"></div>
9505
9506     <div class="entry">
9507       <div class="title">
9508         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Notes_on_language_codes_for_Norwegian_docbook_processing___.html">Notes on language codes for Norwegian docbook processing...</a>
9509       </div>
9510       <div class="date">
9511         10th August 2012
9512       </div>
9513       <div class="body">
9514         <p>In <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> one can specify
9515 the language used at the top, and the processing pipeline will use
9516 this information to pick the correct translations for 'chapter', 'see
9517 also', 'index' etc.  And for most languages used with docbook, I guess
9518 this work just fine.  For example a German user can start the document
9519 with &lt;book lang="de"&gt;, and the document will show up with the
9520 correct content with any of the docbook processors.  This is not the
9521 case for the language
9522 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Culture_in_Norwegian___5_chapters_done__74_percent_left_to_do.html">I
9523 am working with at the moment</a>, Norwegian Bokmål.</p>
9524
9525 <p>For a while, I was confused about which language code to use,
9526 because I was unable to find any language code that would work across
9527 all tools.  I am currently testing dblatex, xmlto, docbook-xsl, and
9528 dbtoepub, and they do not handle Norwegian Bokmål the same way.  Some
9529 of them do not handle it at all.</p>
9530
9531 <p>A bit of background information is probably needed to understand
9532 this mess.  Norwegian is not one, but two written variants.  The
9533 variants are Norwegian Nynorsk and Norwegian Bokmål.  There are three
9534 two letter language codes associated with these languages, Norwegian
9535 is 'no', Norwegian Nynorsk is 'nn' and Norwegian Bokmål is 'nb'.
9536 Historically the 'no' language code was used for Norwegian Bokmål, but
9537 many years ago this was found to be å bad idea, and the recommendation
9538 is to use the most specific language code instead, to avoid confusion.
9539 In the transition period it is a good idea to make sure 'no' was an
9540 alias for 'nb'.</p>
9541
9542 <p>Back to docbook processing tools in Debian.  The dblatex tool only
9543 understand 'nn'.  There are translations for 'no', but not 'nb' (BTS
9544 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/684391">#684391</a>), but due to a bug
9545 (BTS <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682936">#682936</a>) the 'no'
9546 language code is not recognised.  The docbook-xsl tool chain only
9547 recognise 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'.  The xmlto tool only recognise
9548 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'.  The end result that there is no language
9549 code I can use to get the docbook file working with all of these tools
9550 at the same time. :(</p>
9551
9552 <p>The correct solution is to use &lt;book lang="nb"&gt;, but it will
9553 take time before that will work with all the free software docbook
9554 processors. :(</p>
9555
9556 <p>Oh, the joy of well integrated tools. :/</p>
9557
9558       </div>
9559       <div class="tags">
9560
9561
9562         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
9563
9564
9565       </div>
9566     </div>
9567     <div class="padding"></div>
9568
9569     <div class="entry">
9570       <div class="title">
9571         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Best_way_to_create_a_docbook_book_.html">Best way to create a docbook book?</a>
9572       </div>
9573       <div class="date">
9574         31st July 2012
9575       </div>
9576       <div class="body">
9577         <p>I tried to send this text to the
9578 <a href="https://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook-apps/">docbook-apps
9579 mailing list at lists.oasis-open.org</a>, but it only accept messages
9580 from subscribers and rejected my post, and I completely lack the
9581 bandwidth required to subscribe to another mailing list, so instead I
9582 try to post my message here and hope my blog readers can help me
9583 out.</p>
9584
9585 <p>I am quite new to docbook processing, and am climbing a steep
9586 learning curve at the moment.</p>
9587
9588 <p>To give you some background, I am working on a Norwegian
9589 translation of the book Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig, and I use
9590 docbook to handle the process.  The files to build the book are
9591 available from
9592 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.
9593 The book got around 400 pages with parts, images, footnotes, tables,
9594 index entries etc, which has proven to be a challenge for the free
9595 software docbook processors.  My build platform is Debian GNU/Linux
9596 Squeeze.</p>
9597
9598 <p>I want to build PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book, and have
9599 tried different tool chains to do the conversion from docbook to these
9600 formats.  I am currently focusing on the PDF version, and have a few
9601 problems.</p>
9602
9603 <ul>
9604
9605 <li>Using dblatex, the &lt;part&gt; handling is not the way I want to,
9606    as &lt;/part&gt; do not really end the &lt;part&gt;. (See
9607    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683166">BTS report #683166</a>), the
9608    xetex backend (needed to process UTF-8) give incorrect hyphens in
9609    index references spanning several pages (See
9610    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682901">BTS report #682901</a>), and
9611    I am unable to get the norwegian template texts (See
9612    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682936">BTS report #682936</a>).</li>
9613
9614 <li>Using straight xmlto fail with some latex error (See
9615    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683163">BTS report
9616    #683163</a>).</li>
9617
9618 <li>Using xmlto with the fop backend fail to handle images (do not
9619    show up in the PDF), fail to handle a long footnote (overlap
9620    footnote and text body, see
9621    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683197">BTS report #683197</a>), and
9622    fail to create a correct index (some lack page ref, and the page
9623    refs listed are not right).</li>
9624
9625 <li>Using xmlto with the dblatex backend behave like dblatex.</li>
9626
9627 <li>Using docbook-xls with xsltproc + fop have the same footnote and
9628    index problems the xmlto + fop processing.</li>
9629
9630 </ul>
9631
9632 <p>So I wonder, what would be the best way to create the PDF version
9633 of this book?  Are some of the bugs found above solved in new or
9634 experimental versions of some docbook tool chain?</p>
9635
9636 <p>What about HTML and EPUB versions?</p>
9637
9638       </div>
9639       <div class="tags">
9640
9641
9642         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
9643
9644
9645       </div>
9646     </div>
9647     <div class="padding"></div>
9648
9649     <div class="entry">
9650       <div class="title">
9651         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Culture_in_Norwegian___5_chapters_done__74_percent_left_to_do.html">Free Culture in Norwegian - 5 chapters done, 74 percent left to do</a>
9652       </div>
9653       <div class="date">
9654         21st July 2012
9655       </div>
9656       <div class="body">
9657         <p>I reported earlier that I am working on
9658 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">a
9659 norwegian version</a> of the book
9660 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
9661 Progress is good, and yesterday I got a major contribution from Anders
9662 Hagen Jarmund completing chapter six.  The source files as well as a
9663 PDF and EPUB version of this book are available from
9664 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
9665
9666 <p>I am happy to report that the draft for the first two chapters
9667 (preface, introduction) is complete, and three other chapters are also
9668 completely translated.  This completes 26 percent of the number of
9669 strings (equivalent to paragraphs) in the book, and there is thus 74
9670 percent left to translate.  A graph of the progress is present at the
9671 bottom of the github project page.  There is still room for more
9672 contributors.  Get in touch or send github pull requests with fixes if
9673 you got time and are willing to help make this book make it to
9674 print. :)</p>
9675
9676 <p>The book translation framework could also be a good basis for other
9677 translations, if you want the book to be available in your
9678 language.</p>
9679
9680       </div>
9681       <div class="tags">
9682
9683
9684         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</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>.
9685
9686
9687       </div>
9688     </div>
9689     <div class="padding"></div>
9690
9691     <div class="entry">
9692       <div class="title">
9693         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Call_for_help_from_docbook_expert_to_tag_Free_Culture_by_Lawrence_Lessig.html">Call for help from docbook expert to tag Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig</a>
9694       </div>
9695       <div class="date">
9696         16th July 2012
9697       </div>
9698       <div class="body">
9699         <p>I am currently working on a
9700 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">project
9701 to translate</a> the book
9702 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig
9703 to Norwegian.  And the source we base our translation on is the
9704 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DocBook">docbook</a> version, to
9705 allow us to use po4a and .po files to handle the translation, and for
9706 this to work well the docbook source document need to be properly
9707 tagged.  The source files of this project is available from
9708 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
9709
9710 <p>The problem is that the docbook source have flaws, and we have
9711 no-one involved in the project that is a docbook expert.  Is there a
9712 docbook expert somewhere that is interested in helping us create a
9713 well tagged docbook version of the book, and adjust our build process
9714 for the PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book?  This will provide a
9715 well tagged English version (our source document), and make it a lot
9716 easier for us to create a good Norwegian version.  If you can and want
9717 to help, please get in touch with me or fork the github project and
9718 send pull requests with fixes. :)</p>
9719
9720       </div>
9721       <div class="tags">
9722
9723
9724         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</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>.
9725
9726
9727       </div>
9728     </div>
9729     <div class="padding"></div>
9730
9731     <div class="entry">
9732       <div class="title">
9733         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__George_Bredberg.html">Debian Edu interview: George Bredberg</a>
9734       </div>
9735       <div class="date">
9736          9th July 2012
9737       </div>
9738       <div class="body">
9739         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
9740 Skolelinux</a> project have users all over the globe, but until
9741 recently we have not known about any users in Norway's neighbour
9742 country Sweden.  This changed when George Bredberg showed up in March
9743 this year on the mailing list, asking interesting questions about how
9744 to adjust and scale the just released
9745 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
9746 Wheezy</a> setup to his liking.  He granted me an interview, and I am
9747 happy to share his answers with you here.</p>
9748
9749 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
9750
9751 <p>I'm a 44 year old country guy that have been working 12 years at
9752 the same school as 50% IT-manager and 50% Teacher. My educational
9753 background is fil.kand in history and religious beliefs, an exam as a
9754 "folkhighschool" teacher, that is, for teaching grownups.  In
9755 Norwegian I believe it's called "Vuxenupplaring". I also have a master
9756 in "Technology and social change". So I'm not really a tech guy, I
9757 just like to study how humans and technology interact and that is my
9758 perspective when working with IT.</p>
9759
9760 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
9761 project?</strong></p>
9762
9763 I have followed the Skolelinux project for quite some time by
9764 now. Earlier I tested out the K12-LTSP project, which we used for some
9765 time, but I really like the idea of having a distribution aimed to be
9766 a complete solution for schools with necessary tools integrated. When
9767 K12-LTSP abandoned that idea some years ago, I started to look more
9768 seriously into Skolelinux instead.
9769
9770 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
9771 Edu?</strong></p>
9772
9773 The big point of Skolelinux to me is that it is a complete
9774 distribution, ready to install. It has LDAP-support, MS Windows
9775 integration tools and so forth already configured, saving an
9776 administrator a lot of time and headache. We were using another Linux
9777 based thin-client system called Thinlinc, that has served us very
9778 well. But that Skolelinux is based on VNC and LTSP, to me, is better
9779 when it comes to the kind of multimedia used in schools. That is
9780 showing videos from Youtube or educational TV. It is also easier to
9781 mix thin clients with workstations, since the user settings will be the
9782 same. In our VNC-based solution you had to "beat around the bush" by
9783 setting up a second, hidden, home-directory for user settings for the
9784 workstations, because they will be different from the ones used on the
9785 thin clients. Skolelinux support for diskless workstations are very
9786 convenient since a school today often need to use a class room
9787 projector showing videos in full screen. That is easily done with a
9788 small integrated media computer running as a diskless workstation. You
9789 have only two installs to update and configure. One for the thin
9790 clients and one for the workstations. Also saving a lot of time.  Our
9791 old system was also based on Redhat and CentOS. They are both very
9792 nice distributions, but they are sometimes painfully slow when it
9793 comes to updating multimedia support and multimedia programs (even
9794 such as Gimp), leaving us with a bit "oldish" applications. Debian is
9795 quicker to update.
9796
9797 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
9798 Edu?</strong></p>
9799
9800 <p>Debian is a bit too quick when it comes to updating. As an example
9801 we use old HP terminals as thinclients, and two times already this
9802 year (2012) the updates you get from the repositories has stopped
9803 sound from working with them.  It's a kernel/ALSA issue. So you have
9804 to be more careful properly testing the updates before you run them in
9805 a production environment. This has never happened with CentOS.</p>
9806
9807 <p>I also would like to be able to set my own domain-settings at
9808 install time.  In Skolelinux they are kind of hard coded into the
9809 distribution, when it comes to LDAP and at least samba integration.
9810 That is more a cosmetic/translation issue, and not a real problem.
9811 Running MS Windows applications within the Skolelinux environment needs
9812 to be better supported. That is, running them seamlessly via RDP, and
9813 support for single-sign on.  That will make the transition to free
9814 software easier, because you can keep the applications you really
9815 need.  No support will make it impossible if you work in a school where
9816 some applications can't be open source. As for us we really need to
9817 run Adobe InDesign in our journalist classes.  We run a journalist
9818 education, and is one of the very few non university ones that is ok:d
9819 by Svenska journalistförbundet (Swedish journalist association).  Our
9820 education gives the pupils the right of membership there, once they
9821 are done.  This is important if you want to get a job.</p>
9822
9823 <p>Adobe InDesign is the program most commonly used in newspapers and
9824 magazines.  We used Quark Express before, but they seem to loose there
9825 market to Adobe. The only "equivalent" to InDesign in the opensource
9826 world is Scribus, and its not advanced enough. At least not according
9827 to the teacher. I think it would be possible to use it, because they
9828 are not supposed to learn a program, they are supposed to learn how to
9829 edit and compile a newspaper.  But politically at our school we are not
9830 there yet.  And Scribus lacks a lot of things you find i InDesign.</p>
9831
9832 <p>We used even a windows program for sound editing when it comes to
9833 the radio-journalist part. The year to come we are going to try
9834 Audacity. That software has the same kind of limitations compared to
9835 Adobe Audition, but that teacher is a bit more open minded. We have
9836 tried Ardour also, but that instead is more like a music studio
9837 program, not intended for the kind of editing taking place in a radio
9838 studio. Its way to complex and the GUI is to scattered when you only
9839 want to cut, make pass-overs, add extra channels and normalise.  Those
9840 things you can do in Audacity, but its not as easy as in Audition. You
9841 have to do more things manually with envelopes, and that is a bit old
9842 fashion and timewasting. Its also harder to cut and move sound from
9843 one channel to another, which is a thing that you do frequently
9844 because you often find yourself needing to rearrange parts of the
9845 sound file.</p>
9846
9847 <p>So, I am not sure we will succeed in replacing even Audition, but we
9848 will try.  The problem is the students have certain expectations when
9849 they start an education towards a profession.  So the programs has to
9850 look and feel professional.  Good thing with radio, there are many
9851 programs out there, that radio studios use, so its not as standardised
9852 as Newspaper editing. That means, it does not really matter what
9853 program they learn, because once they start working they still have to
9854 learn the program the studio uses, so instead focus has to be to learn
9855 the editing part without to much focus on a specific software.</p>
9856
9857 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
9858
9859 <p>Myself I'm running Linux Mint, or Ubuntu these days.  I use almost
9860 only open source software, and preferably Linux based. When it comes
9861 to most used applications its OpenOffice, and Firefox (of course ;)
9862 )</p>
9863
9864 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
9865 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
9866
9867 <p>To get schools to use free software there has to be good open
9868 source software that are windows based, to ease the transition. But
9869 it's also very important that the multimedia support is working
9870 flawlessly.  The problems with Youtube, Twitter, Facebook and whatever
9871 will create problems when it comes to both teachers and
9872 students. Economy are also important for schools, so using thin
9873 clients, as long as they have good multimedia support, is a very good
9874 idea. It's also important that the open source software works even for
9875 the administration.  It's hard to convince the teachers to stick with
9876 open source, if the principal has to run Windows.  It also creates a
9877 problem if some classes has to use Windows for there tasks, since that
9878 will create a difference in "status" between classes, so a good
9879 support for running windows applications via the thin client (Linux)
9880 desktop is essential.  At least at our school, where we have mixed
9881 level of educations, from high-school to journalist-school.</p>
9882
9883 <p>Update 2012-07-09 08:30: Paul Wise tipped me on IRC about three
9884 useful sources related to Free Software for radio stations: the LWN
9885 article <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/481607/">Radio station
9886 management with Airtime</a>,
9887 <a href="http://www.sourcefabric.org/en/airtime/">Airtime</a> which
9888 claim to be a Free open source radio automation software and
9889 <a href="http://www.rivendellaudio.org/">Rivendell</a> which claim to
9890 be complete radio broadcast automation solution.  All of them seem
9891 useful to the aspiring radio producer.</p>
9892
9893       </div>
9894       <div class="tags">
9895
9896
9897         Tags: <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/intervju">intervju</a>.
9898
9899
9900       </div>
9901     </div>
9902     <div class="padding"></div>
9903
9904     <div class="entry">
9905       <div class="title">
9906         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_do_schools_waste_money_on_IT_.html">Why do schools waste money on IT?</a>
9907       </div>
9908       <div class="date">
9909          8th July 2012
9910       </div>
9911       <div class="body">
9912         <p>In the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project, we have realised that one
9913 of the major blockers for the project success is the purchasing skills
9914 in schools and municipalities.  We provide what the happy users of
9915 Debian Edu / Skolelinux say they need and to a lower cost than the
9916 alternatives, and yet so few schools decide to use our solution.  I
9917 was pleased to discover the same observation done by mySociety and Tom
9918 Steinberg in his blog post
9919 "<a href="http://www.mysociety.org/2012/06/19/can-you-recognize-the-million-pound-chair/">Can
9920 you recognize the million pound chair?</a>".  Read it and weep for the
9921 spending of your tax money.</p>
9922
9923 <p>Of course there are other factors involved as well, like our
9924 projects bad marketing skills and the Linux community fragmentation
9925 causing worry with the people on the outside, so we as a project need
9926 to keep working hard to gain users, but it is a up-hill battle when
9927 public decision makers are unable to understand computer system
9928 purchases.</p>
9929
9930       </div>
9931       <div class="tags">
9932
9933
9934         Tags: <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>.
9935
9936
9937       </div>
9938     </div>
9939     <div class="padding"></div>
9940
9941     <div class="entry">
9942       <div class="title">
9943         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Timetabling_Software___nice_free_software.html">Free Timetabling Software - nice free software</a>
9944       </div>
9945       <div class="date">
9946          7th July 2012
9947       </div>
9948       <div class="body">
9949         <p>Included in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
9950 Skolelinux</a> is a large collection of end user and school specific
9951 software.  It is one of the packages not installed by default but
9952 provided in the Debian archive for schools to install if they want to,
9953 is a system to automatically plan the school time table using
9954 information about available teachers, classes and rooms, combined with
9955 the list of required courses and how many hours each topic should
9956 receive.  The software is
9957
9958 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/">named FET</a>, and it provide a
9959 graphical user interface to input the required information, save the
9960 result in a fairly simple XML format, and generate time tables for
9961 both teachers and students.  It is available both for
9962 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/download.html">Linux, MacOSX and
9963 Windows</a>.</p>
9964
9965 <p>This is <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/features.html">the
9966 feature list</a>, liftet from the project web site:</p>
9967
9968 <p><ul>
9969
9970   <li>FET is free software, licensed under the GNU GPL v2 or later.
9971     You can freely use, copy, modify and redistribute it </li>
9972
9973   <li>Localized to en_US (US English, default), ar (Arabic), ca
9974     (Catalan), da (Danish), de (German), el (Greek), es (Spanish), fa
9975     (Persian), fr (French), gl (Galician), he (Hebrew), hu
9976     (Hungarian), id (Indonesian), it (Italian), lt (Lithuanian), mk
9977     (Macedonian), ms (Malay), nl (Dutch), pl (Polish), pt_BR
9978     (Brazilian Portuguese), ro (Romanian), ru (Russian), si (Sinhala),
9979     sk (Slovak), sr (Serbian), tr (Turkish), uk (Ukrainian), uz
9980     (Uzbek) and vi (Vietnamese) (incompletely for some languages)
9981     </li>
9982
9983   <li>Fully automatic generation algorithm, allowing also
9984     semi-automatic or manual allocation</li>
9985
9986   <li>Platform independent implementation, allowing running on
9987     GNU/Linux, Windows, Mac and any system that Qt supports </li>
9988
9989   <li>Flexible modular XML format for the input file, allowing editing
9990     with an XML editor or by hand (besides FET interface)</li>
9991
9992   <li>Import/export from CSV format</li>
9993
9994   <li>The resulted timetables are exported into HTML, XML and CSV
9995     formats </li>
9996
9997   <li>Flexible students structure, organized into sets: years, groups
9998     and subgroups. FET allows overlapping years and groups and
9999     non-overlapping subgroups. You can even define individual students
10000     (as separate sets)</li>
10001
10002   <li>Each constraint has a weight percentage, from 0.0% to 100.0%
10003     (but some special constraints are allowed to have only 100% weight
10004     percentage)</li>
10005
10006   <li>Limits for the algorithm (all these limits can be increased on
10007     demand, as a custom version, because this would require a bit more
10008     memory):
10009     <ul>
10010       <li>Maximum total number of hours (periods) per day: 60</li>
10011       <li>Maximum number of working days per week: 35</li>
10012       <li>Maximum total number of teachers: 6000</li>
10013       <li>Maximum total number of sets of students: 30000</li>
10014       <li>Maximum total number of subjects: 6000</li>
10015       <li>Virtually unlimited number of activity tags</li>
10016       <li>Maximum number of activities: 30000</li>
10017       <li>Maximum number of rooms: 6000</li>
10018       <li>Maximum number of buildings: 6000</li>
10019       <li>Possibility of adding multiple teachers and
10020           students sets for each activity.  (it is possible
10021           also to have no teachers or no students sets for an
10022           activity)</li>
10023       <li>Virtually unlimited number of time constraints</li>
10024       <li>Virtually unlimited number of space constraints</li>
10025     </ul></li>
10026
10027   <li>A large and flexible palette of time constraints:
10028     <ul>
10029       <li>Break periods</li>
10030       <li>For teacher(s):
10031         <ul>
10032           <li>Not available periods</li>
10033           <li>Max/min days per week</li>
10034           <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
10035           <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
10036           <li>Min hours daily</li>
10037           <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
10038
10039           <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
10040             days per week</li>
10041         </ul></li>
10042       <li>For students (sets):
10043         <ul>
10044           <li>Not available periods</li>
10045           <li>Begins early (specify max allowed beginnings at second hour)</li>
10046           <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
10047           <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
10048           <li>Min hours daily</li>
10049           <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
10050
10051           <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
10052             days per week</li>
10053         </ul></li>
10054       <li>For an activity or a set of activities/subactivities:
10055         <ul>
10056           <li>A single preferred starting time</li>
10057           <li>A set of preferred starting times</li>
10058           <li>A set of preferred time slots</li>
10059           <li>Min/max days between them</li>
10060           <li>End(s) students day</li>
10061           <li>Same starting time/day/hour</li>
10062           <li>Occupy max time slots from selection (a complex and
10063             flexible constraint, useful in many situations)</li>
10064           <li>Consecutive, ordered, grouped (for 2 or 3 (sub)activities)</li>
10065           <li>Not overlapping</li>
10066           <li>Max simultaneous in selected time slots</li>
10067           <li>Min gaps between a set of (sub)activities</li>
10068         </ul></li>
10069     </ul></li>
10070
10071   <li>A large and flexible palette of space constraints:
10072     <ul>
10073       <li>Room not available periods</li>
10074       <li>For teacher(s):
10075         <ul>
10076           <li>Home room(s)</li>
10077           <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
10078           <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
10079         </ul>
10080       </li>
10081
10082       <li>For students (sets):
10083         <ul>
10084           <li>Home room(s)</li>
10085           <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
10086           <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
10087         </ul>
10088       </li>
10089       <li>Preferred room(s):
10090         <ul>
10091           <li>For a subject</li>
10092           <li>For an activity tag</li>
10093           <li>For a subject and an activity tag</li>
10094           <li>Individually for a (sub)activity</li>
10095         </ul>
10096       </li>
10097
10098       <li>For a set of activities:
10099         <ul>
10100           <li>Occupy a maximum number of different rooms</li>
10101         </ul>
10102       </li>
10103     </ul>
10104   </li>
10105 </ul></p>
10106
10107 <p>I have not used it myself, as I am not involved in time table
10108 planning at a school, but it seem to work fine when I test it.  If you
10109 need to set up your schools time table, and is tired of doing it
10110 manually, check it out.
10111
10112 A quick summary on how to use it can be found in
10113 <a href="http://marvelsoft.co.in/wp/2012/03/generate-timetable-for-state-cbse-icse-igcse-schools-free/">a
10114 blog post from MarvelSoft</a>.  If you find FET useful, please provide
10115 a recipe for the Debian Edu project in the
10116 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu#Howtos">Debian Edu HowTo
10117 section</a>.</p>
10118
10119       </div>
10120       <div class="tags">
10121
10122
10123         Tags: <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>.
10124
10125
10126       </div>
10127     </div>
10128     <div class="padding"></div>
10129
10130     <div class="entry">
10131       <div class="title">
10132         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Can_Zimbra_be_told_to_send_autoreplies_to_the_From__address_.html">Can Zimbra be told to send autoreplies to the From: address?</a>
10133       </div>
10134       <div class="date">
10135          3rd July 2012
10136       </div>
10137       <div class="body">
10138         <p>In the NUUG <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a>
10139 project (Norwegian version of
10140 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> from
10141 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a>), we have discovered
10142 a problem with the municipalities using
10143 <a href="http://www.zimbra.com/">Zimbra</a>.  When FiksGataMi send a
10144 problem report to the government, the email From: address is set to
10145 the address of the person reporting the problem, while envelope sender
10146 is set to the FiksGataMi contact address.  The intention is to make
10147 sure the municipality send any replies to the person reporting the
10148 problem, while any email delivery problems are sent to us in NUUG.
10149 This work well in most cases, but not for Karmøy municipality using
10150 Zimbra.  Karmøy is using the vacation message function in Zimbra to
10151 send an automatic reply to report that the message has been received,
10152 and this message is sent to the envelope sender and not the address in
10153 the From: header.</p>
10154
10155 <p>This causes the automatic message from Karmøy to go to NUUGs
10156 request-tracker instance instead of to the person reporting the
10157 problem.  We can not really change the envelope sender address, as
10158 this would make it impossible for us to discover when there are
10159 problems with the MTAs receiving problem reports.  We have been in
10160 contact with the people at Karmøy municipality, and they are willing
10161 to adjust Zimbra if something can be changed there to get a better
10162 behaviour.</p>
10163
10164 <p>The default behaviour of Zimbra is as far as I can tell according
10165 to the specification in RFC 3834, which recommend that vacation
10166 messages are sent to the envelope sender and not to the From: address.
10167 But I wonder if it is possible to adjust or configure Zimbra to behave
10168 differently.  Anyone know?  Please let us know at
10169 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami">fiksgatami
10170 (at) nuug.no</a>.</p>
10171
10172       </div>
10173       <div class="tags">
10174
10175
10176         Tags: <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/nuug">nuug</a>.
10177
10178
10179       </div>
10180     </div>
10181     <div class="padding"></div>
10182
10183     <div class="entry">
10184       <div class="title">
10185         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Jos__Luis_Redrejo_Rodr_guez.html">Debian Edu interview: José Luis Redrejo Rodríguez</a>
10186       </div>
10187       <div class="date">
10188         26th June 2012
10189       </div>
10190       <div class="body">
10191         <p>I've been too busy at home, but finally I found time to wrap up
10192 another interview with the people behind
10193 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>.
10194 This time we get to know José Luis Redrejo Rodríguez, one of our great
10195 helpers from Spain.  His effort was the reason we added support for
10196 several desktop types (KDE, Gnome and most recently LXDE) in Debian
10197 Edu, and have all of these available in the recently published
10198 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
10199 Squeeze</a> version.</p>
10200
10201 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
10202
10203 <p>I'm a father, teacher and engineer who is working for the Education
10204 ministry of the Region of Extremadura (Spain) in the implementation of
10205 ICT in schools</p>
10206
10207 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
10208 project?</strong></p>
10209
10210 <p>At 2006, I verified that both, we in Extremadura and Skolelinux
10211 project, had been working in parallel for some years, doing very
10212 similar things, using very similar tools and with similar targets, so
10213 I decided it was time to join forces as much as possible.</p>
10214
10215 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
10216 Edu?</strong></p>
10217
10218 <p>A community of highly skilled experts working together, with a
10219 really open schema of collaboration and work. I really love the
10220 concepts of Do-ocracy and Merit-ocracy and the way these concepts are
10221 been used everyday inside Debian Edu.</p>
10222
10223 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
10224 Edu?</strong></p>
10225
10226 <p>Sometimes the differences in the implementations, laws or
10227 economical and technical resources in the different countries don't
10228 allow us to agree in the same solution for all of us, and several
10229 approaches are needed, what is a waste of effort. Also, there is a
10230 lack of more man power to be able to follow the fast evolution of the
10231 technologies in school.</p>
10232
10233 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
10234
10235 <p>Debian, of course, and due to my kind of job I am most of my time
10236 between Iceweasel, <a href="http://www.geany.org/">Geany</a> and
10237 <a href="http://www.ohloh.net/p/gnome-terminator">Terminator</a>.</p>
10238
10239 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
10240 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
10241
10242 <p>I think there is not a single strategy because there are very
10243 different scenarios: schools with mixed proprietary and free
10244 environments, schools using only workstations, other schools using
10245 laptops, netbooks, tablets, interactive white-boards, etc.</p>
10246
10247 <p>Also the range of ages of the students is very broad and you can
10248 not use the same solutions for primary schools and secondary or even
10249 universities. So different strategies are needed.</p>
10250
10251 <p>But, looking at these differences, and looking back to the things
10252 we've done and implemented, and the places were we have spent most of
10253 our forces, I think we should focus as much as possible in free
10254 multi-platform environments, using only standards tools, and moving
10255 more and more to Internet or network solutions that could be deployed
10256 using wireless. I think we'll see more and more personal devices in
10257 the schools, devices the students and teachers will take home with
10258 them, so the solutions must be able to be taken at home and continue
10259 working there.</p>
10260
10261       </div>
10262       <div class="tags">
10263
10264
10265         Tags: <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/intervju">intervju</a>.
10266
10267
10268       </div>
10269     </div>
10270     <div class="padding"></div>
10271
10272     <div class="entry">
10273       <div class="title">
10274         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Song book for Computer Scientists</a>
10275       </div>
10276       <div class="date">
10277         24th June 2012
10278       </div>
10279       <div class="body">
10280         <p>Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
10281 <a href="http://www.uit.no/">University of Tromsø</a>, I started
10282 collecting computer related songs for use at parties.  The original
10283 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
10284 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
10285 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format.  I have
10286 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
10287 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
10288 help me extend and update the book.  If anyone is volunteering to help
10289 me with this, send me an email.  Also let me know if there are songs
10290 missing in my book.</p>
10291
10292 <p>I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
10293 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
10294 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
10295 Especially now that <a href="http://debconf12.debconf.org/">Debconf
10296 12</a> is about to start (and I am not going).  Want to sing?  Check
10297 out <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's
10298 Computer Science Songbook</a>.
10299
10300       </div>
10301       <div class="tags">
10302
10303
10304         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>.
10305
10306
10307       </div>
10308     </div>
10309     <div class="padding"></div>
10310
10311     <div class="entry">
10312       <div class="title">
10313         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu___some_ideas_for_the_future_versions.html">Debian Edu - some ideas for the future versions</a>
10314       </div>
10315       <div class="date">
10316         11th June 2012
10317       </div>
10318       <div class="body">
10319         <p>During my work on
10320 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.nb.html">Debian Edu
10321 based on Squeeze</a>, I came across some issues that should be
10322 addressed in the Wheezy release.  I finally found time to wrap up my
10323 notes and provide quick summary of what I found, with a bit
10324 explanation.</p>
10325
10326 <p><ul>
10327
10328 <li>We need to rewrite our package installation framework, as tasksel
10329 changed from using tasksel tasks to using meta packages (aka packages
10330 with dependencies like our education-* packages), and our installation
10331 system depend on tasksel tasks in
10332 /usr/share/tasksel/debian-edu-tasks.desc for package
10333 installation.</li>
10334
10335 <li>Enable Kerberos login for more services.  Now with the Kerberos
10336 foundation in place, we should use it to get single sign on with more
10337 services, and avoiding unneeded password / login questions.  We should
10338 at least try to enable it for these services:
10339 <ul>
10340
10341   <li>CUPS for admins to add/configure printers and users when using
10342     quotas.</li>
10343   <li>Nagios for admins checking the system status.</li>
10344   <li>GOsa for admins updating LDAP and users changing their passwords.</li>
10345   <li>LDAP for admins updating LDAP.</li>
10346   <li>Squid for users when exam mode / filtering is active.</li>
10347   <li>ssh for admins and users to save a password prompt.</li>
10348
10349 </ul></li>
10350
10351 <li>When we move GOsa to use Kerberos instead of LDAP bind to
10352 authenticate users, we should try to block or at least limit access to
10353 use LDAP bind for authentication, to ensure Kerberos is used when it
10354 is intended, and nothing fall back to using the less safe LDAP bind</li>
10355
10356 <li>Merge debian-edu-config and debian-edu-install.  The split made
10357 sense when d-e-install did a lot more, but these days it is just an
10358 inconvenience when we update the debconf preseeding values.</li>
10359
10360 <li>Fix partman-auto to allow us to abort the installation before
10361 touching the disk if the disk is too small.  This is
10362 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/653305">BTS report #653305</a> and the
10363 d-i developers are fine with the patch and someone just need to apply
10364 it and upload.  After this is done we need to adjust
10365 debian-edu-install to use this new hook.</li>
10366
10367 <li>Adjust to new LTSP framework (boot time config instead of install
10368 time config).  LTSP changed its design, and our hooks to install
10369 packages and update the configuration is most likely not going to work
10370 in Wheezy.
10371
10372 <li>Consider switching to NBD instead of NFS for LTSP root, to allow
10373 the Kernel to cache files in its normal file cache, possibly speeding
10374 up KDE login on slow networks.</li>
10375
10376 <li>Make it possible to create expired user passwords that need to
10377 change on first login.  This is useful when handing out password on
10378 paper, to make sure only the user know the password.  This require
10379 fixes to the PAM handling of kdm and gdm.</li>
10380
10381 <li>Make GUI for adding new machines automatically from sitesummary.
10382 The current command line script is not very friendly to people most
10383 familiar with GUIs.  This should probably be integrated into GOsa to
10384 have it available where the admin will be looking for it..</li>
10385
10386 <li>We should find way for Nagios to check that the DHCP service
10387 actually is working (as in handling out IP addresses).  None of the
10388 Nagios checks I have found so far have been working for me.</li>
10389
10390 <li>We should switch from libpam-nss-ldapd to sssd for all profiles
10391 using LDAP, and not only on for roaming workstations, to have less
10392 packages to configure and consistent setup across all profiles.</li>
10393
10394 <li>We should configure Kerberos to update LDAP and Samba password
10395 when changing password using the Kerberos protocol.  The hook was
10396 requested in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/588968">BTS report
10397 #588968</a> and is now available in Wheezy.  We might need to write a
10398 MIT Kerberos plugin in C to get this.</li>
10399
10400 <li>We should clean up the set of applications installed by default.
10401 <ul>
10402
10403 <li>reduce the number of chemistry visualisers</li>
10404 <li>consider dropping xpaint</li>
10405 <li>and probably more?</li>
10406 </ul></li>
10407
10408 <li>Some hardware need external firmware to work properly.  This is
10409 mostly the case for WiFi network cards, but there are some other
10410 examples too.  For popular laptops to work out of the box, such
10411 firmware need to be installed from non-free, and we should provide
10412 some GUI to do this.  Ubuntu already have this implemented, and we
10413 could consider using their packages.  At the moment we have some
10414 command line script to do this (one for the running system, another
10415 for the LTSP chroot).</li>
10416
10417
10418 <li>In Squeeze, we provide KDE, Gnome and LXDE as desktop options.  We
10419 should extend the list to Xfce and Sugar, and preferably find a way to
10420 install several and allow the admin or the user to select which one to
10421 use.</li>
10422
10423 <li>The golearn tool from the goplay package make it easy to check out
10424 interesting educational packages.  We should work on the package
10425 tagging in Debian to ensure it represent all the useful educational
10426 packages, and extend the tool to allow it to use packagekit to install
10427 new applications with a simple mouse click.</li>
10428
10429 <li>The Squeeze version got half a exam solution already in place,
10430 with the introduction of iptable based network blocking, but for it to
10431 be a complete exam solution the Squid proxy need to enable
10432 filtering/blocking as well when the exam mode is enabled.  We should
10433 implement a way to easily enable this for the schools that want it,
10434 instead of the "it is documented" method of today.</li>
10435
10436 <li>A feature used in several schools is the ability for a teacher to
10437 "take over" the desktop of individual or all computers in the room.
10438 There are at least three implementations,
10439 <a href="italc.sourceforge.net/">italc</a>,
10440 <a href="http://www.itais.net/help/en/">controlaula</a> og
10441 <a href="http://www.epoptes.org/">epoptes</a> and we should pick one of
10442 them and make it trivial to set it up in a school.  The challenges is
10443 how to distribute crypto keys and how to group computers in one room
10444 and how to set up which machine/user can control the machines in a
10445 given room.</li>
10446
10447 <li>Tablets and surf boards are getting more and more popular, and we
10448 should look into providing a good solution for integrating these into
10449 the Debian Edu network.  Not quite sure how.  Perhaps we should
10450 provide a installation profile with better touch screen support for
10451 them, or add some sync services to allow them to exchange
10452 configuration and data with the central server.  This should be
10453 investigated.</li>
10454
10455 </ul></p>
10456
10457 <p>I guess we will discover more as we continue to work on the Wheezy
10458 version.</p>
10459
10460       </div>
10461       <div class="tags">
10462
10463
10464         Tags: <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>.
10465
10466
10467       </div>
10468     </div>
10469     <div class="padding"></div>
10470
10471     <div class="entry">
10472       <div class="title">
10473         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/TV_with_face_recognition__for_improved_viewer_experience.html">TV with face recognition, for improved viewer experience</a>
10474       </div>
10475       <div class="date">
10476          9th June 2012
10477       </div>
10478       <div class="body">
10479         <p>Slashdot got a story about Intel planning a
10480 <a href="http://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/12/06/09/0012247/intel-to-launch-tv-service-with-facial-recognition-by-end-of-the-year">TV
10481 with face recognition</a> to recognise the viewer, and it occurred to
10482 me that it would be more interesting to turn it around, and do face
10483 recognition on the TV image itself.  It could let the viewer know who
10484 is present on the screen, and perhaps look up their credibility,
10485 company affiliation, previous appearances etc for the viewer to better
10486 evaluate what is being said and done.  That would be a feature I would
10487 be willing to pay for.</p>
10488
10489 <p>I would not be willing to pay for a TV that point a camera on my
10490 household, like the big brother feature apparently proposed by Intel.
10491 It is the telescreen idea fetched straight out of the book
10492 <a href="http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021.txt">1984 by George
10493 Orwell</a>.</p>
10494
10495       </div>
10496       <div class="tags">
10497
10498
10499         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
10500
10501
10502       </div>
10503     </div>
10504     <div class="padding"></div>
10505
10506     <div class="entry">
10507       <div class="title">
10508         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Web_service_to_look_up_HP_and_Dell_computer_hardware_support_status.html">Web service to look up HP and Dell computer hardware support status</a>
10509       </div>
10510       <div class="date">
10511          6th June 2012
10512       </div>
10513       <div class="body">
10514         <p>A few days ago
10515 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/SOAP_based_webservice_from_Dell_to_check_server_support_status.html">I
10516 reported how to get</a> the support status out of Dell using an
10517 unofficial and undocumented SOAP API, which I since have found out was
10518 <a href="http://lists.us.dell.com/pipermail/linux-poweredge/2012-February/045959.html">discovered
10519 by Daniel De Marco in february</a>.  Combined with my web scraping
10520 code for HP, Dell and IBM
10521 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">from
10522 2009</a>, I got inspired and wrote
10523 <a href="https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/">a
10524 web service</a> based on Scraperwiki to make it easy to look up the
10525 support status and get a machine readable result back.</p>
10526
10527 <p>This is what it look like at the moment when asking for the JSON
10528 output:
10529
10530 <blockquote><pre>
10531 % GET <a href="https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/?format=json&vendor=Dell&servicetag=2v1xwn1">https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/?format=json&vendor=Dell&servicetag=2v1xwn1</a>
10532 supportstatus({"servicetag": "2v1xwn1", "warrantyend": "2013-11-24", "shipped": "2010-11-24", "scrapestamputc": "2012-06-06T20:26:56.965847", "scrapedurl": "http://143.166.84.118/services/assetservice.asmx?WSDL", "vendor": "Dell", "productid": ""})
10533 %
10534 </pre></blockquote>
10535
10536 <p>It currently support Dell and HP, and I am hoping for help to add
10537 support for other vendors.  The python source is available on
10538 Scraperwiki and I welcome help with adding more features.</p>
10539
10540       </div>
10541       <div class="tags">
10542
10543
10544         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
10545
10546
10547       </div>
10548     </div>
10549     <div class="padding"></div>
10550
10551     <div class="entry">
10552       <div class="title">
10553         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html">Debian Edu interview: Mike Gabriel</a>
10554       </div>
10555       <div class="date">
10556          2nd June 2012
10557       </div>
10558       <div class="body">
10559         <p>Back in 2010, Mike Gabriel showed up on the
10560 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
10561 mailing list.  He quickly proved to be a valuable developer, and
10562 thanks to his tireless effort we now have Kerberos integrated into the
10563 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
10564 Squeeze</a> version.</p>
10565
10566 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
10567
10568 <p>My name is Mike Gabriel, I am 38 years old and live near Kiel,
10569 Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. I live together with a wonderful partner
10570 (Angela Fuß) and two own children and two bonus children (contributed
10571 by Angela).</p>
10572
10573 <p>During the day I am part-time employed as a system administrator
10574 and part-time working as an IT consultant. The consultancy work
10575 touches free software topics wherever and whenever possible. During
10576 the nights I am a free software developer. In the gaps I also train in
10577 becoming an osteopath.</p>
10578
10579 <p>Starting in 2010 we (Andreas Buchholz, Angela Fuß, Mike Gabriel)
10580 have set up a free software project in the area of Kiel that aims at
10581 introducing free software into schools. The project's name is
10582 "IT-Zukunft Schule" (IT future for schools). The project links IT
10583 skills with communication skills.</p>
10584
10585 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
10586 project?</strong></p>
10587
10588 <p>While preparing our own customised Linux distribution for
10589 "IT-Zukunft Schule" we were repeatedly asked if we really wanted to
10590 reinvent the wheel. What schools really need is already available,
10591 people said.  From this impulse we started evaluating other Linux
10592 distributions that target being used for school networks.</p>
10593
10594 <p>At the end we short-listed two approaches and compared them: a
10595 commercial Linux distribution developed by a company in Bremen,
10596 Germany, and Skolelinux / Debian Edu. Between 12/2010 and 03/2011 we
10597 went to several events and met people being responsible for marketing
10598 and development of either of the distributions. Skolelinux / Debian
10599 Edu was by far much more convincing compared to the other product that
10600 got short-listed beforehand--across the full spectrum. What was most
10601 attractive for me personally: the perspective of collaboration within
10602 the developmental branch of the Debian Edu project itself.</p>
10603
10604 <p>In parallel with this, we talked to many local and not-so-local
10605 people.  People teaching at schools, headmasters, politicians, data
10606 protection experts, other IT professionals.</p>
10607
10608 <p>We came to two conclusions:</p>
10609
10610 <p>First, a technical conclusion: What schools need is available in
10611 bits and pieces here and there, and none of the solutions really fit
10612 by 100%. Any school we have seen has a very individual IT setup
10613 whereas most of each school's requirements could mapped by a standard
10614 IT solution.  The requirement to this IT solution is flexibility and
10615 customisability, so that individual adaptations here and there are
10616 possible.  In terms of re-distributing and rolling out such a
10617 standardised IT system for schools (a system that is still to some
10618 degree customisable) there is still a lot of work to do here
10619 locally. Debian Edu / Skolelinux has been our choice as the starting
10620 point.</p>
10621
10622 <p>Second, a holistic conclusion: What schools need does not exist at
10623 all (or we missed it so far). There are several technical solutions
10624 for handling IT at schools that tend to make a good impression. What
10625 has been missing completely here in Germany, though, is the enrolment
10626 of people into using IT and teaching with IT. "IT-Zukunft Schule"
10627 tries to provide an approach for this.</p>
10628
10629 <p>Only some schools have some sort of a media concept which explains,
10630 defines and gives guidance on how to use IT in class. Most schools in
10631 Northern Germany do not have an IT service provider, the school's IT
10632 equipment is managed by one or (if the school is lucky) two (admin)
10633 teachers, most of the workload these admin teachers get done in there
10634 spare time.</p>
10635
10636 <p>We were surprised that only a very few admin teachers were
10637 networked with colleagues from other schools. Basically, every school
10638 here around has its individual approach of providing IT equipment to
10639 teachers and students and the exchange of ideas has been quasi
10640 non-existent until 2010/2011.</p>
10641
10642 <p>Quite some (non-admin) teachers try to avoid using IT technology in
10643 class as a learning medium completely. Several reasons for this
10644 avoidance do exist.</p>
10645
10646 <p>We discovered that no-one has ever taken a closer look at this
10647 social part of IT management in schools, so far. On our quest journey
10648 for a technical IT solution for schools, we discussed this issue with
10649 several teachers, headmasters, politicians, other IT professionals and
10650 they all confirmed: a holistic approach of considering IT management
10651 at schools, an approach that includes the people in place, will be new
10652 and probably a gain for all.</p>
10653
10654 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
10655 Edu?</strong></p>
10656
10657 <p>There is a list of advantages: international context, openness to
10658 any kind of contributions, do-ocracy policy, the closeness to Debian,
10659 the different installation scenarios possible (from stand-alone
10660 workstation to complex multi-server sites), the transparency within
10661 project communication, honest communication within the group of
10662 developers, etc.</p>
10663
10664 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
10665 Edu?</strong></p>
10666
10667 <p>Every coin has two sides:</p>
10668
10669 <p>Technically: <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/311188">BTS issue
10670 #311188</a>, tricky upgradability of a Debian Edu main server, network
10671 client installations on top of a plain vanilla Debian installation
10672 should become possible sometime in the near future, one could think
10673 about splitting the very complex package debian-edu-config into
10674 several portions (to make it easier for new developers to
10675 contribute).</p>
10676
10677 <p>Another issue I see is that we (as Debian Edu developers) should
10678 find out more about the network of people who do the marketing for
10679 Debian Edu / Skolelinux. There is a very active group in Germany
10680 promoting Skolelinux on the bigger Linux Days within Germany. Are
10681 there other groups like that in other countries? How can we bring
10682 these marketing people together (marketing group A with group B and
10683 all of them with the group of Debian Edu developers)? During the last
10684 meeting of the German Skolelinux group, I got the impression of people
10685 there being rather disconnected from the development department of
10686 Debian Edu / Skolelinux.</p>
10687
10688 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
10689
10690 <p>For my daily business, I do not use commercial software at all.</p>
10691
10692 <p>For normal stuff I use Iceweasel/Firefox, Libreoffice.org. For
10693 serious text writing I prefer LaTeX. I use gimp, inkscape, scribus for
10694 more artistic tasks. I run virtual machines in KVM and Virtualbox.</p>
10695
10696 <p>I am one of the upstream developers of X2Go. In 2010 I started the
10697 development of a Python based X2Go Client, called PyHoca-GUI.
10698 PyHoca-GUI has brought forth a Python X2Go Client API that currently
10699 is being integrated in Ubuntu's software center.</p>
10700
10701 <p>For communications I have my own Kolab server running using Horde
10702 as web-based groupware client. For IRC I love to use irssi, for Jabber
10703 I have several clients that I use, mostly pidgin, though. I am also
10704 the Debian maintainer of Coccinella, a Jabber-based interactive
10705 whiteboard.</p>
10706
10707 <p>My favourite terminal emulator is KDE's Yakuake.</p>
10708
10709 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
10710 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
10711
10712 <p>Communicate, communicate, communicate. Enrol people, enrol people,
10713 enrol people.</p>
10714
10715       </div>
10716       <div class="tags">
10717
10718
10719         Tags: <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/intervju">intervju</a>.
10720
10721
10722       </div>
10723     </div>
10724     <div class="padding"></div>
10725
10726     <div class="entry">
10727       <div class="title">
10728         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/SOAP_based_webservice_from_Dell_to_check_server_support_status.html">SOAP based webservice from Dell to check server support status</a>
10729       </div>
10730       <div class="date">
10731          1st June 2012
10732       </div>
10733       <div class="body">
10734         <p>A few years ago I wrote
10735 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">how
10736 to extract support status</a> for your Dell and HP servers.  Recently
10737 I have learned from colleges here at the
10738 <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> that Dell have
10739 made this even easier, by providing a SOAP based web service.  Given
10740 the service tag, one can now query the Dell servers and get machine
10741 readable information about the support status.  This perl code
10742 demonstrate how to do it:</p>
10743
10744 <p><pre>
10745 use strict;
10746 use warnings;
10747 use SOAP::Lite;
10748 use Data::Dumper;
10749 my $GUID = '11111111-1111-1111-1111-111111111111';
10750 my $App = 'test';
10751 my $servicetag = $ARGV[0] or die "Please supply a servicetag. $!\n";
10752 my ($deal, $latest, @dates);
10753 my $s = SOAP::Lite
10754     -> uri('http://support.dell.com/WebServices/')
10755     -> on_action( sub { join '', @_ } )
10756     -> proxy('http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx')
10757     ;
10758 my $a = $s->GetAssetInformation(
10759     SOAP::Data->name('guid')->value($GUID)->type(''),
10760     SOAP::Data->name('applicationName')->value($App)->type(''),
10761     SOAP::Data->name('serviceTags')->value($servicetag)->type(''),
10762 );
10763 print Dumper($a -> result) ;
10764 </pre></p>
10765
10766 <p>The output can look like this:</p>
10767
10768 <p><pre>
10769 $VAR1 = {
10770           'Asset' => {
10771                      'Entitlements' => {
10772                                        'EntitlementData' => [
10773                                                             {
10774                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
10775                                                               'EndDate' => '2009-07-29T00:00:00',
10776                                                               'Provider' => '',
10777                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
10778                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
10779                                                             },
10780                                                             {
10781                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
10782                                                               'EndDate' => '2009-07-29T00:00:00',
10783                                                               'Provider' => '',
10784                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
10785                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
10786                                                             },
10787                                                             {
10788                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
10789                                                               'EndDate' => '2007-07-29T00:00:00',
10790                                                               'Provider' => '',
10791                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
10792                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
10793                                                             }
10794                                                           ]
10795                                      },
10796                      'AssetHeaderData' => {
10797                                           'SystemModel' => 'GX620',
10798                                           'ServiceTag' => '8DSGD2J',
10799                                           'SystemShipDate' => '2006-07-29T19:00:00-05:00',
10800                                           'Buid' => '2323',
10801                                           'Region' => 'Europe',
10802                                           'SystemID' => 'PLX_GX620',
10803                                           'SystemType' => 'OptiPlex'
10804                                         }
10805                    }
10806         };
10807 </pre></p>
10808
10809 <p>I have not been able to find any documentation from Dell about this
10810 service outside the
10811 <a href="http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx?op=GetAssetInformation">inline
10812 documentation</a>, and according to
10813 <a href="http://iboyd.net/index.php/2012/02/14/updated-dell-warranty-information-script/">one
10814 comment</a> it can have stability issues, but it is a lot better than
10815 scraping HTML pages. :)</p>
10816
10817 <p>Wonder if HP and other server vendors have a similar service.  If
10818 you know of one, drop me an email. :)</p>
10819
10820       </div>
10821       <div class="tags">
10822
10823
10824         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
10825
10826
10827       </div>
10828     </div>
10829     <div class="padding"></div>
10830
10831     <div class="entry">
10832       <div class="title">
10833         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_monitor_calibration_using_ColorHug.html">First monitor calibration using ColorHug</a>
10834       </div>
10835       <div class="date">
10836         31st May 2012
10837       </div>
10838       <div class="body">
10839         <p>A few days ago my color calibration gadget
10840 <a href="http://www.hughski.com/index.html">ColorHug</a> arrived in the
10841 mail, and I've had a few days to test it.  As all my machines are
10842 running Debian Squeeze, where
10843 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html">the
10844 calibration software</a> is missing (it is present in Wheezy and Sid),
10845 I ran the calibration using the Fedora based live CD.  This worked
10846 just fine.  So far I have only done the quick calibration.  It was
10847 slow enough for me, so I will leave the more extensive calibration for
10848 another day.</p>
10849
10850 <p>After calibration, I get a
10851 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICC_profile">ICC color
10852 profile</a> file that can be passed to programs understanding such
10853 tools.  KDE do not seem to understand it out of the box, so I searched
10854 for command line tools to use to load the color profile into X.
10855 xcalib was the first one I found, and it seem to work fine for single
10856 monitor setups.  But for my video player, a laptop with a flat screen
10857 attached, it was unable to load the color profile for the correct
10858 monitor.  After searching a bit, I
10859 <a href="http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1347896">discovered</a>
10860 that the dispwin tool from the argyll package would do what I wanted,
10861 and a simple</p>
10862
10863 <p><pre>
10864 dispwin -d 1 profile.icc
10865 </pre></p>
10866
10867 <p>later I had the color profile loaded for the correct monitor.  The
10868 result was a bit more pink than I expected.  I guess I picked the
10869 wrong monitor type for the "led" monitor I got, but the result is good
10870 enough for now.</p>
10871
10872       </div>
10873       <div class="tags">
10874
10875
10876         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10877
10878
10879       </div>
10880     </div>
10881     <div class="padding"></div>
10882
10883     <div class="entry">
10884       <div class="title">
10885         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Ralf_Gesellensetter.html">Debian Edu interview: Ralf Gesellensetter</a>
10886       </div>
10887       <div class="date">
10888         27th May 2012
10889       </div>
10890       <div class="body">
10891         <p>In 2003, a German teacher showed up on the
10892 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
10893 mailing list with interesting problems and reports proving he setting
10894 up Linux for a (for us at the time) lot of pupils.  His name was Ralf
10895 Gesellensetter, and he has been an important tester and contributor
10896 since then, helping to make sure the
10897 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
10898 Squeeze</a> release became as good as it is..</p>
10899
10900 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
10901
10902 <p>I am a teacher from Germany, and my subjects are Geography,
10903 Mathematics, and Computer Science ("Informatik"). During the past 12
10904 years (since 2000), I have been working for a comprehensive (and soon,
10905 also inclusive) school leading to all kind of general levels, such as
10906 O- or A-level ("Abitur").  For quite as long, I've been taking care of
10907 our computer network.</p>
10908
10909 <p>Now, in my early 40s, I enjoy the privilege of spending a lot of my
10910 spare time together with my wife, our son (3 years) and our daughter
10911 (4 months).</p>
10912
10913 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
10914 project?</strong></p>
10915
10916 <p>We had tried different Linux based school servers, when members of
10917 my local Linux User Group (LUG OWL) detected Skolelinux. I remember
10918 very well, being part of a party celebrating the Linux New Media Award
10919 ("Best Newcomer Distribution", also nominated: Ubuntu) that was given
10920 to Skolelinux at Linux World Exposition in Frankfurt, 2005 (IIRC). Few
10921 months later, I had the chance to join a developer meeting in Ulsrud
10922 (Oslo) and to hand out the award to Knut Yrvin and others.  For more
10923 than 7 years, Skolelinux is part of our schools infrastructure, namely
10924 our main server (tjener), one LTSP (today without thin clients), and
10925 approximately 50 work stations. Most of these have the option to boot a
10926 locally installed Skolelinux image.  As a consequence, I joined quite
10927 a few events dealing with free software or Linux, and met many Debian
10928 (Edu) developers. All of them seemed quite nice and competent to me,
10929 one more reason to stick to Skolelinux.</p>
10930
10931 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
10932 Edu?</strong></p>
10933
10934 <p>Debian driven, you are given all the advantages of a community
10935 project including well maintained updates. Once, you are familiar with
10936 the network layout, you can easily roll out an entire educational
10937 computer infrastructure, from just one installation media. As only
10938 free software (FOSS) is used, that supports even elderly hardware,
10939 up-sizing your IT equipment is only limited by space (i.e. available
10940 labs).  Especially if you run a LTSP thin client server, your
10941 administration costs tend towards zero.</p>
10942
10943 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
10944 Edu?</strong></p>
10945
10946 <p>While Debian's stability has loads of advantages for servers, this
10947 might be different in some cases for clients: Schools with unlimited
10948 budget might buy new hardware with components that are not yet
10949 supported by Debian stable, or wish to use more recent versions of
10950 office packages or desktop environments.  These schools have the
10951 option to run Debian testing or other distributions - if they have the
10952 capacity to do so.  Another issue is that Debian release cycles
10953 include a wide range of changes; therefor a high percentage of human
10954 power seems to be absorbed by just keeping the features of Skolelinux
10955 within the new setting of the version to come. During this process,
10956 the cogs of Debian Edu are getting more and more professional,
10957 i.e. harder to understand for novices.</p>
10958
10959 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
10960
10961 <p>LibreOffice, Wikipedia, Openstreetmap, Iceweasel (Mozilla Firefox),
10962 KMail, Gimp, Inkscape - and of course the Linux Kernel (not only on
10963 PC, Laptop, Mobile, but also our SAT receiver)</p>
10964
10965 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
10966 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
10967
10968 <p><ol>
10969
10970 <li>Support computer science as regular subject in schools to make
10971 people really "own" their hardware, to make them understand the
10972 difference between proprietary software products, and free software
10973 developing.</li>
10974
10975 <li>Make budget baskets corresponding: In Germany's public schools
10976 there are more or less fixed budgets for IT equipment (including
10977 licenses), so schools won't benefit from any savings here. This
10978 privilege is left to private schools which have consequently a large
10979 share among German Skolelinux schools.</li>
10980
10981 <li>Get free software in the seminars where would-be teachers are
10982 trained. In many cases, teachers' software customs are respected by
10983 decision makers rather than the expertise of any IT experts.</li>
10984
10985 <li>Don't limit ourself to free software run natively. Everybody uses
10986 free software or free licenses (for instance Wikipedia), and this
10987 general concept should get expanded to free educational content to be
10988 shared world wide (school books e.g.).</li>
10989
10990 <li>Make clear where ever you can that the market share of free (libre)
10991 office suites is much above 20 p.c. today, and that you pupils don't
10992 need to know the "ribbon menu" in order to get employed.</li>
10993
10994 <li>Talk about the difference between freeware and free software.</li>
10995
10996 <li>Spread free software, or even collections of portable free apps
10997 for USB pen drives. Endorse students to get a legal copy of
10998 Libreoffice rather than accepting them to use illegal serials.  And
10999 keep sending documents in ODF formats.</li>
11000
11001 </ol></p>
11002
11003       </div>
11004       <div class="tags">
11005
11006
11007         Tags: <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/intervju">intervju</a>.
11008
11009
11010       </div>
11011     </div>
11012     <div class="padding"></div>
11013
11014     <div class="entry">
11015       <div class="title">
11016         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_cost_of_ODF_and_OOXML.html">The cost of ODF and OOXML</a>
11017       </div>
11018       <div class="date">
11019         26th May 2012
11020       </div>
11021       <div class="body">
11022         <p>I just come across a blog post from Glyn Moody reporting the
11023 claimed cost from Microsoft on requiring ODF to be used by the UK
11024 government.  I just sent him an email to let him know that his
11025 assumption are most likely wrong.  Sharing it here in case some of my
11026 blog readers have seem the same numbers float around in the UK.</p>
11027
11028 <p><blockquote> <p>Hi.  I just noted your
11029 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/does-microsoft-office-lock-in-cost-the-uk-government-500-million/index.htm">http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/does-microsoft-office-lock-in-cost-the-uk-government-500-million/index.htm</a>
11030 comment:</p>
11031
11032 <p><blockquote>"They're all in Danish, not unreasonably, but even
11033 with the help of Google Translate I can't find any figures about the
11034 savings of "moving to a flexible two standard" as claimed by the
11035 Microsoft email. But I assume it is backed up somewhere, so let's take
11036 it, and the £500 million figure for the UK, on trust."
11037 </blockquote></p>
11038
11039 <p>I can tell you that the Danish reports are inflated.  I believe it is
11040 the same reports that were used in the Norwegian debate around 2007,
11041 and Gisle Hannemyr (a well known IT commentator in Norway) had a look
11042 at the content.  In short, the reason it is claimed that using ODF
11043 will be so costly, is based on the assumption that this mean every
11044 existing document need to be converted from one of the MS Office
11045 formats to ODF, transferred to the receiver, and converted back from
11046 ODF to one of the MS Office formats, and that the conversion will cost
11047 10 minutes of work time for both the sender and the receiver.  In
11048 reality the sender would have a tool capable of saving to ODF, and the
11049 receiver would have a tool capable of reading it, and the time spent
11050 would at most be a few seconds for saving and loading, not 20 minutes
11051 of wasted effort.</p>
11052
11053 <p>Microsoft claimed all these costs were saved by allowing people to
11054 transfer the original files from MS Office instead of spending 10
11055 minutes converting to ODF. :)</p>
11056
11057 <p>See
11058 <a href="http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php">http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php</a>
11059 and
11060 <a href="http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php">http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php</a>
11061 for background information.  Norwegian only, sorry. :)</p>
11062 </blockquote></p>
11063
11064       </div>
11065       <div class="tags">
11066
11067
11068         Tags: <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>.
11069
11070
11071       </div>
11072     </div>
11073     <div class="padding"></div>
11074
11075     <div class="entry">
11076       <div class="title">
11077         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ColorHug___USB_and_free_software_based_screen_color_calibration.html">ColorHug - USB and free software based screen color calibration</a>
11078       </div>
11079       <div class="date">
11080         18th May 2012
11081       </div>
11082       <div class="body">
11083         <p>In january, I
11084 <a href="http://blog.cihar.com/archives/2012/01/17/colorhug-has-arrived/">discovered
11085 the ColorHug</a>, a USB dongle from
11086 <a href="http://www.hughski.com/index.html">Hughski</a> to calibrate
11087 the color on a computer screen.  The software required is
11088 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html">included
11089 in Debian</a>, and I decided back then to preorder from the next
11090 batch.  Yesterday I finally heard back from them, and got the
11091 opportunity to order.  Today I ordered mine, and eagerly await the
11092 delivery.  I hope it arrive next week, as I got a confirmation that it
11093 should go in the mail on monday. :)</p>
11094
11095 <p>If you want to ensure the colors on the screen match the intended
11096 colors, I suggest you check out this cheap tool with free software
11097 drivers. :)</p>
11098
11099       </div>
11100       <div class="tags">
11101
11102
11103         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11104
11105
11106       </div>
11107     </div>
11108     <div class="padding"></div>
11109
11110     <div class="entry">
11111       <div class="title">
11112         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__J_rgen_Leibner.html">Debian Edu interview: Jürgen Leibner</a>
11113       </div>
11114       <div class="date">
11115         13th May 2012
11116       </div>
11117       <div class="body">
11118         <p>It has been a few busy weeks for me, but I am finally back to
11119 publish another interview with the people behind
11120 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>.
11121 This time it is one of our German developers, who have helped out over the
11122 years to make sure both a lot of major but also a lot of the minor
11123 details get right before release.
11124
11125 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
11126
11127 <p>My name is Jürgen Leibner, I'm 49 years old and living in
11128 Bielefeld, a town in northern Germany.  I worked nearly 20 years as
11129 certified engineer in the department for plant design and layout of an
11130 international company for machinery and equipment.  Since 2011 I'm a
11131 certified technical writer (tekom e.V.) and doing technical
11132 documentations for a steam turbine manufacturer.  From April this year
11133 I will manage the department of technical documentation at a
11134 manufacturer of automation and assembly line engineering.</p>
11135
11136 <p>My first contact with linux was around 1993. Since that time I used
11137 it at work and at home repeatedly but not exclusively as I do now at
11138 home since 2006.</p>
11139
11140 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
11141 project?</strong></p>
11142
11143 <p>Once a day in the early year of 2001 when I wanted to fetch my
11144 daughter from primary school, there was a teacher sitting in the
11145 middle of 20 old computers trying to boot them and he failed. I helped
11146 him to get them booting. That was seen by the school director and she
11147 asked me if I would like to manage that the school gets all that old
11148 computers in use. I answered: "Yes".</p>
11149
11150 <p>Some weeks later every of the 10 classrooms had one computer
11151 running Windows98. I began to collect old computers and equipment as
11152 gifts and installed the first computer room with a peer-to-peer
11153 network. I did my work at school without being payed in my spare time
11154 and with a lot of fun.  About one year later the school was connected
11155 to Internet and a local area network was installed in the school
11156 building.  That was the time to have a server and I knew it must be a
11157 Linux server to be able to fulfil all the wishes of the teachers and
11158 being able to do this in a transparent and economic way, without extra
11159 costs for things like licence and software.  So I searched for a
11160 school server system running under Linux and I found a couple of
11161 people nearby who founded 'skolelinux.de'. It was the Skolelinux
11162 prerelease 32 I first tried out for being used at the school.  I
11163 managed the IT of that school until the municipal authority took over
11164 the IT management and centralised the services for all schools in
11165 Bielefeld in December of 2006.</p>
11166
11167 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
11168 Edu?</strong></p>
11169
11170 <p>When I'm looking back to the beginning, there were other advantages
11171 for me as today.</p>
11172
11173 <p>In the past there were advantages like:</p>
11174
11175 <p><ul>
11176
11177 <li>I don't need to buy it so it generates no costs to the school as
11178 they had little money to spent for computers and software.</li>
11179
11180 <li>It has a licence which grands all rights to use it without
11181 cost.</li>
11182
11183 <li>It was more able to fit all requirements of a server system for
11184 schools than a Microsoft server system, even if there are only Windows
11185 clients because of it's preconfigured overall concept of being a
11186 infrastructure solution and community for schools, not only a
11187 server</li>
11188
11189 <li>I was able to configure the server to the needs of the
11190 school.</li>
11191
11192 </ul></p>
11193
11194 <p>Today some of the advantages has been lost, changed or new ones
11195 came up in this way:</p>
11196
11197 <p><ul>
11198
11199 <li>Most schools here do have money to buy hardware and software
11200 now.</li>
11201
11202 <li>They are today mostly managed from central IT departments which
11203 have own concepts which often do not fit to Debian Edu concepts
11204 because they are to close to Microsoft ideology.</li>
11205
11206 <li>With the Squeeze version of Debian Edu which now uses GOsa² for
11207 management I feel more able to manage the daily tasks than with the
11208 interfaces used in the past.</li>
11209
11210 <li>It is more modular than in the past and fits even better to the
11211 different needs.</li>
11212
11213 <li>The documentation is usable and gets better every day.</li>
11214
11215 <li>More people than ever before are using Debian Edu all over the
11216 world and so the community, which is an very important part I think,
11217 is sharing knowledge and minds.</li>
11218
11219 <li>Most, maybe all, of the technical requirements for schools are
11220 solved today by Debian Edu. </li>
11221
11222 </ul></p>
11223
11224 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
11225 Edu?</strong></p>
11226
11227 <p><ul>
11228
11229 <li>There are too few IT companies able to integrate Debian Edu into
11230 their product portfolio for serving schools with concepts or even
11231 whole municipality areas.</li>
11232
11233 <li>Debian Edu has beside other free and open software projects not
11234 enough lobbyists which promote free and open software to
11235 politicians.</li>
11236
11237 <li>Technically there are no disadvantages I'm aware of.</li>
11238
11239 </ul></p>
11240
11241 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
11242
11243 <p>I use Debian stable on my home server and on my little desktop
11244 computer. On my laptop I use Debian testing/sid. The applications I
11245 use on my laptop and my desktop are Open/Libre-office, Iceweasel,
11246 KMail, DigiKam, Amarok, Dolphin, okular and all the other programs I
11247 need from the KDE environment.  On console I use newsbeuter, mutt,
11248 screen, irssi and all the other famous and useful tools.</p>
11249
11250 <p>My home server provides mail services with exim, dovecot, roundcube
11251 and mutt over ssh on the console, file services with samba, NFS,
11252 rsync, web services with apache, moinmoin-wiki, multimedia services
11253 with gallery2 and mediatomb and database services with MySQL for me
11254 and the whole family.  I probably forgot something.</p>
11255
11256 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
11257 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
11258
11259 <p>I believe, we should provide concepts for IT companies to integrate
11260 Debian Edu into their product portfolio with use cases for different
11261 countries and areas all over the world.</p>
11262
11263       </div>
11264       <div class="tags">
11265
11266
11267         Tags: <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/intervju">intervju</a>.
11268
11269
11270       </div>
11271     </div>
11272     <div class="padding"></div>
11273
11274     <div class="entry">
11275       <div class="title">
11276         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Cutting_it_short___and_picking_the_right_tool_for_the_job.html">Cutting it short - and picking the right tool for the job</a>
11277       </div>
11278       <div class="date">
11279         30th April 2012
11280       </div>
11281       <div class="body">
11282         <p><!-- IMG_5869.JPG -->
11283 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/panasonic-er-1611.jpeg"></p>
11284
11285 <p>I normally cut my hair short, and my tool of choice has been a
11286 common hair/beard cutter, bought in a electrical shop here in Norway.
11287 But the last ones have not really been up to the task.  My last
11288 cutter, some model from Braun, could only cut a few of my hairs at the
11289 time, and cutting my head took forever.  And the one before that did
11290 not work very well either.  We have looked for something better for a
11291 while, but it was not until I ended up visiting a hairdresser that we
11292 discovered that there are indeed better tools available.  But these
11293 are not marketed and sold to "regular consumers".  The hair saloons
11294 can get them through their suppliers, but their suppliers only sell
11295 companies.  The models they sell, are very different from the ones
11296 available from Elkjøp and Lefdal.  The main difference is their
11297 efficiency.  It would cut my hair in 5 minutes, instead of the 30-40
11298 minutes required by my impotent Braun.  The hairdresser I visited had
11299 a Panasonic ER160, which unfortunately is no longer available from the
11300 producer.  But I found it had a successor, the Panasonic ER1611.</p>
11301
11302 <p>The next step was to find somewhere to buy it.  This was not
11303 straight forward.  The list of suppliers I got from the hairdresser
11304 did not want to sell anything to me.  But searching for the model on
11305 the web we found a supplier in Norway willing to sell it to us for
11306 around NOK 4000,-.  This was a bit much.  We kept searching and
11307 finally found a Danish supplier
11308 <a href="http://nicehair.dk/panasonic-er-1611-professionel-hartrimmer.html">selling
11309 it for around NOK 1800,-</a>.  We ordered one, and it arrived a few
11310 days ago.</p>
11311
11312 <p>The instructions said it had to charge for 8 hours when we started
11313 to use it, so we left it charging over night.  Normally it will only
11314 need one hour to charge.  The following evening we successfully tested
11315 it, and I can warmly recommend it to anyone looking for a real hair
11316 cutter.  The ones we have used until now have been hair cutter
11317 toys.</p>
11318
11319       </div>
11320       <div class="tags">
11321
11322
11323         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11324
11325
11326       </div>
11327     </div>
11328     <div class="padding"></div>
11329
11330     <div class="entry">
11331       <div class="title">
11332         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/HTC_One_X___Your_video___What_do_you_mean_.html">HTC One X - Your video?  What do you mean?</a>
11333       </div>
11334       <div class="date">
11335         26th April 2012
11336       </div>
11337       <div class="body">
11338         <p>In <a href="http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article243690.ece">an
11339 article today</a> published by Computerworld Norway, the photographer
11340 <a href="http://www.urke.com/eirik/">Eirik Helland Urke</a> reports
11341 that the video editor application included with
11342 <a href="http://www.htc.com/www/smartphones/htc-one-x/#specs">HTC One
11343 X</a> have some quite surprising terms of use.  The article is mostly
11344 based on the twitter message from mister Urke, stating:
11345
11346 <p><blockquote>
11347 "<a href="http://twitter.com/urke/status/194062269724897280">Drøy
11348 brukeravtale: HTC kan bruke MINE redigerte videoer kommersielt. Selv
11349 kan jeg KUN bruke dem privat.</a>"
11350 </blockquote></p>
11351
11352 <p>I quickly translated it to this English message:</p>
11353
11354 <p><blockquote>
11355 "Arrogant user agreement: HTC can use MY edited videos
11356 commercially.  Although I can ONLY use them privately."
11357 </blockquote></p>
11358
11359 <p>I've been unable to find the text of the license term myself, but
11360 suspect it is a variation of the MPEG-LA terms I
11361 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Terms_of_use_for_video_produced_by_a_Canon_IXUS_130_digital_camera.html">discovered
11362 with my Canon IXUS 130</a>.  The HTC One X specification specifies that
11363 the recording format of the phone is .amr for audio and .mp3 for
11364 video.  AMR is
11365 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_Multi-Rate_audio_codec#Licensing_and_patent_issues">Adaptive
11366 Multi-Rate audio codec</a> with patents which according to the
11367 Wikipedia article require an license agreement with
11368 <a href="http://www.voiceage.com/">VoiceAge</a>.  MP4 is
11369 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC#Patent_licensing">MPEG4 with
11370 H.264</a>, which according to Wikipedia require a licence agreement
11371 with <a href="http://www.mpegla.com/">MPEG-LA</a>.</p>
11372
11373 <p>I know why I prefer
11374 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and open
11375 standards</a> also for video.</p>
11376
11377       </div>
11378       <div class="tags">
11379
11380
11381         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</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/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</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>.
11382
11383
11384       </div>
11385     </div>
11386     <div class="padding"></div>
11387
11388     <div class="entry">
11389       <div class="title">
11390         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/RAND_terms___non_reasonable_and_discriminatory.html">RAND terms - non-reasonable and discriminatory</a>
11391       </div>
11392       <div class="date">
11393         19th April 2012
11394       </div>
11395       <div class="body">
11396         <p>Here in Norway, the
11397 <a href="http://www.regjeringen.no/nb/dep/fad.html?id=339"> Ministry of
11398 Government Administration, Reform and Church Affairs</a> is behind
11399 a <a href="http://standard.difi.no/forvaltningsstandarder">directory of
11400 standards</a> that are recommended or mandatory for use by the
11401 government.  When the directory was created, the people behind it made
11402 an effort to ensure that everyone would be able to implement the
11403 standards and compete on equal terms to supply software and solutions
11404 to the government.  Free software and non-free software could compete
11405 on the same level.</p>
11406
11407 <p>But recently, some standards with RAND
11408 (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_and_non-discriminatory_licensing">Reasonable
11409 And Non-Discriminatory</a>) terms have made their way into the
11410 directory.  And while this might not sound too bad, the fact is that
11411 standard specifications with RAND terms often block free software from
11412 implementing them.  The reasonable part of RAND mean that the cost per
11413 user/unit is low,and the non-discriminatory part mean that everyone
11414 willing to pay will get a license.  Both sound great in theory.  In
11415 practice, to get such license one need to be able to count users, and
11416 be able to pay a small amount of money per unit or user.  By
11417 definition, users of free software do not need to register their use.
11418 So counting users or units is not possible for free software projects.
11419 And given that people will use the software without handing any money
11420 to the author, it is not really economically possible for a free
11421 software author to pay a small amount of money to license the rights
11422 to implement a standard when the income available is zero.  The result
11423 in these situations is that free software are locked out from
11424 implementing standards with RAND terms.</p>
11425
11426 <p>Because of this, when I see someone claiming the terms of a
11427 standard is reasonable and non-discriminatory, all I can think of is
11428 how this really is non-reasonable and discriminatory.  Because free
11429 software developers are working in a global market, it does not really
11430 help to know that software patents are not supposed to be enforceable
11431 in Norway.  The patent regimes in other countries affect us even here.
11432 I really hope the people behind the standard directory will pay more
11433 attention to these issues in the future.</p>
11434
11435 <p>You can find more on the issues with RAND, FRAND and RAND-Z terms
11436 from Simon Phipps
11437 (<a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2010/11/rand-not-so-reasonable/">RAND:
11438 Not So Reasonable?</a>).</p>
11439
11440 <p>Update 2012-04-21: Just came across a
11441 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/of-microsoft-netscape-patents-and-open-standards/index.htm">blog
11442 post from Glyn Moody</a> over at Computer World UK warning about the
11443 same issue, and urging people to speak out to the UK government.  I
11444 can only urge Norwegian users to do the same for
11445 <a href="http://www.standard.difi.no/hoyring/hoyring-om-nye-anbefalte-it-standarder">the
11446 hearing taking place at the moment</a> (respond before 2012-04-27).
11447 It proposes to require video conferencing standards including
11448 specifications with RAND terms.</p>
11449
11450       </div>
11451       <div class="tags">
11452
11453
11454         Tags: <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/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
11455
11456
11457       </div>
11458     </div>
11459     <div class="padding"></div>
11460
11461     <div class="entry">
11462       <div class="title">
11463         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Andreas_Mundt.html">Debian Edu interview: Andreas Mundt</a>
11464       </div>
11465       <div class="date">
11466         15th April 2012
11467       </div>
11468       <div class="body">
11469         <p>Behind <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
11470 Skolelinux</a> there are a lot of people doing the hard work of
11471 setting together all the pieces.  This time I present to you Andreas
11472 Mundt, who have been part of the technical development team several
11473 years.  He was also a key contributor in getting GOsa and Kerberos set
11474 up in the recently released
11475 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">Debian
11476 Edu Squeeze</a> version.</p>
11477
11478 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
11479
11480 <p>My name is Andreas Mundt, I grew up in south Germany.  After
11481 studying Physics I spent several years at university doing research in
11482 Quantum Optics.  After that I worked some years in an optics company.
11483 Finally I decided to turn over a new leaf in my life and started
11484 teaching 10 to 19 years old kids at school.  I teach math, physics,
11485 information technology and science/technology.</p>
11486
11487 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
11488 project?</strong></p>
11489
11490 <p>Already before I switched to teaching, I followed the Debian Edu
11491 project because of my interest in education and Debian.  Within the
11492 qualification/training period for the teaching, I started
11493 contributing.</p>
11494
11495 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
11496 Edu?</strong></p>
11497
11498 <p>The advantages of Debian Edu are the well known name, the
11499 out-of-the-box philosophy and of course the great free software of the
11500 Debian Project!</p>
11501
11502 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
11503 Edu?</strong></p>
11504
11505 <p>As every coin has two sides, the out-of-the-box philosophy has its
11506 downside, too.  In my opinion, it is hard to modify and tweak the
11507 setup, if you need or want that.  Further more, it is not easily
11508 possible to upgrade the system to a new release.  It takes much too
11509 long after a Debian release to prepare the -Edu release, perhaps
11510 because the number of developers working on the core of the code is
11511 rather small and often busy elsewhere.</p>
11512
11513 <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianLAN">Debian LAN</a>
11514 project might fill the use case of a more flexible system.</p>
11515
11516 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
11517
11518 <p>I am only using non-free software if I am forced to and run Debian
11519 on all my machines.  For documents I prefer LaTeX and PGF/TikZ, then
11520 mutt and iceweasel for email respectively web browsing.  At school I
11521 have Arduino and Fritzing in use for a micro controller project.</p>
11522
11523 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
11524 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
11525
11526 <p>One of the major problems is the vendor lock-in from top to bottom:
11527 Especially in combination with ignorant government employees and
11528 politicians, this works out great for the "market-leader".  The school
11529 administration here in Baden-Wuerttemberg is occupied by that vendor.
11530 Documents have to be prepared in non-free, proprietary formats.  Even
11531 free browsers do not work for the school administration.  Publishers
11532 of school books provide software only for proprietary platforms.</p>
11533
11534 <p>To change this, political work is very important.  Parts of the
11535 political spectrum have become aware of the problem in the last years.
11536 However it takes quite some time and courageous politicians to 'free'
11537 the system.  There is currently some discussion about "Open Data" and
11538 "Free/Open Standards".  I am not sure if all the involved parties have
11539 a clue about the potential of these ideas, and probably only a
11540 fraction takes them seriously.  However it might slowly make free
11541 software and the philosophy behind it more known and popular.</p>
11542
11543       </div>
11544       <div class="tags">
11545
11546
11547         Tags: <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/intervju">intervju</a>.
11548
11549
11550       </div>
11551     </div>
11552     <div class="padding"></div>
11553
11554     <div class="entry">
11555       <div class="title">
11556         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Justin_B__Rye.html">Debian Edu interview: Justin B. Rye</a>
11557       </div>
11558       <div class="date">
11559          8th April 2012
11560       </div>
11561       <div class="body">
11562         <p>It take all kind of contributions to create a Linux distribution
11563 like <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>,
11564 and this time I lend the ear to Justin B. Rye, who is listed as a big
11565 contributor to the
11566 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">Debian
11567 Edu Squeeze release manual</a>.
11568
11569 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
11570
11571 <p>I'm a 44-year-old linguistics graduate living in Edinburgh who has
11572 occasionally been employed as a sysadmin.</p>
11573
11574 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
11575 project?</strong></p>
11576
11577 <p>I'm neither a developer nor a Skolelinux/Debian Edu user!  The only
11578 reason my name's in the credits for the documentation is that I hang
11579 around on debian-l10n-english waiting for people to mention things
11580 they'd like a native English speaker to proofread...  So I did a sweep
11581 through the wiki for typos and Norglish and inconsistent spellings of
11582 "localisation".</p>
11583
11584 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
11585 Edu?</strong></p>
11586
11587 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
11588 Edu?</strong></p>
11589
11590 <p>These questions are too hard for me - I don't use it!  In fact I
11591 had hardly any contact with I.T. until long after I'd got out of the
11592 education system.</p>
11593
11594 <p>I can tell you the advantages of Debian for me though: it soaks up
11595 as much of my free time as I want and no more, and lets me do
11596 everything I want a computer for without ever forcing me to spend
11597 money on the latest hardware.</p>
11598
11599 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
11600
11601 <p>I've been using Debian since Rex; popularity-contest says the
11602 software that I use most is xinit, xterm, and xulrunner (in other
11603 words, I use a distinctly retro sort of desktop).</p>
11604
11605 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
11606 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
11607
11608 <p>Well, I don't know.  I suppose I'd be inclined to try reasoning
11609 with the people who make the decisions, but obviously if that worked
11610 you would hardly need a strategy.</p>
11611
11612       </div>
11613       <div class="tags">
11614
11615
11616         Tags: <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/intervju">intervju</a>.
11617
11618
11619       </div>
11620     </div>
11621     <div class="padding"></div>
11622
11623     <div class="entry">
11624       <div class="title">
11625         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_the_KDE_menu_is_slow_when__usr__is_NFS_mounted___and_a_workaround.html">Why the KDE menu is slow when /usr/ is NFS mounted - and a workaround</a>
11626       </div>
11627       <div class="date">
11628          6th April 2012
11629       </div>
11630       <div class="body">
11631         <p>Recently I have spent time with
11632 <a href="http://www.slxdrift.no/">Skolelinux Drift AS</a> on speeding
11633 up a <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
11634 Lenny installation using LTSP diskless workstations, and in the
11635 process I discovered something very surprising.  The reason the KDE
11636 menu was responding slow when using it for the first time, was mostly
11637 due to the way KDE find application icons.  I discovered that showing
11638 the Multimedia menu would cause more than 20 000 IP packages to be
11639 passed between the LTSP client and the NFS server.  Most of these were
11640
11641 NFS LOOKUP calls, resulting in a NFS3ERR_NOENT response.  Because the
11642 ping times between the client and the server were in the range 2-20
11643 ms, the menus would be very slow.  Looking at the strace of kicker in
11644 Lenny (or plasma-desktop i Squeeze - same problem there), I see that
11645 the source of these NFS calls are access(2) system calls for
11646 non-existing files.  KDE can do hundreds of access(2) calls to find
11647 one icon file.  In my example, just finding the mplayer icon required
11648 around 230 access(2) calls.</p>
11649
11650 <p>The KDE code seem to search for icons using a list of icon
11651 directories, and the list of possible directories is large.  In
11652 (almost) each directory, it look for files ending in .png, .svgz, .svg
11653 and .xpm.  The result is a very slow KDE menu when /usr/ is NFS
11654 mounted.  Showing a single sub menu may result in thousands of NFS
11655 requests.  I am not the first one to discover this.  I found a
11656 <a href="https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=211416">KDE bug report
11657 from 2009</a> about this problem, and it is still unsolved.</p>
11658
11659 <p>My solution to speed up the KDE menu was to create a package
11660 kde-icon-cache that upon installation will look at all .desktop files
11661 used to generate the KDE menu, find their icons, search the icon paths
11662 for the file that KDE will end up finding at run time, and copying the
11663 icon file to /var/lib/kde-icon-cache/.  Finally, I add symlinks to
11664 these icon files in one of the first directories where KDE will look
11665 for them.  This cut down the number of file accesses required to find
11666 one icon from several hundred to less than 5, and make the KDE menu
11667 almost instantaneous.  I'm not quite sure where to make the package
11668 publicly available, so for now it is only available on request.</p>
11669
11670 <p>The bug report mention that this do not only affect the KDE menu
11671 and icon handling, but also the login process.  Not quite sure how to
11672 speed up that part without replacing NFS with for example NBD, and
11673 that is not really an option at the moment.</p>
11674
11675 <p>If you got feedback on this issue, please let us know on debian-edu
11676 (at) lists.debian.org.</p>
11677
11678       </div>
11679       <div class="tags">
11680
11681
11682         Tags: <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>.
11683
11684
11685       </div>
11686     </div>
11687     <div class="padding"></div>
11688
11689     <div class="entry">
11690       <div class="title">
11691         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_in_the_Linux_Weekly_News.html">Debian Edu in the Linux Weekly News</a>
11692       </div>
11693       <div class="date">
11694          5th April 2012
11695       </div>
11696       <div class="body">
11697         <p>About two weeks ago, I was interviewed via email about
11698 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a> by
11699 Bruce Byfield in Linux Weekly News.  The result was made public for
11700 non-subscribers today.  I am pleased to see liked our Linux solution
11701 for schools.  Check out his article
11702 <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/488805/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux: A
11703 distribution for education</a> if you want to learn more.</p>
11704
11705       </div>
11706       <div class="tags">
11707
11708
11709         Tags: <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>.
11710
11711
11712       </div>
11713     </div>
11714     <div class="padding"></div>
11715
11716     <div class="entry">
11717       <div class="title">
11718         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Wolfgang_Schweer.html">Debian Edu interview: Wolfgang Schweer</a>
11719       </div>
11720       <div class="date">
11721          1st April 2012
11722       </div>
11723       <div class="body">
11724         <p>Germany is a core area for the
11725 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
11726 user community, and this time I managed to get hold of Wolfgang
11727 Schweer, a valuable contributor to the project from Germany.
11728
11729 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
11730
11731 <p>I've studied Mathematics at the university 'Ruhr-Universität' in
11732 Bochum, Germany. Since 1981 I'm working as a teacher at the school
11733 "<a href="http://www.westfalenkolleg-dortmund.de/">Westfalen-Kolleg
11734 Dortmund</a>", a second chance school.  Here, young adults is given
11735 the opportunity to get further education in order to do the school
11736 examination 'Abitur', which will allow to study at a university. This
11737 second chance is of value for those who want a better job perspective
11738 or failed to get a higher school examination being teens.</p>
11739
11740 <p>Besides teaching I was involved in developing online courses for a
11741 blended learning project called 'abitur-online.nrw' and in some other
11742 information technology related projects. For about ten years I've been
11743 teacher and coordinator for the 'abitur-online' project at my
11744 school. Being now in my early sixties, I've decided to leave school at
11745 the end of April this year.</p>
11746
11747 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
11748 project?</strong></p>
11749
11750 <p>The first information about Skolelinux must have come to my
11751 attention years ago and somehow related to LTSP (Linux Terminal Server
11752 Project).  At school, we had set up a network at the beginning of 1997
11753 using Suse Linux on the desktop, replacing a Novell network. Since
11754 2002, we used old machines from the city council of Dortmund as thin
11755 clients (LTSP, later Ubuntu/Lessdisks) cause new hardware was out of
11756 reach. At home I'm using Debian since years and - subscribed to the
11757 Debian news letter - heard from time to time about Skolelinux. About
11758 two years ago I proposed to replace the (somehow undocumented and only
11759 known to me) system at school by a well known Debian based system:
11760 Skolelinux.</p>
11761
11762 <p>Students and teachers appreciated the new system because of a
11763 better look and feel and an enhanced access to local media on thin
11764 clients.  The possibility to alter and/or reset passwords using a GUI
11765 was welcomed, too. Being able to do administrative tasks using a GUI
11766 and to easily set up workstations using PXE was of very high value for
11767 the admin teachers.</p>
11768
11769 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
11770 Edu?</strong></p>
11771
11772 <p>It's open source, easy to set up, stable and flexible due to it's
11773 Debian base. It integrates LTSP out-of-the-box. And it is documented!
11774 So it was a perfect choice.</p>
11775
11776 <p>Being open source, there are no license problems and so it's
11777 possible to point teachers and students to programs like
11778 OpenOffice.org, ViewYourMind (mind mapping) and The Gimp.  It's of
11779 high value to be able to adapt parts of the system to special needs of
11780 a school and to choose where to get support for this.</p>
11781
11782 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
11783 Edu?</strong></p>
11784
11785 <p>Nothing yet.</p>
11786
11787 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
11788
11789 <p>At home (Debian Sid with Gnome Desktop): Iceweasel, LibreOffice,
11790 Mutt, Gedit, Document Viewer, Midnight Commander, flpsed (PDF
11791 Annotator).  At school (Skolelinux Lenny): Iceweasel, Gedit,
11792 LibreOffice.</p>
11793
11794 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
11795 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
11796
11797 <p>Some time ago I thought it was enough to tell people about it. But
11798 that doesn't seem to work quite well. Now I concentrate on those more
11799 interested and hope to get multiplicators that way.</p>
11800
11801       </div>
11802       <div class="tags">
11803
11804
11805         Tags: <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/intervju">intervju</a>.
11806
11807
11808       </div>
11809     </div>
11810     <div class="padding"></div>
11811
11812     <div class="entry">
11813       <div class="title">
11814         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_screencast__Checking_email_with_kmail_using_Kerberos_authentication.html">Debian Edu screencast: Checking email with kmail using Kerberos authentication</a>
11815       </div>
11816       <div class="date">
11817         25th March 2012
11818       </div>
11819       <div class="body">
11820         <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
11821
11822 <p>The same Debian Edu developer that did the last screen cast I
11823 published, Wolfgang Schweer, has created a new screen cast showing how
11824 to set up Kmail in Debian Edu Squeze to authenticate using Kerberos,
11825 allowing users to check their local email account without providing
11826 any password. The video is embedded here in quarter size,
11827 and also available from <a href="https://vimeo.com/38601767">vimeo</a>
11828 and download as a
11829 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv">Ogg
11830 Theora</a> file.  Check it out below.</p>
11831
11832 <p><video id="kmail-kerberos-movie" width="256" height="184" preload controls>
11833   <source src="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv" type='video/ogg; codecs="theora, vorbis"' />
11834     <p>Download video as
11835       <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv">Ogg</a>.</p>
11836 </video></p>
11837
11838       </div>
11839       <div class="tags">
11840
11841
11842         Tags: <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>.
11843
11844
11845       </div>
11846     </div>
11847     <div class="padding"></div>
11848
11849     <div class="entry">
11850       <div class="title">
11851         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__John_Ingleby.html">Debian Edu interview: John Ingleby</a>
11852       </div>
11853       <div class="date">
11854         19th March 2012
11855       </div>
11856       <div class="body">
11857         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
11858 users are spread all across the globe.  The second inteview after
11859 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">the
11860 Squeeze release</a> was publised is with John Ingleby, a teacher and
11861 long time Linux user in United Kingdom.</p>
11862
11863 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
11864
11865 <p>I teach ICT part time at the Rudolf Steiner School in Kings
11866 Langley, near London, UK. Previously I worked as a technical
11867 author/trainer while my children attended the school, and I also
11868 contributed to the Schoolforge UK community with the aim of
11869 encouraging UK schools to adopt free/open source software. Five or six
11870 years ago we had about 50 schools interested in some way, but we
11871 weren't able to convert many of them into sustainable
11872 installations.</p>
11873
11874 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
11875 project?</strong></p>
11876
11877 <p>Skolelinux had two representatives at an early Edubuntu meeting in
11878 London which I attended. However at that time our school network had
11879 just been installed using CentOS, LTSP 4 and GNOME. When LTSP 5 came
11880 along we switched to Edubuntu thin client servers so now we have a
11881 mixed environment which includes Windows PCs and student laptops, as
11882 well as their MacBooks and iPads. However, the proprietary systems
11883 have always been rather problematic, and we never built a GUI for the
11884 LDAP server, so when I discovered Skolelinux is configured for all
11885 these things we decided to try it.</p>
11886
11887 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
11888 Edu?</strong></p>
11889
11890 <p>By far the biggest advantage is the Debian Edu community. Apart
11891 from that I have always believed in the same "sustainable computing"
11892 goals that Skolelinux is built on: installing Linux on computers which
11893 would otherwise be thrown away, to provide a reliable, secure and
11894 low-cost IT environment for schools. From my own experience I know
11895 that a part-time person can teach and manage a network of about 25
11896 Linux computers, but it would take much more of my time if we had
11897 proprietary software everywhere.</p>
11898
11899 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
11900 Edu?</strong></p>
11901
11902 <p>As a newcomer I'm just finding out who's who in the community and
11903 how you're organised, and what your procedures are for dealing with
11904 various things such as editing manual pages and so-on. The only
11905 English language mailing list seems to be for developers as well as
11906 users, so my inbox needs heavy pruning each day!</p>
11907
11908 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
11909
11910 <p>Besides the software already mentioned at school we use Samba,
11911 OpenLDAP, CUPS, Nagios and Dansguardian for the network, and on the
11912 desktops we have LibreOffice, Firefox, GIMP and Inkscape. At home I
11913 use Ubuntu and an Android 4 eePad Transformer (but I'm not sure if
11914 that counts...)</p>
11915
11916 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
11917 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
11918
11919 <p>That's a tough question! For very many years UK schools installed
11920 and taught only proprietary software, so that at the highest levels
11921 the notion of "computer" means simply "proprietary office
11922 applications".  However, schools today are experiencing budget
11923 constraints, and many are having to think hard about upgrading Windows
11924 XP.  At the same time, we have students showing teachers how to use
11925 iPads, MacBooks and Android, so the choice of operating system is no
11926 longer quite so automatic. What is more, our government at last
11927 realised that we need people with programming skills, so they're
11928 putting coding back in the curriculum! And it's encouraging that the
11929 first 10,000 Raspberry Pi units sold out in 2 hours.</p>
11930
11931 <p>I don't really know what strategy is going to get UK schools to use
11932 free software, but building an active community of Skolelinux/Debian
11933 Edu users in this country has to be part of it.</p>
11934
11935       </div>
11936       <div class="tags">
11937
11938
11939         Tags: <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/intervju">intervju</a>.
11940
11941
11942       </div>
11943     </div>
11944     <div class="padding"></div>
11945
11946     <div class="entry">
11947       <div class="title">
11948         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Writing_and_translating_documentation_in_Debian_Edu.html">Writing and translating documentation in Debian Edu</a>
11949       </div>
11950       <div class="date">
11951         16th March 2012
11952       </div>
11953       <div class="body">
11954         <p>Documentation in Debian Edu is provided in several languages, and
11955 it is important to make it both easy to contribute and to keep the
11956 translated versions in sync.  To do this we have come up with what we
11957 believe is a very efficient work flow.</p>
11958
11959 <ol>
11960
11961 <li>The documentation is written in a
11962 <a href="http://moinmo.in">moinmoin wiki</a> (see for example
11963 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">the
11964 Squeeze release manual</a>) with support for exporting the content as
11965 docbook XML.</li>
11966
11967 <li>This docbook document is given to po4a to extract a gettext style
11968 .pot file with the content, which in turn is used to create .po files
11969 with the translated text.</li>
11970
11971 <li>The .po files are given to translators, and they can always tell
11972 which part of the original wiki document is new or changed.  They can
11973 use their normal translation tools like lokalize or poedit to write
11974 the translation.  There is even a system in place to handle translated
11975 images.</li>
11976
11977 <li>The translated .po files are combined with the original docbook
11978 XML document using po4a to create a translated docbook document.</li>
11979
11980 <li>The final step is to use all the generated docbook files and
11981 create PDF and HTML version of the original and translated documents.</li>
11982
11983 </ol>
11984
11985 <p>This setup work very well, but have a few issues.  The biggest
11986 issue is that <a href="http://moinmo.in/DocBook">the docbook support
11987 we use in moinmoin</a> is not actively maintained.  The docbook
11988 support is also buggy, and our build system contain workarounds to
11989 make sure the generated docbook is usable despite these bugs.</p>
11990
11991 <p>If you want to have a look at our setup, it is all there in the
11992 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-doc">debian-edu-doc
11993 package</a>.</p>
11994
11995       </div>
11996       <div class="tags">
11997
11998
11999         Tags: <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>.
12000
12001
12002       </div>
12003     </div>
12004     <div class="padding"></div>
12005
12006     <div class="entry">
12007       <div class="title">
12008         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_is_out_.html">Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze is out!</a>
12009       </div>
12010       <div class="date">
12011         11th March 2012
12012       </div>
12013       <div class="body">
12014         <p>This weekend we finally published the first stable release of
12015 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a> based
12016 on Debian/Squeeze.  The full announcement is
12017 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">available</a>
12018 from the project announcement list.  Now is a good time to test if it
12019 you have not done so already.</p>
12020
12021 <p>I plan to present the new version at
12022 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20120313-skolelinux/">a NUUG
12023 meeting</a> on tuesday.  I look forward to seeing you there if you are
12024 in Oslo, Norway.</p>
12025
12026       </div>
12027       <div class="tags">
12028
12029
12030         Tags: <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>.
12031
12032
12033       </div>
12034     </div>
12035     <div class="padding"></div>
12036
12037     <div class="entry">
12038       <div class="title">
12039         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Nigel_Barker.html">Debian Edu interview: Nigel Barker</a>
12040       </div>
12041       <div class="date">
12042          9th March 2012
12043       </div>
12044       <div class="body">
12045         <p>Inspired by <a href="http://raphaelhertzog.com/tag/interview/">the
12046 interview series</a> conducted by Raphael, I started a Norwegian
12047 interview series with people involved in the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
12048 community.  This was so popular that I believe it is time to move to a
12049 more international audience.</p>
12050
12051 <p>While <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
12052 Skolelinux</a> originated in France and Norway, and have most users in
12053 Europe, there are users all around the globe.  One of those far away
12054 from me is Nigel Barker, a long time Debian Edu system administrator
12055 and contributor.  It is thanks to him that Debian Edu is adjusted to
12056 work out of the box in Japan.  I got him to answer a few questions,
12057 and am happy to share the response with you. :)
12058
12059
12060 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
12061
12062 <p>My name is Nigel Barker, and I am British. I am married to Yumiko,
12063 and we have three lovely children, aged 15, 14 and 4(!) I am the IT
12064 Coordinator at Hiroshima International School, Japan. I am also a
12065 teacher, and in fact I spend most of my day teaching Mathematics,
12066 Science, IT, and Chemistry. I was originally a Chemistry teacher, but
12067 I have always had an interest in computers. Another teacher teaches
12068 primary school IT, but apart from that I am the only computer person,
12069 so that means I am the network manager, technician and webmaster,
12070 also, and I help people with their computer problems. I teach python
12071 to beginners in an after-school club. I am way too busy, so I really
12072 appreciate the simplicity of Skolelinux.</p>
12073
12074 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
12075 project?</strong></p>
12076
12077 <p>In around 2004 or 5 I discovered the ltsp project, and set up a
12078 server in the IT lab. I wanted some way to connect it to our central
12079 samba server, which I was also quite poor at configuring. I discovered
12080 Edubuntu when it came out, but it didn't really improve my setup. I
12081 did various desperate searches for things like "school Linux server"
12082 and ended up in a document called "Drift" something or other. Reading
12083 there it became clear that Skolelinux was going to solve all my
12084 problems in one go. I was very excited, but apprehensive, because my
12085 previous attempts to install Debian had ended in failure (I used
12086 Mandrake for everything - ltsp, samba, apache, mail, ns...). I
12087 downloaded a beta version, had some problems, so subscribed to the
12088 Debian Edu list for help. I have remained subscribed ever since, and
12089 my school has run a Skolelinux network since Sarge.</p>
12090
12091 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
12092 Edu?</strong></p>
12093
12094 <p>For me the integrated setup. This is not just the server, or the
12095 workstation, or the ltsp. Its all of them, and its all configured
12096 ready to go. I read somewhere in the early documentation that it is
12097 designed to be setup and managed by the Maths or Science teacher, who
12098 doesn't necessarily know much about computers, in a small Norwegian
12099 school. That describes me perfectly if you replace Norway with
12100 Japan.</p>
12101
12102 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
12103 Edu?</strong></p>
12104
12105 <p>The desktop is fairly plain. If you compare it with Edubuntu, who
12106 have fun themes for children, or with distributions such as Mint, who
12107 make the desktop beautiful. They create a good impression on people
12108 who don't need to understand how to use any of it, but who might be
12109 important to the school. School administrators or directors, for
12110 instance, or parents. Even kids. Debian itself usually has ugly
12111 default theme settings. It was my dream a few years back that some
12112 kind of integration would allow Edubuntu to do the desktop stuff and
12113 Debian Edu the servers, but now I realise how impossible that is.  A
12114 second disadvantage is that if something goes wrong, or you need to
12115 customise something, then suddenly the level of expertise required
12116 multiplies. For example, backup wasn't working properly in Lenny. It
12117 took me ages to learn how to set up my own server to do rsync backups.
12118 I am afraid of anything to do with ldap, but perhaps Gosa will
12119 help.</p>
12120
12121 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
12122
12123 <p>Nowadays I only use Debian on my personal computers. I have one for
12124 studio work (I play guitar and write songs), running AV Linux
12125 (customised Debian) a netbook running Squeeze, and a bigger laptop
12126 still running Skolelinux Lenny workstation. I have a Tjener in my
12127 house, that's very useful for the family photos and music.  At school
12128 the students only use Skolelinux. (Some teachers and the office still
12129 have windows). So that means we only use free software all day every
12130 day. Open office, The GIMP, Firefox/Iceweasel, VLC and Audacity are
12131 installed on every computer in school, irrespective of OS.  We also
12132 have Koha on Debian for the library, and Apache, Moodle, b2evolution
12133 and Etomite on Debian for the www. The firewall is Untangle.</p>
12134
12135 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
12136 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
12137
12138 <p>Current trends are in our favour. Open source is big in industry,
12139 and ordinary people have heard of it. The spread of Android and the
12140 popularity of Apple have helped to weaken the impression that you have
12141 to have Microsoft on everything. People complain to me much less about
12142 file formats and Word than they did 5 years ago.  The Edu aspect is
12143 also a selling point. This is all customised for schools. Where is the
12144 Windows-edu, or the Mac-edu?  But of course the main attraction is
12145 budget.The trick is to convince people that the quality is not
12146 compromised when you stop paying and use free software instead. That
12147 is one reason why I say the desktop experience is a weakness. People
12148 are not impressed when their USB drive doesn't work, or their browser
12149 doesn't play flash, for example.</p>
12150
12151       </div>
12152       <div class="tags">
12153
12154
12155         Tags: <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/intervju">intervju</a>.
12156
12157
12158       </div>
12159     </div>
12160     <div class="padding"></div>
12161
12162     <div class="entry">
12163       <div class="title">
12164         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_screencast__Mass_creation_of_user_accounts_in_Squeeze.html">Debian Edu screencast: Mass creation of user accounts in Squeeze</a>
12165       </div>
12166       <div class="date">
12167          7th March 2012
12168       </div>
12169       <div class="body">
12170         <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
12171
12172 <p>One of the Debian Edu developers, Wolfgang Schweer, just created a
12173 screen cast documenting how to create a lot of new users in LDAP on
12174 Debian Edu Squeeze.  The video is embedded here in quarter size, and
12175 also available from <a href="http://vimeo.com/37675399">vimeo</a> and
12176 download as a
12177 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg
12178 Theora</a> file.  Check it out below.</p>
12179
12180 <p><video id="gosa-mass-user-create-movie" width="256" height="184" preload controls>
12181   <source src="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv" type='video/ogg; codecs="theora, vorbis"' />
12182     <p>Download video as
12183       <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg</a>.</p>
12184 </video></p>
12185
12186       </div>
12187       <div class="tags">
12188
12189
12190         Tags: <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>.
12191
12192
12193       </div>
12194     </div>
12195     <div class="padding"></div>
12196
12197     <div class="entry">
12198       <div class="title">
12199         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Third release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
12200       </div>
12201       <div class="date">
12202          4th March 2012
12203       </div>
12204       <div class="body">
12205         <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the third release
12206 candidate for <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
12207 Skolelinux</a> based on Squeeze.  The full announcement is
12208 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00000.html">available</a>
12209 from the project announcement list.  Check it out if you
12210 need a software solution for your school.</p>
12211
12212       </div>
12213       <div class="tags">
12214
12215
12216         Tags: <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>.
12217
12218
12219       </div>
12220     </div>
12221     <div class="padding"></div>
12222
12223     <div class="entry">
12224       <div class="title">
12225         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Stopmotion_for_making_stop_motion_animations_on_Linux___reloaded.html">Stopmotion for making stop motion animations on Linux - reloaded</a>
12226       </div>
12227       <div class="date">
12228          3rd March 2012
12229       </div>
12230       <div class="body">
12231         <p>Many years ago, the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
12232 / Debian Edu project</a> initiated a student project to create a tool
12233 for making stop motion movies.  The proposal came from a teacher
12234 needing such tool on Skolelinux.  The project, called "stopmotion",
12235 was manned by two extraordinary students and won a school award and a
12236 national aware with this great project.  The project was initiated and
12237 mentored by Herman Robak, and manned by the students Bjørn Erik Nilsen
12238 and Fredrik Berg Kjølstad.  They got in touch with people at Aardman
12239 Animation studio and received feedback on how professionals would like
12240 such stopmotion tool to work, and the end result was and is used by
12241 animators around the globe.  But as is usual after studying, both got
12242 jobs and went elsewhere, and did not have time to properly tend to the
12243 project, and it has been lingering for a few years now.  Until last
12244 year...</p>
12245
12246 <p>Last year some of the users got together with Herman, and moved the
12247 project to Sourceforge and in effect restarted the project under a new
12248 name,
12249 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/linuxstopmotion/">linuxstopmotion</a>.
12250 The name change was done to make it possible to find the project using
12251 Internet search engines (try to search for 'stopmotion' to see what I
12252 mean). I've been following
12253 <a href="https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/linuxstopmotion-community">the
12254 mailing list</a> and the improvement already in place and planned for
12255 the future is encouraging.  If you want to make stop motion movies.
12256 Check it out. :)</p>
12257
12258       </div>
12259       <div class="tags">
12260
12261
12262         Tags: <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/video">video</a>.
12263
12264
12265       </div>
12266     </div>
12267     <div class="padding"></div>
12268
12269     <div class="entry">
12270       <div class="title">
12271         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Second release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
12272       </div>
12273       <div class="date">
12274         27th February 2012
12275       </div>
12276       <div class="body">
12277         <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the second release
12278 candidate for <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
12279 Skolelinux</a> based on Squeeze.  The full announcement did for some
12280 reason not make it the project announcement list, but is
12281 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2012/02/msg00015.html">available</a>
12282 from the Debian development announcement list.  Check it out if you
12283 need a software solution for your school.</p>
12284
12285       </div>
12286       <div class="tags">
12287
12288
12289         Tags: <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>.
12290
12291
12292       </div>
12293     </div>
12294     <div class="padding"></div>
12295
12296     <div class="entry">
12297       <div class="title">
12298         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">First release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
12299       </div>
12300       <div class="date">
12301         19th February 2012
12302       </div>
12303       <div class="body">
12304         <p>One week delayed due to DVD build problems, we managed today to
12305 wrap up and publish the first release candidate for
12306 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
12307 on Squeeze.  The full announcement is
12308 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00001.html">available</a>
12309 on the project announcement list.  Check it out if you need a software
12310 solution for your school.</p>
12311
12312       </div>
12313       <div class="tags">
12314
12315
12316         Tags: <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>.
12317
12318
12319       </div>
12320     </div>
12321     <div class="padding"></div>
12322
12323     <div class="entry">
12324       <div class="title">
12325         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_figure_out_which_RAID_disk_to_replace_when_it_fail.html">How to figure out which RAID disk to replace when it fail</a>
12326       </div>
12327       <div class="date">
12328         14th February 2012
12329       </div>
12330       <div class="body">
12331         <p>Once in a while my home server have disk problems.  Thanks to Linux
12332 Software RAID, I have not lost data yet (but
12333 <a href="http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.linux.raid/34532">I was
12334 close</a> this summer :).  But once a disk is starting to behave
12335 funny, a practical problem present itself.  How to get from the Linux
12336 device name (like /dev/sdd) to something that can be used to identify
12337 the disk when the computer is turned off?  In my case I have SATA
12338 disks with a unique ID printed on the label.  All I need is a way to
12339 figure out how to query the disk to get the ID out.</p>
12340
12341 <p>After fumbling a bit, I
12342 <a href="http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-getting-scsi-ide-harddisk-information/">found
12343 that hdparm -I</a> will report the disk serial number, which is
12344 printed on the disk label.  The following (almost) one-liner can be
12345 used to look up the ID of all the failed disks:</p>
12346
12347 <blockquote><pre>
12348 for d in $(cat /proc/mdstat |grep '(F)'|tr ' ' "\n"|grep '(F)'|cut -d\[ -f1|sort -u);
12349 do
12350     printf "Failed disk $d: "
12351     hdparm -I /dev/$d |grep 'Serial Num'
12352 done
12353 </blockquote></pre>
12354
12355 <p>Putting it here to make sure I do not have to search for it the
12356 next time, and in case other find it useful.</p>
12357
12358 <p>At the moment I have two failing disk. :(</p>
12359
12360 <blockquote><pre>
12361 Failed disk sdd1:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1860823
12362 Failed disk sdd2:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1860823
12363 Failed disk sde2:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1840589
12364 </blockquote></pre>
12365
12366 <p>The last time I had failing disks, I added the serial number on
12367 labels I printed and stuck on the short sides of each disk, to be able
12368 to figure out which disk to take out of the box without having to
12369 remove each disk to look at the physical vendor label.  The vendor
12370 label is at the top of the disk, which is hidden when the disks are
12371 mounted inside my box.</p>
12372
12373 <p>I really wish the check_linux_raid Nagios plugin for checking Linux
12374 Software RAID in the
12375 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nagios-plugins.html">nagios-plugins-standard</a>
12376 debian package would look up this value automatically, as it would
12377 make the plugin a lot more useful when my disks fail.  At the moment
12378 it only report a failure when there are no more spares left (it really
12379 should warn as soon as a disk is failing), and it do not tell me which
12380 disk(s) is failing when the RAID is running short on disks.</p>
12381
12382       </div>
12383       <div class="tags">
12384
12385
12386         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid</a>.
12387
12388
12389       </div>
12390     </div>
12391     <div class="padding"></div>
12392
12393     <div class="entry">
12394       <div class="title">
12395         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_proxy_configuration_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux.html">Automatic proxy configuration with Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
12396       </div>
12397       <div class="date">
12398         13th February 2012
12399       </div>
12400       <div class="body">
12401         <p>New in the Squeeze version of
12402 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is the
12403 ability for clients to automatically configure their proxy settings
12404 based on their environment.  We want all systems on the client to use
12405 the WPAD based proxy definition fetched from <tt>http://wpad/wpad.dat</tt>, to
12406 allow sites to control the proxy setting from a central place and make
12407 sure clients do not have hard coded proxy settings.  The schools can
12408 change the global proxy setting by editing
12409 <tt>tjener:/etc/debian-edu/www/wpad.dat</tt> and the change propagate
12410 to all Debian Edu clients in the network.</p>
12411
12412 <p>The problem is that some systems do not understand the WPAD system.
12413 In other words, how do one get from a WPAD file like this (this is a
12414 simple one, they can run arbitrary code):</p>
12415
12416 <blockquote><pre>
12417 function FindProxyForURL(url, host)
12418 {
12419    if (!isResolvable(host) ||
12420        isPlainHostName(host) ||
12421        dnsDomainIs(host, ".intern"))
12422       return "DIRECT";
12423    else
12424       return "PROXY webcache:3128; DIRECT";
12425 }
12426 </pre></blockquote>
12427
12428 <p>to a proxy setting in the process environment looking like this:</p>
12429
12430 <blockquote><pre>
12431 http_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
12432 ftp_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
12433 </pre></blockquote>
12434
12435 <p>To do this conversion I developed a perl script that will execute
12436 the javascript fragment in the WPAD file and return the proxy that
12437 would be used for
12438 <tt><a href="http://www.debian.org/">http://www.debian.org/</a></tt>,
12439 and insert this extracted proxy URL in <tt>/etc/environment</tt> and
12440 <tt>/etc/apt/apt.conf</tt>.  The perl script wpad-extract work just
12441 fine in Squeeze, but in Wheezy the library it need to run the
12442 javascript code is <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/631045">no longer
12443 able to build</a> because the C library it depended on is now a C++
12444 library.  I hope someone find a solution to that problem before Wheezy
12445 is frozen.  An alternative would be for us to rewrite wpad-extract to
12446 use some other javascript library currently working in Wheezy, but no
12447 known alternative is known at the moment.</p>
12448
12449 <p>This automatic proxy system allow the roaming workstation (aka
12450 laptop) setup in Debian Edu/Squeeze to use the proxy when the laptop
12451 is connected to the backbone network in a Debian Edu setup, and to
12452 automatically use any proxy present and announced using the WPAD
12453 feature when it is connected to other networks.  And if no proxy is
12454 announced, direct connections will be used instead.</p>
12455
12456 <p>Silently using a proxy announced on the network might be a privacy
12457 or security problem.  But those controlling DHCP and DNS on a network
12458 could just as easily set up a transparent proxy, and force all HTTP
12459 and FTP connections to use a proxy anyway, so I consider that
12460 distinction to be academic.  If you are afraid of using the wrong
12461 proxy, you should avoid connecting to the network in question in the
12462 first place.  In Debian Edu, the proxy setup is updated using dhcp and
12463 ifupdown hooks, to make sure the configuration is updated every time
12464 the network setup changes.</p>
12465
12466 <p>The WPAD system is documented in a
12467 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-wrec-wpad-01">IETF
12468 draft</a> and a
12469 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Proxy_Autodiscovery_Protocol">Wikipedia
12470 page</a> for those that want to learn more.</p>
12471
12472       </div>
12473       <div class="tags">
12474
12475
12476         Tags: <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>.
12477
12478
12479       </div>
12480     </div>
12481     <div class="padding"></div>
12482
12483     <div class="entry">
12484       <div class="title">
12485         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Saving_power_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_using_shutdown_at_night.html">Saving power with Debian Edu / Skolelinux using shutdown-at-night</a>
12486       </div>
12487       <div class="date">
12488          5th February 2012
12489       </div>
12490       <div class="body">
12491         <p>Since the Lenny version of
12492 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>, a
12493 feature to save power have been included.  It is as simple as it is
12494 practical: Shut down unused clients at night, and turn them on again
12495 in the morning.  This is done using the
12496 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/shutdown-at-night.html">shutdown-at-night</a> Debian package.</p>
12497
12498 <p>To enable this feature on a client, the machine need to be added to
12499 the netgroup shutdown-at-night-hosts.  For Debian Edu, this is done in
12500 LDAP, and once this is in place, the machine in question will check
12501 every hour from 16:00 until 06:00 to see if the machine is unused, and
12502 shut it down if it is.  If the hardware in question is supported by
12503 the
12504 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nvram-wakeup.html">nvram-wakeup</a>
12505 package, the BIOS is told to turn the machine back on around 07:00 +-
12506 10 minutes.  If this isn't working, one can configure wake-on-lan to
12507 try to turn on the client.  The wake-on-lan option is only documented
12508 and not enabled by default in Debian Edu.</p>
12509
12510 <p>It is important to not turn all machines on at once, as this can
12511 blow a fuse if several computers are connected to the same fuse like
12512 the common setup for a classroom.  The nvram-wakeup method only work
12513 for machines with a functioning hardware/BIOS clock.  I've seen old
12514 machines where the BIOS battery were dead and the hardware clock were
12515 starting from 0 (or was it 1990?) every boot.  If you have one of
12516 those, you have to turn on the computer manually.</p>
12517
12518 <p>The shutdown-at-night package is completely self contained, and can
12519 also be used outside the Debian Edu environment.  For those without a
12520 central LDAP server with netgroups, one can instead touch the file
12521 <tt>/etc/shutdown-at-night/shutdown-at-night</tt> to enable it.
12522 Perhaps you too can use it to save some power?</p>
12523
12524       </div>
12525       <div class="tags">
12526
12527
12528         Tags: <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>.
12529
12530
12531       </div>
12532     </div>
12533     <div class="padding"></div>
12534
12535     <div class="entry">
12536       <div class="title">
12537         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_beta_version_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Third beta version of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
12538       </div>
12539       <div class="date">
12540          4th February 2012
12541       </div>
12542       <div class="body">
12543         <p>I am happy to announce that finally we managed today to wrap up and
12544 publish the third beta version of
12545 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
12546 on Squeeze.  If you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with
12547 out of the box PXE configuration for running diskless machines and
12548 installing new machines, check it out.  If you need a software
12549 solution for your school, check it out too.  The full announcement is
12550 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00000.html">available</a>
12551 on the project announcement list.</p>
12552
12553 <p>I am very happy to report these changes and improvements since
12554 beta2 (there are more, see announcement for full list):</p>
12555
12556 <ul>
12557
12558 <li>It is now possible to change the pre-configured IP subnet from
12559   10.0.0.0/8 to something else by using the subnet-change tool after
12560   the installation.</li>
12561
12562 <li>Too full partitions are now automatically extended on the Main
12563   Server, based on the rules specified in /etc/fsautoresizetab.</li>
12564
12565 <li>The CUPS queues are now automatically flushed every night, and all
12566   disabled queues are restarted every hour.  This should cut down on
12567   the amount of manual administration needed for printers.</li>
12568
12569 <li>The set of initial users have been changed.  Now a personal user
12570   for the local system administrator is created during installation
12571   instead of the previously created localadmin and super-admin users,
12572   and this user is granted administrative privileges using group
12573   membership.  This reduces the number of passwords one need to keep
12574   up to date on the system.</li>
12575
12576 </ul>
12577
12578 <p>The new main server seem to work so well that I am testing it as my
12579 private DNS/LDAP/Kerberos/PXE/LTSP server at home.  I will use it look
12580 for issues we could fix to polish Debian Edu even further before the
12581 final Squeeze release is published.</p>
12582
12583 <p>Next weekend the project organise a
12584 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00001.html">developer
12585 gathering</a> in Oslo.  We will continue the work on the Squeeze
12586 version, and start initial planning for the Wheezy version.  Perhaps I
12587 will see you there?</p>
12588
12589       </div>
12590       <div class="tags">
12591
12592
12593         Tags: <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>.
12594
12595
12596       </div>
12597     </div>
12598     <div class="padding"></div>
12599
12600     <div class="entry">
12601       <div class="title">
12602         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Handling_non_free_firmware_in_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html">Handling non-free firmware in Debian Edu/Squeeze</a>
12603       </div>
12604       <div class="date">
12605         27th January 2012
12606       </div>
12607       <div class="body">
12608         <p>With some computer hardware, one need non-free firmware blobs.
12609 This is the sad fact of todays computers.  In the next version of
12610 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
12611 on Squeeze, we provide several scripts and modifications to make
12612 firmware blobs easier to handle.  The common use case I run into is a
12613 laptop with a wireless network card requiring non-free firmware to
12614 work, but there are other use cases as well.</p>
12615
12616 <p>First and foremost, Debian Edu provide ISO images for DVD and CD
12617 with all firmware packages in the Debian sections main and non-free
12618 included, to ensure debian-installer find and can install all of them
12619 during installation.  This take care firmware for network devices used
12620 by the installer when installing from from local media.  But for
12621 example multimedia devices are not activated in the installer and are
12622 not taken care of by this.</p>
12623
12624 <p>For non-network devices, we provide the script
12625 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/auto-addfirmware</tt> which
12626 search through the <tt>dmesg</tt> output for drivers requesting extra
12627 firmware.  The firmware file name is looked up in the Contents-ARCH.gz
12628 file available in the package repository, and the packages providing
12629 the requested firmware file(s) is installed.  I have proposed to do
12630 something similar in debian-installer (BTS report
12631 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">#655507</a>), to allow PXE
12632 installs of Debian to handle firmware installation better.  Run the
12633 script as root from the command line to fetch and install the needed
12634 firmware packages.</p>
12635
12636 <p>Debian Edu provide PXE installation of Debian out of the box, and
12637 because some machines need firmware to get their network cards
12638 working, the installation initrd some times need extra firmware
12639 included to be able to install at all.  To fill the PXE installation
12640 initrd with extra firmware, the
12641 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/pxe-addfirmware</tt> script is
12642 provided.  Again, just run it as root on the command line to fill the
12643 PXE initrd with firmware packages.</p>
12644
12645 <p>Last, some LTSP clients might also need firmware to get their
12646 network cards working.  For this,
12647 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/ltsp-addfirmware</tt> is
12648 provided to update the LTSP initrd with firmware blobs.  It is used
12649 the same way as the other firmware related tools.</p>
12650
12651 <p>At the moment, we do not run any of these during installation.  We
12652 do not know if this is acceptable for the local administrator to use
12653 non-free software, and it is their choice.</p>
12654
12655 <p>We plan to release beta3 this weekend.  You might want to give it a
12656 try.</p>
12657
12658       </div>
12659       <div class="tags">
12660
12661
12662         Tags: <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>.
12663
12664
12665       </div>
12666     </div>
12667     <div class="padding"></div>
12668
12669     <div class="entry">
12670       <div class="title">
12671         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Setting_up_a_new_school_with_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html">Setting up a new school with Debian Edu/Squeeze</a>
12672       </div>
12673       <div class="date">
12674         25th January 2012
12675       </div>
12676       <div class="body">
12677         <p>The next version of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu
12678 / Skolelinux</a> will include a new tool
12679 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp</tt>, which can be used to quickly set up all
12680 the computers in a school without much manual labour.  Here is a short
12681 summary on how to use it to set up a new school.</p>
12682
12683 <p>First, install a combined Main Server and Thin Client Server as the
12684 central server in the network.  Next, PXE boot all the client machines
12685 as thin clients and wait 5 minutes after the last client booted to
12686 allow the clients to report their existence to the central server.  When
12687 this is done, log on to the central server and run
12688 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a</tt> in the <tt>konsole</tt> to use the
12689 collected information to generate system objects in LDAP.  The output
12690 will look similar to this:</p>
12691
12692 <p><blockquote><pre>
12693 % sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a
12694 info: Updating machine tjener.intern [10.0.2.2] id ether-00:01:02:03:04:05.
12695 info: Create GOsa machine for auto-mac-00-01-02-03-04-06 [10.0.16.20] id ether-00:01:02:03:04:06.
12696
12697 Enter password if you want to activate these changes, and ^c to abort.
12698
12699 Connecting to LDAP as cn=admin,ou=ldap-access,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
12700 enter password: *******
12701 %
12702 </pre></blockquote></p>
12703
12704 <p>After providing the LDAP administrative password (the same as the
12705 root password set during installation), the LDAP database will be
12706 populated with system objects for each PXE booted machine with
12707 automatically generated names.  The final step to set up the school is
12708 then to log into <a href="https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/">GOsa</a>,
12709 the web based user, group and system administration system to change
12710 system names, add systems to the correct host groups and finally
12711 enable DHCP and DNS for the systems.  All clients that should be used
12712 as diskless workstations should be added to the workstation-hosts
12713 group.  After this is done, all computers can be booted again via PXE
12714 and get their assigned names and group based configuration
12715 automatically.</p>
12716
12717 <p>We plan to release beta3 with the updated version of this feature
12718 enabled this weekend.  You might want to give it a try.</p>
12719
12720 <p>Update 2012-01-28: When calling sitesummary2ldapdhcp to add new
12721 hosts, one need to add the option -a.  I forgot to mention this in my
12722 original text, and have added it to the text now.</p>
12723
12724       </div>
12725       <div class="tags">
12726
12727
12728         Tags: <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>.
12729
12730
12731       </div>
12732     </div>
12733     <div class="padding"></div>
12734
12735     <div class="entry">
12736       <div class="title">
12737         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Changing_the_default_Iceweasel_start_page_in_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html">Changing the default Iceweasel start page in Debian Edu/Squeeze</a>
12738       </div>
12739       <div class="date">
12740         10th January 2012
12741       </div>
12742       <div class="body">
12743         <p>In the Squeeze version of
12744 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> soon
12745 to be released, users of the system will get their default browser
12746 start page set from LDAP, allowing the system administrator to point
12747 all users to the school web page by updating one setting in LDAP.  In
12748 addition to setting the default start page when a machine boots, users
12749 are shown the same page as a welcome page when they log in for the
12750 first time.</p>
12751
12752 <p>The LDAP object dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no have an attribute
12753 labeledURI with "http://www/ LDAP for Debian Edu/Skolelinux" as the
12754 default content.  By changing this value to another URL, all users get
12755 to see the page behind this new URL.</p>
12756
12757 <p>An easy way to update it is by using the ldapvi tool.  It can be
12758 called as "<tt>ldapvi -ZD '(cn=admin)'</tt>' to update LDAP with the
12759 new setting.</p>
12760
12761 <p>We have written the code to adjust the default start page and show
12762 the welcome page, and I wonder if there is an easier way to do this
12763 from within Iceweasel instead.</p>
12764
12765       </div>
12766       <div class="tags">
12767
12768
12769         Tags: <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/web">web</a>.
12770
12771
12772       </div>
12773     </div>
12774     <div class="padding"></div>
12775
12776     <div class="entry">
12777       <div class="title">
12778         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_beta_version_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Second beta version of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
12779       </div>
12780       <div class="date">
12781          7th January 2012
12782       </div>
12783       <div class="body">
12784         <p>I am happy to announce that today we managed to wrap up and publish
12785 the second beta version of
12786 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>.  If
12787 you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with out of the box PXE
12788 configuration for running diskless machines and installing new
12789 machines, check it out.  If you need a software solution for your
12790 school, check it out too.  The full announcement is
12791 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00000.html">available</a>
12792 on the project announcement list.</p>
12793
12794       </div>
12795       <div class="tags">
12796
12797
12798         Tags: <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>.
12799
12800
12801       </div>
12802     </div>
12803     <div class="padding"></div>
12804
12805     <div class="entry">
12806       <div class="title">
12807         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fixing_an_hanging_debian_installer_for_Debian_Edu.html">Fixing an hanging debian installer for Debian Edu</a>
12808       </div>
12809       <div class="date">
12810          3rd January 2012
12811       </div>
12812       <div class="body">
12813         <p>During christmas, I have been working getting the next version of
12814 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ready
12815 for release.  The initial problem I looked at was particularly
12816 interesting.</p>
12817
12818 <P>The installer would hang at the end when it was doing it
12819 post-installation configuration, and whatevery I did to try to find
12820 the cause and fix it always worked while I tested it, but never when I
12821 integrated it into the installer and ran the installation from
12822 scratch.  I would try to restart processes, close file descriptors,
12823 remove or create files, and the installer would always unblock and
12824 wrap up its tasks.</p>
12825
12826 <p>Eventually the cause was found.  The kernel was simply running out
12827 of entropy, causing the Kerberos setup to hang waiting for more.
12828 Pressing keys was adding entropy to the kernel, and thus all my tries
12829 to fix the problem worked not because what I was typing to fix it, but
12830 because I was typing.</P>
12831
12832 <p>The fix I implemented was to add a background process looking at
12833 the level of entropy in the kernel (by checking
12834 /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail), and if it was too small, the
12835 installer will flush the kernel file buffers and do 'find /' to
12836 generate some disk IO.  Disk IO generate entropy in the kernel, and is
12837 one of the few things that can be initated from within the system to
12838 generate entropy.</p>
12839
12840 <p>The fix is in
12841 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/Installation">beta1
12842 of the Debian Edu/Squeeze</a> version, and we
12843 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu">welcome more testers and
12844 developers</a>.  We plan to release beta2 this weekend.</p>
12845
12846       </div>
12847       <div class="tags">
12848
12849
12850         Tags: <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>.
12851
12852
12853       </div>
12854     </div>
12855     <div class="padding"></div>
12856
12857     <div class="entry">
12858       <div class="title">
12859         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html">Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge</a>
12860       </div>
12861       <div class="date">
12862         21st November 2011
12863       </div>
12864       <div class="body">
12865         <p>At work we have heaps of servers.  I believe the total count is
12866 around 1000 at the moment.  To be able to get help from the vendors
12867 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
12868 up to date.  If the firmware isn't the latest and greatest, the
12869 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
12870 firmware is upgraded.  So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
12871 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
12872 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
12873 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
12874 the tools to do so.</p>
12875
12876 <p>To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
12877 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got.  Most of
12878 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
12879 so far.  This blog post is about the Dell part.</P>
12880
12881 <p>On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
12882 <a href="ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz">an XML file</a>
12883 with firmware information for all 11th generation servers, listing
12884 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
12885 site I can find it.  Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
12886 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
12887 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
12888 be activated on the first reboot.</p>
12889
12890 <p>This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
12891 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
12892 servers at a site?  Please get in touch and lets share resources.</p>
12893
12894 <p><pre>
12895 #!/usr/bin/perl
12896 use strict;
12897 use warnings;
12898 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
12899 BEGIN {
12900     # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
12901     my %rhelmodules = (
12902         'XML::Simple' => 'perl-XML-Simple',
12903         );
12904     for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
12905         eval "use $module;";
12906         if ($@) {
12907             my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
12908             system("yum install -y $pkg");
12909             eval "use $module;";
12910         }
12911     }
12912 }
12913 my $errorsto = 'pere@hungry.com';
12914
12915 upgrade_dell();
12916
12917 exit 0;
12918
12919 sub run_firmware_script {
12920     my ($opts, $script) = @_;
12921     unless ($script) {
12922         print STDERR "fail: missing script name\n";
12923         exit 1
12924     }
12925     print STDERR "Running $script\n\n";
12926
12927     if (0 == system("sh $script $opts")) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
12928         print STDERR "success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n";
12929     } else {
12930         print STDERR "fail: firmware script returned error\n";
12931     }
12932 }
12933
12934 sub run_firmware_scripts {
12935     my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
12936     # Run firmware packages
12937     for my $dir (@dirs) {
12938         print STDERR "info: Running scripts in $dir\n";
12939         opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die "Unable to open directory $dir: $!";
12940         while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
12941             next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
12942             run_firmware_script($opts, "$dir/$s");
12943         }
12944         closedir $dh;
12945     }
12946 }
12947
12948 sub download {
12949     my $url = shift;
12950     print STDERR "info: Downloading $url\n";
12951     system("wget --quiet \"$url\"");
12952 }
12953
12954 sub upgrade_dell {
12955     my @dirs;
12956     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
12957     chomp $product;
12958
12959     if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
12960
12961         # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
12962         system('yum install -y compat-libstdc++-33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail');
12963
12964         my $tmpdir = tempdir(
12965             CLEANUP => 1
12966             );
12967         chdir($tmpdir);
12968         fetch_dell_fw('catalog/Catalog.xml.gz');
12969         system('gunzip Catalog.xml.gz');
12970         my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list('Catalog.xml');
12971         # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
12972         my $fwopts = "-q";
12973         if (@paths) {
12974             for my $url (@paths) {
12975                 fetch_dell_fw($url);
12976             }
12977             run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
12978         } else {
12979             print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
12980             print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
12981         }
12982         chdir('/');
12983     } else {
12984         print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
12985         print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
12986     }
12987 }
12988
12989 sub fetch_dell_fw {
12990     my $path = shift;
12991     my $url = "ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path";
12992     download($url);
12993 }
12994
12995 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
12996 # firmware packages to download from Dell.  Only work for Linux
12997 # machines and 11th generation Dell servers.
12998 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
12999     my $filename = shift;
13000
13001     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
13002     chomp $product;
13003     my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
13004
13005     print STDERR "Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n";
13006
13007     my $xml = XMLin($filename);
13008     my @paths;
13009     for my $bundle (@{$xml->{SoftwareBundle}}) {
13010         my $brand = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Display}->{content};
13011         my $model = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Model}->{Display}->{content};
13012         my $oscode;
13013         if ("ARRAY" eq ref $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}) {
13014             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}[0]->{osCode};
13015         } else {
13016             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}->{osCode};
13017         }
13018         if ($mybrand eq $brand && $mymodel eq $model && "LIN" eq $oscode)
13019         {
13020             @paths = map { $_->{path} } @{$bundle->{Contents}->{Package}};
13021         }
13022     }
13023     for my $component (@{$xml->{SoftwareComponent}}) {
13024         my $componenttype = $component->{ComponentType}->{value};
13025
13026         # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
13027         next if 'APAC' eq $componenttype;
13028
13029         my $cpath = $component->{path};
13030         for my $path (@paths) {
13031             if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
13032                 push(@paths, $cpath);
13033             }
13034         }
13035     }
13036     return @paths;
13037 }
13038 </pre>
13039
13040 <p>The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
13041 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking.  Anyone know a
13042 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers?  At the
13043 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
13044 outdated.</p>
13045
13046       </div>
13047       <div class="tags">
13048
13049
13050         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>.
13051
13052
13053       </div>
13054     </div>
13055     <div class="padding"></div>
13056
13057     <div class="entry">
13058       <div class="title">
13059         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_e_book_kiosk_for_the_public_libraries_.html">Free e-book kiosk for the public libraries?</a>
13060       </div>
13061       <div class="date">
13062          7th October 2011
13063       </div>
13064       <div class="body">
13065         <p>Here in Norway the public libraries are debating with the
13066 publishing houses how to handle electronic books.  Surprisingly, the
13067 libraries seem to be willing to accept digital restriction mechanisms
13068 (DRM) on books and renting e-books with artificial scarcity from the
13069 publishing houses.  Time limited renting (2-3 years) is one proposed
13070 model, and only allowing X borrowers for each book is another.
13071 Personally I find it amazing that libraries are even considering such
13072 models.</p>
13073
13074 <p>Anyway, while reading <a href="http://boklaben.no/?p=220">part of
13075 this debate</a>, it occurred to me that someone should present a more
13076 sensible approach to the libraries, to allow its borrowers to get used
13077 to a better model.  The idea is simple:</p>
13078
13079 <p>Create a computer system for the libraries, either in the form of a
13080 Live DVD or a installable distribution, that provide a simple kiosk
13081 solution to hand out free e-books.  As a start, the books distributed
13082 by <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/">Project Gutenberg</a> (about
13083 36,000 books), <a href="http://runeberg.org/">Project Runenberg</a>
13084 (1149 books) and <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/texts">The
13085 Internet Archive</a> (3,033,748 books) could be included, but any book
13086 where the copyright has expired or with a free licence could be
13087 distributed.</p>
13088
13089 <p>The computer system would make it easy to:</p>
13090
13091 <ul>
13092
13093 <li>Copy e-books into a USB stick, reading tablets, cell phones and
13094   other relevant equipment.</li>
13095
13096 <li>Show the books for reading on the the screen in the library.</li>
13097
13098 </ul>
13099
13100 <p>In addition to such kiosk solution, there should probably be a web
13101 site as well to allow people easy access to these books without
13102 visiting the library.  The site would be the distribution point for
13103 the kiosk systems, which would connect regularly to fetch any new
13104 books available.</p>
13105
13106 <p>Are there anyone working on a system like this?  I guess it would
13107 fit any library in the world, and not just the Norwegian public
13108 libraries. :)</p>
13109
13110       </div>
13111       <div class="tags">
13112
13113
13114         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
13115
13116
13117       </div>
13118     </div>
13119     <div class="padding"></div>
13120
13121     <div class="entry">
13122       <div class="title">
13123         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ripping_problematic_DVDs_using_dvdbackup_and_genisoimage.html">Ripping problematic DVDs using dvdbackup and genisoimage</a>
13124       </div>
13125       <div class="date">
13126         17th September 2011
13127       </div>
13128       <div class="body">
13129         <p>For convenience, I want to store copies of all my DVDs on my file
13130 server.  It allow me to save shelf space flat while still having my
13131 movie collection easily available.  It also make it possible to let
13132 the kids see their favourite DVDs without wearing the physical copies
13133 down.  I prefer to store the DVDs as ISOs to keep the DVD menu and
13134 subtitle options intact.  It also ensure that the entire film is one
13135 file on the disk.  As this is for personal use, the ripping is
13136 perfectly legal here in Norway.</p>
13137
13138 <p>Normally I rip the DVDs using dd like this:</p>
13139
13140 <blockquote><pre>
13141 #!/bin/sh
13142 # apt-get install lsdvd
13143 title=$(lsdvd 2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $3}')
13144 dd if=/dev/dvd of=/storage/dvds/$title.iso bs=1M
13145 </pre></blockquote>
13146
13147 <p>But some DVDs give a input/output error when I read it, and I have
13148 been looking for a better alternative.  I have no idea why this I/O
13149 error occur, but suspect my DVD drive, the Linux kernel driver or
13150 something fishy with the DVDs in question.  Or perhaps all three.</p>
13151
13152 <p>Anyway, I believe I found a solution today using dvdbackup and
13153 genisoimage.  This script gave me a working ISO for a problematic
13154 movie by first extracting the DVD file system and then re-packing it
13155 back as an ISO.
13156
13157 <blockquote><pre>
13158 #!/bin/sh
13159 # apt-get install lsdvd dvdbackup genisoimage
13160 set -e
13161 tmpdir=/storage/dvds/
13162 title=$(lsdvd 2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $3}')
13163 dvdbackup -i /dev/dvd -M -o $tmpdir -n$title
13164 genisoimage -dvd-video -o $tmpdir/$title.iso $tmpdir/$title
13165 rm -rf $tmpdir/$title
13166 </pre></blockquote>
13167
13168 <p>Anyone know of a better way available in Debian/Squeeze?</p>
13169
13170 <p>Update 2011-09-18: I got a tip from Konstantin Khomoutov about the
13171 readom program from the wodim package.  It is specially written to
13172 read optical media, and is called like this: <tt>readom dev=/dev/dvd
13173 f=image.iso</tt>.  It got 6 GB along with the problematic Cars DVD
13174 before it failed, and failed right away with a Timmy Time DVD.</p>
13175
13176 <p>Next, I got a tip from Bastian Blank about
13177 <a href="http://bblank.thinkmo.de/blog/new-software-python-dvdvideo">his
13178 program python-dvdvideo</a>, which seem to be just what I am looking
13179 for.  Tested it with my problematic Timmy Time DVD, and it succeeded
13180 creating a ISO image.  The git source built and installed just fine in
13181 Squeeze, so I guess this will be my tool of choice in the future.</p>
13182
13183       </div>
13184       <div class="tags">
13185
13186
13187         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
13188
13189
13190       </div>
13191     </div>
13192     <div class="padding"></div>
13193
13194     <div class="entry">
13195       <div class="title">
13196         <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>
13197       </div>
13198       <div class="date">
13199          4th August 2011
13200       </div>
13201       <div class="body">
13202         <p>Wouter Verhelst have some
13203 <a href="http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot">interesting
13204 comments and opinions</a> on my blog post on
13205 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">the
13206 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian</a> and my blog post about
13207 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">the
13208 default KDE desktop in Debian</a>.  I only have time to address one
13209 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
13210 misunderstanding he bring forward:</p>
13211
13212 <p><blockquote>
13213 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
13214 single-user system (by adding 'single' to the kernel command line;
13215 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
13216 </blockquote></p>
13217
13218 <p>This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
13219 and booting into runlevel 1 is the same.  I am not surprised he
13220 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
13221 thing to believe.  But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
13222 runlevel 1 do not work properly and it isn't the same as single user
13223 mode.  I'll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
13224 hard to explain.</p>
13225
13226 <p>Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
13227 "<tt>~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin</tt>".  This means the only thing that is
13228 executed in single user mode is sulogin.  Single user mode is a boot
13229 state "between" the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
13230 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
13231 enters the single user state.  When switching to runlevel 1, the state
13232 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
13233 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
13234 runs "init -t1 S" to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
13235 1.  It is confusing that the 'S' (single user) init mode is not the
13236 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
13237 mode).</p>
13238
13239 <p>This summary might make it clearer.  When booting for the first
13240 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
13241 "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  When booting into
13242 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc
13243 S; /etc/init.d/rc 1; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  A problem show up when
13244 trying to continue after visiting single user mode.  Not all services
13245 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
13246 unpredicatble state.  This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
13247 after visiting single user mode.</p>
13248
13249 <p>A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
13250 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/.  When switching from say runlevel 2
13251 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
13252 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
13253 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
13254 2-5.  I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
13255 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not <strong>required</strong> to get a
13256 functioning single user mode during boot.</p>
13257
13258 <p>I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
13259 and discovered this problem a few years ago.  I suspect it originates
13260 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.</p>
13261
13262       </div>
13263       <div class="tags">
13264
13265
13266         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>.
13267
13268
13269       </div>
13270     </div>
13271     <div class="padding"></div>
13272
13273     <div class="entry">
13274       <div class="title">
13275         <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>
13276       </div>
13277       <div class="date">
13278         30th July 2011
13279       </div>
13280       <div class="body">
13281         <p>In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
13282 are started from /etc/rcS.d/.  In fact, there is a bite more of them
13283 than make sense, and this causes a few problems.  What kind of
13284 problems, you might ask.  There are at least two problems.  The first
13285 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
13286 runlevel 1.  One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
13287 the expected state.  The other is that single user boot will sometimes
13288 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
13289 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
13290 machine from a problem in that subsystem.  A minor additional point is
13291 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
13292 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
13293 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.</p>
13294
13295 <p>So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/.  In short, only the
13296 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
13297 presented during a single user boot should go there.  Everything else
13298 should go into the numeric runlevels.  This means things like
13299 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
13300 the numeric runlevels.  Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
13301 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
13302 out.  Do your package have one of them?  Please help us make single
13303 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.</p>
13304
13305 <p>Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
13306 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
13307 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
13308 is presented.</p>
13309
13310 <p>As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound.  To keep
13311 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
13312 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
13313 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
13314 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
13315 moved first.  This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
13316 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
13317 the system state correct.  This will require some coordination when it
13318 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
13319 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
13320 on them.  Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
13321 package, while others are still left to do.  I wish I had time to work
13322 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
13323 find time to push this forward.</p>
13324
13325       </div>
13326       <div class="tags">
13327
13328
13329         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>.
13330
13331
13332       </div>
13333     </div>
13334     <div class="padding"></div>
13335
13336     <div class="entry">
13337       <div class="title">
13338         <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>
13339       </div>
13340       <div class="date">
13341         29th July 2011
13342       </div>
13343       <div class="body">
13344         <p>While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
13345 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
13346 desktop to be useful for more people.  The use case for this is my
13347 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
13348 issues.</p>
13349
13350 <p>I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
13351 implement.  After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
13352 do this in Debian we would have a source.</p>
13353
13354 <ol>
13355
13356 <li><strong>Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.</strong> When there
13357 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
13358 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
13359 tool to handle it.  I have no problem guiding both of my parents
13360 through the process over the phone.  If a kernel reboot is required,
13361 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool.  Last
13362 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
13363 Debian.</li>
13364
13365 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
13366 plugins.</strong> When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
13367 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
13368 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
13369 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
13370 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
13371 Packages file in the APT archive).  If one or more packages are found,
13372 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
13373 type.  If the package require the user to accept some non-free
13374 license, this is explained to the user.  The entire process make it
13375 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
13376 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
13377 not the browser for any missing features.</li>
13378
13379 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
13380 handlers.</strong> When the media players encounter a format or codec
13381 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
13382 should search for a package that would add support for it.  This
13383 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264.  The selection
13384 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
13385 plugin handling.  This is as far as I know implemented using a
13386 gstreamer hook.  The end result is that the user easily get access to
13387 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
13388 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.</li>
13389
13390 <li><strong>Better browser handling of some MIME types.</strong> When
13391 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
13392 start emacs to show it.  If I remember correctly, when doing the same
13393 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser.  At least I
13394 know Opera will show text files within the browser.  I much prefer the
13395 latter behaviour.</li>
13396
13397 </ol>
13398
13399 <p>There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
13400 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
13401 it do not matter much.</p>
13402
13403 <p>I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
13404 Debian release.  It would require the coordinated effort of several
13405 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.</p>
13406
13407       </div>
13408       <div class="tags">
13409
13410
13411         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>.
13412
13413
13414       </div>
13415     </div>
13416     <div class="padding"></div>
13417
13418     <div class="entry">
13419       <div class="title">
13420         <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>
13421       </div>
13422       <div class="date">
13423         26th July 2011
13424       </div>
13425       <div class="body">
13426         <p>The Norwegian <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</A>
13427 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
13428 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
13429 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
13430 security support for a few years.</p>
13431
13432 <p>The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
13433 that are missing in Debian at the moment.  It would be great if these
13434 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
13435 their own <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com">FixMyStreet</a> clone
13436 in their own country using only Debian packages.  The list of modules
13437 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn't very long, and I hope the perl group
13438 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
13439 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
13440 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
13441 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
13442 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
13443 easier in the future.</p>
13444
13445 <p>Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
13446 installed on my server was a simple call to 'cpan2deb Module::Name'
13447 and 'dpkg -i' to install the resulting package.  But this leave me
13448 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
13449 do not have time for.</p>
13450
13451       </div>
13452       <div class="tags">
13453
13454
13455         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>.
13456
13457
13458       </div>
13459     </div>
13460     <div class="padding"></div>
13461
13462     <div class="entry">
13463       <div class="title">
13464         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Software_vs__proprietary_softare___.html">Free Software vs. proprietary softare...</a>
13465       </div>
13466       <div class="date">
13467         20th June 2011
13468       </div>
13469       <div class="body">
13470         <p>Reading
13471 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2011/06/20/open-source-vs-closed-source-eulas/">the
13472 thingiverse blog</a>, I came across two highlights of interesting
13473 parts of the
13474 <a href="http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Autodesk_EULA">Autodesk</a>
13475 and
13476 <a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2011/06/things-you-cant-do-with-the-microsoft-kinect-sdk.html">Microsoft
13477 Kinect</a> End User License Agreements (EULAs), which illustrates
13478 quite well why I stay away from software with EULAs.  Whenever I take
13479 the time to read their content, the terms are simply unacceptable.</p>
13480
13481       </div>
13482       <div class="tags">
13483
13484
13485         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
13486
13487
13488       </div>
13489     </div>
13490     <div class="padding"></div>
13491
13492     <div class="entry">
13493       <div class="title">
13494         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Experimental_Open311_API_for_the_mySociety_fixmystreet_system.html">Experimental Open311 API for the mySociety fixmystreet system</a>
13495       </div>
13496       <div class="date">
13497         30th April 2011
13498       </div>
13499       <div class="body">
13500         <p>Today, the first draft implementation of an
13501 <a href="http://www.open311.org/">Open311 API</a> for the Norwegian
13502 service <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> started to
13503 work.  It is only available on the developer server for now, and I
13504 have not tested it using any existing Open311 client (I lack the
13505 platforms needed to run the clients I have found so far), but it is
13506 able to query the database and extract a list of open and closed
13507 requests within a given category and reported to a given municipality.
13508 I believe that is a good start to create a useful service for those
13509 that want to do data mining on the requests submitted so far.</p>
13510
13511 <p>Where is it?  Visit
13512 <a href="http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/">http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/</a>
13513 to have a look.  Please send feedback to the
13514 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami">fiksgatami
13515 (at) nuug.no</a> mailing list.</p>
13516
13517       </div>
13518       <div class="tags">
13519
13520
13521         Tags: <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/open311">open311</a>.
13522
13523
13524       </div>
13525     </div>
13526     <div class="padding"></div>
13527
13528     <div class="entry">
13529       <div class="title">
13530         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Initial_notes_on_adding_Open311_server_API_on_FixMyStreet.html">Initial notes on adding Open311 server API on FixMyStreet</a>
13531       </div>
13532       <div class="date">
13533         29th April 2011
13534       </div>
13535       <div class="body">
13536         <p>The last few days I have spent some time trying to add support for
13537 the <a href="http://www.open311.org/">Open311 API</a> in the
13538 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">Norwegian FixMyStreet service</a>.
13539 Earlier I believed Open311 would be a useful API to use to submit
13540 reports to the municipalities, but when I noticed that the
13541 <a href="http://fixmystreet.org.nz/">New Zealand version</a> of
13542 FixMyStreet had implemented Open311 on the server side, it occurred to
13543 me that this was a nice way to allow the public, press and
13544 municipalities to do data mining directly in the FixMyStreet service.
13545 Thus I went to work implementing the Open311 specification for
13546 FixMyStreet.  The implementation is not yet ready, but I am starting
13547 to get a draft limping along.  In the process, I have discovered a few
13548 issues with the Open311 specification.</p>
13549
13550 <p>One obvious missing feature is the lack of natural language
13551 handling in the specification.  The specification seem to assume all
13552 reports will be written in English, and do not provide a way for the
13553 receiving end to specify which languages are understood there.  To be
13554 able to use the same client and submit to several Open311 receivers,
13555 it would be useful to know which language to use when writing reports.
13556 I believe the specification should be extended to allow the receivers
13557 of problem reports to specify which language they accept, and the
13558 submitter to specify which language the report is written in.
13559 Language of a text can also be automatically guessed using statistical
13560 methods, but for multi-lingual persons like myself, it is useful to
13561 know which language to use when writing a problem report.  I suspect
13562 some lang=nb,nn kind of attribute would solve it.</p>
13563
13564 <p>A key part of the Open311 API is the list of services provided,
13565 which is similar to the categories used by FixMyStreet.  One issue I
13566 run into is the need to specify both name and unique identifier for
13567 each category.  The specification do not state that the identifier
13568 should be numeric, but all example implementations have used numbers
13569 here.  In FixMyStreet, there is no number associated with each
13570 category.  As the specification do not forbid it, I will use the name
13571 as the unique identifier for now and see how open311 clients handle
13572 it.</p>
13573
13574 <p>The report format in open311 and the report format in FixMyStreet
13575 differ in a key part.  FixMyStreet have a title and a description,
13576 while Open311 only have a description and lack the title.  I'm not
13577 quite sure how to best handle this yet.  When asking for a FixMyStreet
13578 report in Open311 format, I just merge title an description into the
13579 open311 description, but this is not going to work if the open311 API
13580 should be used for submitting new reports to FixMyStreet.</p>
13581
13582 <p>The search feature in Open311 is missing a way to ask for problems
13583 near a geographic location.  I believe this is important if one is to
13584 use Open311 as the query language for mobile units.  The specification
13585 should be extended to handle this, probably using some new lat=, lon=
13586 and range= options.</p>
13587
13588 <p>The final challenge I see is that the FixMyStreet code handle
13589 several administrations in one interface, while the Open311 API seem
13590 to assume only one administration.  For FixMyStreet, this mean a
13591 report can be sent to several administrations, and the categories
13592 available depend on the location of the problem.  Not quite sure how
13593 to best handle this.  I've noticed
13594 <a href="http://seeclickfix.com/open311/">SeeClickFix</a> added
13595 latitude and longitude options to the services request, but it do not
13596 solve the problem of what to return when no location is specified.
13597 Will have to investigate this a bit more.</p>
13598
13599 <p>My distaste for web forums have kept me from bringing these issues
13600 up with the open311 developer group.  I really wish they had a email
13601 list available via <a href="http://www.gmane.org/">Gmane</a> to use for
13602 discussions instead of only
13603 <a href="http://lists.open311.org/groups/discuss">a forum<a/>.  Oh,
13604 well.  That will probably resolve itself, one way or another.  I've
13605 also tried visiting the IRC channel #open311 on FreeNode, but no-one
13606 seem to reply to my questions there.  This make me wonder if I just
13607 fail to understand how the open311 community work.  It sure do not
13608 work like the free software project communities I am used to.</p>
13609
13610       </div>
13611       <div class="tags">
13612
13613
13614         Tags: <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/open311">open311</a>.
13615
13616
13617       </div>
13618     </div>
13619     <div class="padding"></div>
13620
13621     <div class="entry">
13622       <div class="title">
13623         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_enteres_Google_Summer_of_Code_2011.html">Gnash enteres Google Summer of Code 2011</a>
13624       </div>
13625       <div class="date">
13626          6th April 2011
13627       </div>
13628       <div class="body">
13629         <p><a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">The Gnash project</a> is still
13630 the most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation.
13631 A few days ago the project
13632 <a href="http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnash-dev/2011-04/msg00011.html">announced</a>
13633 that it will participate in Google Summer of Code.  I hope many
13634 students apply, and that some of them succeed in getting AVM2 support
13635 into Gnash.</p>
13636
13637       </div>
13638       <div class="tags">
13639
13640
13641         Tags: <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>.
13642
13643
13644       </div>
13645     </div>
13646     <div class="padding"></div>
13647
13648     <div class="entry">
13649       <div class="title">
13650         <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>
13651       </div>
13652       <div class="date">
13653          3rd April 2011
13654       </div>
13655       <div class="body">
13656         <p>Here is a small update for my English readers.  Most of my blog
13657 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
13658 update in English.</p>
13659
13660 <p>The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
13661 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
13662 of the British service
13663 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> up and running,
13664 and it has been running for a month now.  The entire project has been
13665 organised by me and two others.  Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
13666 to fund the development work.  In January I drafted a contract with
13667 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a> on what to develop,
13668 and in February the development took place.  Most of it involved
13669 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
13670 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
13671 running in any country by now.  The Norwegian
13672 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is using
13673 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> as the map
13674 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
13675 support for this had to be added/fixed.</p>
13676
13677 <p>The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
13678 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th.  The system is
13679 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
13680 problem reports in a few weeks.  Soon we hope to announce the Android
13681 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
13682 public infrastructure.</p>
13683
13684 <p>Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
13685 such service?</p>
13686
13687       </div>
13688       <div class="tags">
13689
13690
13691         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>.
13692
13693
13694       </div>
13695     </div>
13696     <div class="padding"></div>
13697
13698     <div class="entry">
13699       <div class="title">
13700         <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>
13701       </div>
13702       <div class="date">
13703         28th January 2011
13704       </div>
13705       <div class="body">
13706         <p>The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
13707 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo.  My idea is that
13708 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
13709 available on the Internet, and check our locally
13710 maintained/distributed software against this information.  It should
13711 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten.  The
13712 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
13713 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
13714 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
13715 out which security holes were present in our free software
13716 collection.</p>
13717
13718 <p>After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
13719 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
13720 consistent way across data sources.  I considered several ways to do
13721 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
13722 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
13723 existing naming scheme.  And it seem like I am not the first one to
13724 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
13725 solution.  Enter the <a href="http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html">Common
13726 Platform Enumeration</a> dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
13727 software, hardware and other platform components.  The CPE ids are
13728 mapped to CVEs in the <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/">National
13729 Vulnerability Database</a>, allowing me to look up know security
13730 issues for any CPE name.  With this in place, all I need to do is to
13731 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
13732 This is fairly trivial (I google for 'cve cpe $package' and check the
13733 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).</p>
13734
13735 <p>To give you an example.  The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
13736 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip.  If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
13737 check out, one could look up
13738 <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
13739 in NVD</a> and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
13740 The most recent one is
13741 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2010-0001">CVE-2010-0001</a>,
13742 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
13743 list of affected versions is provided.</p>
13744
13745 <p>The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
13746 for offline processing of issues.  Using this dump, I've written a
13747 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
13748 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs.  One give it CPEs
13749 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
13750 security issues out.</p>
13751
13752 <p>Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
13753 information need to be high.  For that to happen, I believe as many as
13754 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database.  I notice
13755 RHEL is providing
13756 <a href="https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt">a
13757 map from CVE to CPE</a>, indicating that they are using the CPE
13758 information.  I'm not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.</p>
13759
13760 <p>To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
13761 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
13762 the CVE database in NVD.  The result look fairly good, but there are
13763 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
13764 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
13765 Debian believe are affected by a CVE).  Hope to find time to improve
13766 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
13767 someone maintaining it.  So far my three emails with questions and
13768 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
13769 established soon.</p>
13770
13771 <p>An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
13772 mapping.  It would be useful to know which packages in for example
13773 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
13774 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
13775 for their packages.</p>
13776
13777       </div>
13778       <div class="tags">
13779
13780
13781         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>.
13782
13783
13784       </div>
13785     </div>
13786     <div class="padding"></div>
13787
13788     <div class="entry">
13789       <div class="title">
13790         <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>
13791       </div>
13792       <div class="date">
13793         23rd January 2011
13794       </div>
13795       <div class="body">
13796         <p>In the
13797 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data">discover-data</a>
13798 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
13799 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
13800 information.  One part of this script that I find very useful when
13801 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
13802 to the PCI device it claims.  It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
13803 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with.  To see
13804 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
13805 <tt>/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3>&1</tt>.  The relevant output on
13806 one of my machines like this:</p>
13807
13808 <pre>
13809 loaded modules:
13810 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
13811 10de:03f1 ohci_hcd
13812 10de:03f2 ehci_hcd
13813 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
13814 10de:03ec pata_amd
13815 10de:03f6 sata_nv
13816 1022:1103 k8temp
13817 109e:036e bttv
13818 109e:0878 snd_bt87x
13819 11ab:4364 sky2
13820 </pre>
13821
13822 <p>The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
13823 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:</p>
13824
13825 <pre>
13826 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
13827     echo loaded pci modules:
13828     (
13829         cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
13830         for address in * ; do
13831             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
13832                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
13833                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
13834                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
13835                     id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $3}'`
13836                     echo "$id $module"
13837                 fi
13838             fi
13839         done
13840     )
13841     echo
13842 fi
13843 </pre>
13844
13845 <p>Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
13846 mappings:</p>
13847
13848 <pre>
13849 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
13850     echo loaded usb modules:
13851     (
13852         cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
13853         for address in * ; do
13854             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
13855                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
13856                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
13857                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
13858                     id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $6}')
13859                     if [ "$id" ] ; then
13860                         echo "$id $module"
13861                     fi
13862                 fi
13863             fi
13864         done
13865     )
13866     echo
13867 fi
13868 </pre>
13869
13870 <p>This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
13871 well.</p>
13872
13873       </div>
13874       <div class="tags">
13875
13876
13877         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>.
13878
13879
13880       </div>
13881     </div>
13882     <div class="padding"></div>
13883
13884     <div class="entry">
13885       <div class="title">
13886         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_video_format_most_supported_in_web_browsers_.html">The video format most supported in web browsers?</a>
13887       </div>
13888       <div class="date">
13889         16th January 2011
13890       </div>
13891       <div class="body">
13892         <p>The video format struggle on the web continues, and the three
13893 contenders seem to be Ogg Theora, H.264 and WebM.  Most video sites
13894 seem to use H.264, while others use Ogg Theora.  Interestingly enough,
13895 the comments I see give me the feeling that a lot of people believe
13896 H.264 is the most supported video format in browsers, but according to
13897 the Wikipedia article on
13898 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video">HTML5 video</a>,
13899 this is not true.  Check out the nice table of supprted formats in
13900 different browsers there.  The format supported by most browsers is
13901 Ogg Theora, supported by released versions of Mozilla Firefox, Google
13902 Chrome, Chromium, Opera, Konqueror, Epiphany, Origyn Web Browser and
13903 BOLT browser, while not supported by Internet Explorer nor Safari.
13904 The runner up is WebM supported by released versions of Google Chrome
13905 Chromium Opera and Origyn Web Browser, and test versions of Mozilla
13906 Firefox.  H.264 is supported by released versions of Safari, Origyn
13907 Web Browser and BOLT browser, and the test version of Internet
13908 Explorer.  Those wanting Ogg Theora support in Internet Explorer and
13909 Safari can install plugins to get it.</p>
13910
13911 <p>To me, the simple conclusion from this is that to reach most users
13912 without any extra software installed, one uses Ogg Theora with the
13913 HTML5 video tag.   Of course to reach all those without a browser
13914 handling HTML5, one need fallback mechanisms.  In
13915 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a>, we provide first fallback to a
13916 plugin capable of playing MPEG1 video, and those without such support
13917 we have a second fallback to the Cortado java applet playing Ogg
13918 Theora.  This seem to work quite well, as can be seen in an <a
13919 href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20110111-semantic-web/">example
13920 from last week</a>.</p>
13921
13922 <p>The reason Ogg Theora is the most supported format, and H.264 is
13923 the least supported is simple.  Implementing and using H.264
13924 require royalty payment to MPEG-LA, and the terms of use from MPEG-LA
13925 are incompatible with free software licensing.  If you believed H.264
13926 was without royalties and license terms, check out
13927 "<a href="http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H.264 – Not The Kind Of
13928 Free That Matters</a>" by Simon Phipps.</p>
13929
13930 <p>A incomplete list of sites providing video in Ogg Theora is
13931 available from
13932 <a href="http://wiki.xiph.org/index.php/List_of_Theora_videos">the
13933 Xiph.org wiki</a>, if you want to have a look.  I'm not aware of a
13934 similar list for WebM nor H.264.</p>
13935
13936 <p>Update 2011-01-16 09:40: A question from Tollef on IRC made me
13937 realise that I failed to make it clear enough this text is about the
13938 &lt;video&gt; tag support in browsers and not the video support
13939 provided by external plugins like the Flash plugins.</p>
13940
13941       </div>
13942       <div class="tags">
13943
13944
13945         Tags: <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>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
13946
13947
13948       </div>
13949     </div>
13950     <div class="padding"></div>
13951
13952     <div class="entry">
13953       <div class="title">
13954         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Chrome_plan_to_drop_H_264_support_for_HTML5__lt_video_gt_.html">Chrome plan to drop H.264 support for HTML5 &lt;video&gt;</a>
13955       </div>
13956       <div class="date">
13957         12th January 2011
13958       </div>
13959       <div class="body">
13960         <p>Today I discovered
13961 <a href="http://www.digi.no/860070/google-dropper-h264-stotten-i-chrome">via
13962 digi.no</a> that the Chrome developers, in a surprising announcement,
13963 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/html-video-codec-support-in-chrome.html">yesterday
13964 announced</a> plans to drop H.264 support for HTML5 &lt;video&gt; in
13965 the browser.  The argument used is that H.264 is not a "completely
13966 open" codec technology.  If you believe H.264 was free for everyone
13967 to use, I recommend having a look at the essay
13968 "<a href="http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H.264 – Not The Kind Of
13969 Free That Matters</a>".  It is not free of cost for creators of video
13970 tools, nor those of us that want to publish on the Internet, and the
13971 terms provided by MPEG-LA excludes free software projects from
13972 licensing the patents needed for H.264.  Some background information
13973 on the Google announcement is available from
13974 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/24243/Google_To_Drop_H264_Support_from_Chrome">OSnews</a>.
13975 A good read. :)</p>
13976
13977 <p>Personally, I believe it is great that Google is taking a stand to
13978 promote equal terms for everyone when it comes to video publishing on
13979 the Internet.  This can only be done by publishing using free and open
13980 standards, which is only possible if the web browsers provide support
13981 for these free and open standards.  At the moment there seem to be two
13982 camps in the web browser world when it come to video support.  Some
13983 browsers support H.264, and others support
13984 <a href="http://www.theora.org/">Ogg Theora</a> and
13985 <a href="http://www.webmproject.org/">WebM</a>
13986 (<a href="http://www.diracvideo.org/">Dirac</a> is not really an option
13987 yet), forcing those of us that want to publish video on the Internet
13988 and which can not accept the terms of use presented by MPEG-LA for
13989 H.264 to not reach all potential viewers.
13990 Wikipedia keep <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video">an
13991 updated summary</a> of the current browser support.</p>
13992
13993 <p>Not surprising, several people would prefer Google to keep
13994 promoting H.264, and John Gruber
13995 <a href="http://daringfireball.net/2011/01/simple_questions">presents
13996 the mind set</a> of these people quite well.  His rhetorical questions
13997 provoked a reply from Thom Holwerda with another set of questions
13998 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/24245/10_Questions_for_John_Gruber_Regarding_H_264_WebM">presenting
13999 the issues with H.264</a>. Both are worth a read.</p>
14000
14001 <p>Some argue that if Google is dropping H.264 because it isn't free,
14002 they should also drop support for the Adobe Flash plugin.  This
14003 argument was covered by Simon Phipps in
14004 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2011/01/google-and-h264---far-from-hypocritical/index.htm">todays
14005 blog post</a>, which I find to put the issue in context.  To me it
14006 make perfect sense to drop native H.264 support for HTML5 in the
14007 browser while still allowing plugins.</p>
14008
14009 <p>I suspect the reason this announcement make so many people protest,
14010 is that all the users and promoters of H.264 suddenly get an uneasy
14011 feeling that they might be backing the wrong horse.  A lot of TV
14012 broadcasters have been moving to H.264 the last few years, and a lot
14013 of money has been invested in hardware based on the belief that they
14014 could use the same video format for both broadcasting and web
14015 publishing.  Suddenly this belief is shaken.</p>
14016
14017 <p>An interesting question is why Google is doing this.  While the
14018 presented argument might be true enough, I believe Google would only
14019 present the argument if the change make sense from a business
14020 perspective.  One reason might be that they are currently negotiating
14021 with MPEG-LA over royalties or usage terms, and giving MPEG-LA the
14022 feeling that dropping H.264 completely from Chroome, Youtube and
14023 Google Video would improve the negotiation position of Google.
14024 Another reason might be that Google want to save money by not having
14025 to pay the video tax to MPEG-LA at all, and thus want to move to a
14026 video format not requiring royalties at all.  A third reason might be
14027 that the Chrome development team simply want to avoid the
14028 Chrome/Chromium split to get more help with the development of Chrome.
14029 I guess time will tell.</p>
14030
14031 <p>Update 2011-01-15: The Google Chrome team provided
14032 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/more-about-chrome-html-video-codec.html">more
14033 background and information on the move</a> it a blog post yesterday.</p>
14034
14035       </div>
14036       <div class="tags">
14037
14038
14039         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
14040
14041
14042       </div>
14043     </div>
14044     <div class="padding"></div>
14045
14046     <div class="entry">
14047       <div class="title">
14048         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_standards_are_Free_and_Open_as_defined_by_Digistan_.html">What standards are Free and Open as defined by Digistan?</a>
14049       </div>
14050       <div class="date">
14051         30th December 2010
14052       </div>
14053       <div class="body">
14054         <p>After trying to
14055 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Ogg_Theora_a_free_and_open_standard_.html">compare
14056 Ogg Theora</a> to
14057 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">the Digistan
14058 definition</a> of a free and open standard, I concluded that this need
14059 to be done for more standards and started on a framework for doing
14060 this.  As a start, I want to get the status for all the standards in
14061 the Norwegian reference directory, which include UTF-8, HTML, PDF, ODF,
14062 JPEG, PNG, SVG and others.  But to be able to complete this in a
14063 reasonable time frame, I will need help.</p>
14064
14065 <p>If you want to help out with this work, please visit
14066 <a href="http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/standard/digistan-analyse">the
14067 wiki pages I have set up for this</a>, and let me know that you want
14068 to help out.  The IRC channel #nuug on irc.freenode.net is a good
14069 place to coordinate this for now, as it is the IRC channel for the
14070 NUUG association where I have created the framework (I am the leader
14071 of the Norwegian Unix User Group).</p>
14072
14073 <p>The framework is still forming, and a lot is left to do.  Do not be
14074 scared by the sketchy form of the current pages. :)</p>
14075
14076       </div>
14077       <div class="tags">
14078
14079
14080         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</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>.
14081
14082
14083       </div>
14084     </div>
14085     <div class="padding"></div>
14086
14087     <div class="entry">
14088       <div class="title">
14089         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_many_definitions_of_a_open_standard.html">The many definitions of a open standard</a>
14090       </div>
14091       <div class="date">
14092         27th December 2010
14093       </div>
14094       <div class="body">
14095         <p>One of the reasons I like the Digistan definition of
14096 "<a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">Free and
14097 Open Standard</a>" is that this is a new term, and thus the meaning of
14098 the term has been decided by Digistan.  The term "Open Standard" has
14099 become so misunderstood that it is no longer very useful when talking
14100 about standards.  One end up discussing which definition is the best
14101 one and with such frame the only one gaining are the proponents of
14102 de-facto standards and proprietary solutions.</p>
14103
14104 <p>But to give us an idea about the diversity of definitions of open
14105 standards, here are a few that I know about.  This list is not
14106 complete, but can be a starting point for those that want to do a
14107 complete survey.  More definitions are available on the
14108 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard">wikipedia
14109 page</a>.</p>
14110
14111 <p>First off is my favourite, the definition from the European
14112 Interoperability Framework version 1.0.  Really sad to notice that BSA
14113 and others has succeeded in getting it removed from version 2.0 of the
14114 framework by stacking the committee drafting the new version with
14115 their own people.  Anyway, the definition is still available and it
14116 include the key properties needed to make sure everyone can use a
14117 specification on equal terms.</p>
14118
14119 <blockquote>
14120
14121 <p>The following are the minimal characteristics that a specification
14122 and its attendant documents must have in order to be considered an
14123 open standard:</p>
14124
14125 <ul>
14126
14127 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
14128 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
14129 open decision-making procedure available to all interested parties
14130 (consensus or majority decision etc.).</li>
14131
14132 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
14133 document is available either freely or at a nominal charge. It must be
14134 permissible to all to copy, distribute and use it for no fee or at a
14135 nominal fee.</li>
14136
14137 <li>The intellectual property - i.e. patents possibly present - of
14138 (parts of) the standard is made irrevocably available on a royalty-
14139 free basis.</li>
14140
14141 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.</li>
14142
14143 </ul>
14144 </blockquote>
14145
14146 <p>Another one originates from my friends over at
14147 <a href="http://www.dkuug.dk/">DKUUG</a>, who coined and gathered
14148 support for <a href="http://www.aaben-standard.dk/">this
14149 definition</a> in 2004.  It even made it into the Danish parlament as
14150 <a href="http://www.ft.dk/dokumenter/tingdok.aspx?/samling/20051/beslutningsforslag/B103/som_fremsat.htm">their
14151 definition of a open standard</a>.  Another from a different part of
14152 the Danish government is available from the wikipedia page.</p>
14153
14154 <blockquote>
14155
14156 <p>En åben standard opfylder følgende krav:</p>
14157
14158 <ol>
14159
14160 <li>Veldokumenteret med den fuldstændige specifikation offentligt
14161 tilgængelig.</li>
14162
14163 <li>Frit implementerbar uden økonomiske, politiske eller juridiske
14164 begrænsninger på implementation og anvendelse.</li>
14165
14166 <li>Standardiseret og vedligeholdt i et åbent forum (en såkaldt
14167 "standardiseringsorganisation") via en åben proces.</li>
14168
14169 </ol>
14170
14171 </blockquote>
14172
14173 <p>Then there is <a href="http://www.fsfe.org/projects/os/def.html">the
14174 definition</a> from Free Software Foundation Europe.</p>
14175
14176 <blockquote>
14177
14178 <p>An Open Standard refers to a format or protocol that is</p>
14179
14180 <ol>
14181
14182 <li>subject to full public assessment and use without constraints in a
14183 manner equally available to all parties;</li>
14184
14185 <li>without any components or extensions that have dependencies on
14186 formats or protocols that do not meet the definition of an Open
14187 Standard themselves;</li>
14188
14189 <li>free from legal or technical clauses that limit its utilisation by
14190 any party or in any business model;</li>
14191
14192 <li>managed and further developed independently of any single vendor
14193 in a process open to the equal participation of competitors and third
14194 parties;</li>
14195
14196 <li>available in multiple complete implementations by competing
14197 vendors, or as a complete implementation equally available to all
14198 parties.</li>
14199
14200 </ol>
14201
14202 </blockquote>
14203
14204 <p>A long time ago, SUN Microsystems, now bought by Oracle, created
14205 its
14206 <a href="http://blogs.sun.com/dennisding/resource/Open%20Standard%20Definition.pdf">Open
14207 Standards Checklist</a> with a fairly detailed description.</p>
14208
14209 <blockquote>
14210 <p>Creation and Management of an Open Standard
14211
14212 <ul>
14213
14214 <li>Its development and management process must be collaborative and
14215   democratic:
14216
14217          <ul>
14218
14219          <li>Participation must be accessible to all those who wish to
14220             participate and can meet fair and reasonable criteria
14221             imposed by the organization under which it is developed
14222             and managed.</li>
14223
14224          <li>The processes must be documented and, through a known
14225             method, can be changed through input from all
14226             participants.</li>
14227
14228          <li>The process must be based on formal and binding commitments for
14229             the disclosure and licensing of intellectual property rights.</li>
14230
14231          <li>Development and management should strive for consensus,
14232             and an appeals process must be clearly outlined.</li>
14233
14234          <li>The standard specification must be open to extensive
14235             public review at least once in its life-cycle, with
14236             comments duly discussed and acted upon, if required.</li>
14237
14238          </ul>
14239
14240 </li>
14241
14242 </ul>
14243
14244 <p>Use and Licensing of an Open Standard</p>
14245 <ul>
14246
14247 <li>The standard must describe an interface, not an implementation,
14248   and the industry must be capable of creating multiple, competing
14249   implementations to the interface described in the standard without
14250   undue or restrictive constraints.  Interfaces include APIs,
14251   protocols, schemas, data formats and their encoding.</li>
14252
14253 <li> The standard must not contain any proprietary "hooks" that create
14254   a technical or economic barriers</li>
14255
14256 <li>Faithful implementations of the standard must
14257   interoperate. Interoperability means the ability of a computer
14258   program to communicate and exchange information with other computer
14259   programs and mutually to use the information which has been
14260   exchanged. This includes the ability to use, convert, or exchange
14261   file formats, protocols, schemas, interface information or
14262   conventions, so as to permit the computer program to work with other
14263   computer programs and users in all the ways in which they are
14264   intended to function.</li>
14265
14266 <li>It must be permissible for anyone to copy, distribute and read the
14267   standard for a nominal fee, or even no fee. If there is a fee, it
14268   must be low enough to not preclude widespread use.</li>
14269
14270 <li>It must be possible for anyone to obtain free (no royalties or
14271   fees; also known as "royalty free"), worldwide, non-exclusive and
14272   perpetual licenses to all essential patent claims to make, use and
14273   sell products based on the standard.  The only exceptions are
14274   terminations per the reciprocity and defensive suspension terms
14275   outlined below. Essential patent claims include pending, unpublished
14276   patents, published patents, and patent applications. The license is
14277   only for the exact scope of the standard in question.
14278
14279       <ul>
14280
14281       <li> May be conditioned only on reciprocal licenses to any of
14282         licensees' patent claims essential to practice that standard
14283         (also known as a reciprocity clause)</li>
14284
14285       <li> May be terminated as to any licensee who sues the licensor
14286         or any other licensee for infringement of patent claims
14287         essential to practice that standard (also known as a
14288         "defensive suspension" clause)</li>
14289
14290       <li> The same licensing terms are available to every potential
14291         licensor</li>
14292
14293       </ul>
14294 </li>
14295
14296 <li>The licensing terms of an open standards must not preclude
14297   implementations of that standard under open source licensing terms
14298   or restricted licensing terms</li>
14299
14300 </ul>
14301
14302 </blockquote>
14303
14304 <p>It is said that one of the nice things about standards is that
14305 there are so many of them.  As you can see, the same holds true for
14306 open standard definitions.  Most of the definitions have a lot in
14307 common, and it is not really controversial what properties a open
14308 standard should have, but the diversity of definitions have made it
14309 possible for those that want to avoid a level marked field and real
14310 competition to downplay the significance of open standards.  I hope we
14311 can turn this tide by focusing on the advantages of Free and Open
14312 Standards.</p>
14313
14314       </div>
14315       <div class="tags">
14316
14317
14318         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</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>.
14319
14320
14321       </div>
14322     </div>
14323     <div class="padding"></div>
14324
14325     <div class="entry">
14326       <div class="title">
14327         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Ogg_Theora_a_free_and_open_standard_.html">Is Ogg Theora a free and open standard?</a>
14328       </div>
14329       <div class="date">
14330         25th December 2010
14331       </div>
14332       <div class="body">
14333         <p><a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">The
14334 Digistan definition</a> of a free and open standard reads like this:</p>
14335
14336 <blockquote>
14337
14338 <p>The Digital Standards Organization defines free and open standard
14339 as follows:</p>
14340
14341 <ol>
14342
14343 <li>A free and open standard is immune to vendor capture at all stages
14344 in its life-cycle. Immunity from vendor capture makes it possible to
14345 freely use, improve upon, trust, and extend a standard over time.</li>
14346
14347 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
14348 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
14349 open decision-making procedure available to all interested
14350 parties.</li>
14351
14352 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
14353 document is available freely. It must be permissible to all to copy,
14354 distribute, and use it freely.</li>
14355
14356 <li>The patents possibly present on (parts of) the standard are made
14357 irrevocably available on a royalty-free basis.</li>
14358
14359 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.</li>
14360
14361 </ol>
14362
14363 <p>The economic outcome of a free and open standard, which can be
14364 measured, is that it enables perfect competition between suppliers of
14365 products based on the standard.</p>
14366 </blockquote>
14367
14368 <p>For a while now I have tried to figure out of Ogg Theora is a free
14369 and open standard according to this definition.  Here is a short
14370 writeup of what I have been able to gather so far.  I brought up the
14371 topic on the Xiph advocacy mailing list
14372 <a href="http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/advocacy/2009-July/001632.html">in
14373 July 2009</a>, for those that want to see some background information.
14374 According to Ivo Emanuel Gonçalves and Monty Montgomery on that list
14375 the Ogg Theora specification fulfils the Digistan definition.</p>
14376
14377 <p><strong>Free from vendor capture?</strong></p>
14378
14379 <p>As far as I can see, there is no single vendor that can control the
14380 Ogg Theora specification.  It can be argued that the
14381 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/">Xiph foundation</A> is such vendor, but
14382 given that it is a non-profit foundation with the expressed goal
14383 making free and open protocols and standards available, it is not
14384 obvious that this is a real risk.  One issue with the Xiph
14385 foundation is that its inner working (as in board member list, or who
14386 control the foundation) are not easily available on the web.  I've
14387 been unable to find out who is in the foundation board, and have not
14388 seen any accounting information documenting how money is handled nor
14389 where is is spent in the foundation.  It is thus not obvious for an
14390 external observer who control The Xiph foundation, and for all I know
14391 it is possible for a single vendor to take control over the
14392 specification.  But it seem unlikely.</p>
14393
14394 <p><strong>Maintained by open not-for-profit organisation?</strong></p>
14395
14396 <p>Assuming that the Xiph foundation is the organisation its web pages
14397 claim it to be, this point is fulfilled.  If Xiph foundation is
14398 controlled by a single vendor, it isn't, but I have not found any
14399 documentation indicating this.</p>
14400
14401 <p>According to
14402 <a href="http://media.hiof.no/diverse/fad/rapport_4.pdf">a report</a>
14403 prepared by Audun Vaaler og Børre Ludvigsen for the Norwegian
14404 government, the Xiph foundation is a non-commercial organisation and
14405 the development process is open, transparent and non-Discrimatory.
14406 Until proven otherwise, I believe it make most sense to believe the
14407 report is correct.</p>
14408
14409 <p><strong>Specification freely available?</strong></p>
14410
14411 <p>The specification for the <a href="http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/">Ogg
14412 container format</a> and both the
14413 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/vorbis/doc/">Vorbis</a> and
14414 <a href="http://theora.org/doc/">Theora</a> codeces are available on
14415 the web.  This are the terms in the Vorbis and Theora specification:
14416
14417 <blockquote>
14418
14419 Anyone may freely use and distribute the Ogg and [Vorbis/Theora]
14420 specifications, whether in private, public, or corporate
14421 capacity. However, the Xiph.Org Foundation and the Ogg project reserve
14422 the right to set the Ogg [Vorbis/Theora] specification and certify
14423 specification compliance.
14424
14425 </blockquote>
14426
14427 <p>The Ogg container format is specified in IETF
14428 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/rfc3533.txt">RFC 3533</a>, and
14429 this is the term:<p>
14430
14431 <blockquote>
14432
14433 <p>This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
14434 others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it
14435 or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published and
14436 distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any kind,
14437 provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are
14438 included on all such copies and derivative works.  However, this
14439 document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing
14440 the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other
14441 Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of developing
14442 Internet standards in which case the procedures for copyrights defined
14443 in the Internet Standards process must be followed, or as required to
14444 translate it into languages other than English.</p>
14445
14446 <p>The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be
14447 revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns.</p>
14448 </blockquote>
14449
14450 <p>All these terms seem to allow unlimited distribution and use, an
14451 this term seem to be fulfilled.  There might be a problem with the
14452 missing permission to distribute modified versions of the text, and
14453 thus reuse it in other specifications.  Not quite sure if that is a
14454 requirement for the Digistan definition.</p>
14455
14456 <p><strong>Royalty-free?</strong></p>
14457
14458 <p>There are no known patent claims requiring royalties for the Ogg
14459 Theora format.
14460 <a href="http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=65782">MPEG-LA</a>
14461 and
14462 <a href="http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/04/30/237238/Steve-Jobs-Hints-At-Theora-Lawsuit">Steve
14463 Jobs</a> in Apple claim to know about some patent claims (submarine
14464 patents) against the Theora format, but no-one else seem to believe
14465 them.  Both Opera Software and the Mozilla Foundation have looked into
14466 this and decided to implement Ogg Theora support in their browsers
14467 without paying any royalties.  For now the claims from MPEG-LA and
14468 Steve Jobs seem more like FUD to scare people to use the H.264 codec
14469 than any real problem with Ogg Theora.</p>
14470
14471 <p><strong>No constraints on re-use?</strong></p>
14472
14473 <p>I am not aware of any constraints on re-use.</p>
14474
14475 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
14476
14477 <p>3 of 5 requirements seem obviously fulfilled, and the remaining 2
14478 depend on the governing structure of the Xiph foundation.  Given the
14479 background report used by the Norwegian government, I believe it is
14480 safe to assume the last two requirements are fulfilled too, but it
14481 would be nice if the Xiph foundation web site made it easier to verify
14482 this.</p>
14483
14484 <p>It would be nice to see other analysis of other specifications to
14485 see if they are free and open standards.</p>
14486
14487       </div>
14488       <div class="tags">
14489
14490
14491         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</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>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
14492
14493
14494       </div>
14495     </div>
14496     <div class="padding"></div>
14497
14498     <div class="entry">
14499       <div class="title">
14500         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_reply_from_Edgar_Villanueva_to_Microsoft_in_Peru.html">The reply from Edgar Villanueva to Microsoft in Peru</a>
14501       </div>
14502       <div class="date">
14503         25th December 2010
14504       </div>
14505       <div class="body">
14506         <p>A few days ago
14507 <a href="http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article189879.ece">an
14508 article</a> in the Norwegian Computerworld magazine about how version
14509 2.0 of
14510 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Interoperability_Framework">European
14511 Interoperability Framework</a> has been successfully lobbied by the
14512 proprietary software industry to remove the focus on free software.
14513 Nothing very surprising there, given
14514 <a href="http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/03/29/2115235/Open-Source-Open-Standards-Under-Attack-In-Europe">earlier
14515 reports</a> on how Microsoft and others have stacked the committees in
14516 this work.  But I find this very sad.   The definition of
14517 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/dokumenter/standard-presse-def-200506.txt">an
14518 open standard from version 1</a> was very good, and something I
14519 believe should be used also in the future, alongside
14520 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">the
14521 definition from Digistan</A>.  Version 2 have removed the open
14522 standard definition from its content.</p>
14523
14524 <p>Anyway, the news reminded me of the great reply sent by Dr. Edgar
14525 Villanueva, congressman in Peru at the time, to Microsoft as a reply
14526 to Microsofts attack on his proposal regarding the use of free software
14527 in the public sector in Peru.  As the text was not available from a
14528 few of the URLs where it used to be available, I copy it here from
14529 <a href="http://gnuwin.epfl.ch/articles/en/reponseperou/villanueva_to_ms.html">my
14530 source</a> to ensure it is available also in the future.  Some
14531 background information about that story is available in
14532 <a href="http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6099">an article</a> from
14533 Linux Journal in 2002.</p>
14534
14535 <blockquote>
14536 <p>Lima, 8th of April, 2002<br>
14537 To: Señor JUAN ALBERTO GONZÁLEZ<br>
14538 General Manager of Microsoft Perú</p>
14539
14540 <p>Dear Sir:</p>
14541
14542 <p>First of all, I thank you for your letter of March 25, 2002 in which you state the official position of Microsoft relative to Bill Number 1609, Free Software in Public Administration, which is indubitably inspired by the desire for Peru to find a suitable place in the global technological context. In the same spirit, and convinced that we will find the best solutions through an exchange of clear and open ideas, I will take this opportunity to reply to the commentaries included in your letter.</p>
14543
14544 <p>While acknowledging that opinions such as yours constitute a significant contribution, it would have been even more worthwhile for me if, rather than formulating objections of a general nature (which we will analyze in detail later) you had gathered solid arguments for the advantages that proprietary software could bring to the Peruvian State, and to its citizens in general, since this would have allowed a more enlightening exchange in respect of each of our positions.</p>
14545
14546 <p>With the aim of creating an orderly debate, we will assume that what you call "open source software" is what the Bill defines as "free software", since there exists software for which the source code is distributed together with the program, but which does not fall within the definition established by the Bill; and that what you call "commercial software" is what the Bill defines as "proprietary" or "unfree", given that there exists free software which is sold in the market for a price like any other good or service.</p>
14547
14548 <p>It is also necessary to make it clear that the aim of the Bill we are discussing is not directly related to the amount of direct savings that can by made by using free software in state institutions. That is in any case a marginal aggregate value, but in no way is it the chief focus of the Bill. The basic principles which inspire the Bill are linked to the basic guarantees of a state of law, such as:</p>
14549
14550 <p>
14551 <ul>
14552 <li>Free access to public information by the citizen. </li>
14553 <li>Permanence of public data. </li>
14554 <li>Security of the State and citizens.</li>
14555 </ul>
14556 </p>
14557
14558 <p>To guarantee the free access of citizens to public information, it is indispensable that the encoding of data is not tied to a single provider. The use of standard and open formats gives a guarantee of this free access, if necessary through the creation of compatible free software.</p>
14559
14560 <p>To guarantee the permanence of public data, it is necessary that the usability and maintenance of the software does not depend on the goodwill of the suppliers, or on the monopoly conditions imposed by them. For this reason the State needs systems the development of which can be guaranteed due to the availability of the source code.</p>
14561
14562 <p>To guarantee national security or the security of the State, it is indispensable to be able to rely on systems without elements which allow control from a distance or the undesired transmission of information to third parties. Systems with source code freely accessible to the public are required to allow their inspection by the State itself, by the citizens, and by a large number of independent experts throughout the world. Our proposal brings further security, since the knowledge of the source code will eliminate the growing number of programs with *spy code*. </p>
14563
14564 <p>In the same way, our proposal strengthens the security of the citizens, both in their role as legitimate owners of information managed by the state, and in their role as consumers. In this second case, by allowing the growth of a widespread availability of free software not containing *spy code* able to put at risk privacy and individual freedoms.</p>
14565
14566 <p>In this sense, the Bill is limited to establishing the conditions under which the state bodies will obtain software in the future, that is, in a way compatible with these basic principles.</p>
14567
14568
14569 <p>From reading the Bill it will be clear that once passed:<br>
14570 <li>the law does not forbid the production of proprietary software</li>
14571 <li>the law does not forbid the sale of proprietary software</li>
14572 <li>the law does not specify which concrete software to use</li>
14573 <li>the law does not dictate the supplier from whom software will be bought</li>
14574 <li>the law does not limit the terms under which a software product can be licensed.</li>
14575
14576 </p>
14577
14578 <p>What the Bill does express clearly, is that, for software to be acceptable for the state it is not enough that it is technically capable of fulfilling a task, but that further the contractual conditions must satisfy a series of requirements regarding the license, without which the State cannot guarantee the citizen adequate processing of his data, watching over its integrity, confidentiality, and accessibility throughout time, as these are very critical aspects for its normal functioning.</p>
14579
14580 <p>We agree, Mr. Gonzalez, that information and communication technology have a significant impact on the quality of life of the citizens (whether it be positive or negative). We surely also agree that the basic values I have pointed out above are fundamental in a democratic state like Peru. So we are very interested to know of any other way of guaranteeing these principles, other than through the use of free software in the terms defined by the Bill.</p>
14581
14582 <p>As for the observations you have made, we will now go on to analyze them in detail:</p>
14583
14584 <p>Firstly, you point out that: "1. The bill makes it compulsory for all public bodies to use only free software, that is to say open source software, which breaches the principles of equality before the law, that of non-discrimination and the right of free private enterprise, freedom of industry and of contract, protected by the constitution."</p>
14585
14586 <p>This understanding is in error. The Bill in no way affects the rights you list; it limits itself entirely to establishing conditions for the use of software on the part of state institutions, without in any way meddling in private sector transactions. It is a well established principle that the State does not enjoy the wide spectrum of contractual freedom of the private sector, as it is limited in its actions precisely by the requirement for transparency of public acts; and in this sense, the preservation of the greater common interest must prevail when legislating on the matter.</p>
14587
14588 <p>The Bill protects equality under the law, since no natural or legal person is excluded from the right of offering these goods to the State under the conditions defined in the Bill and without more limitations than those established by the Law of State Contracts and Purchasing (T.U.O. by Supreme Decree No. 012-2001-PCM).</p>
14589
14590 <p>The Bill does not introduce any discrimination whatever, since it only establishes *how* the goods have to be provided (which is a state power) and not *who* has to provide them (which would effectively be discriminatory, if restrictions based on national origin, race religion, ideology, sexual preference etc. were imposed). On the contrary, the Bill is decidedly antidiscriminatory. This is so because by defining with no room for doubt the conditions for the provision of software, it prevents state bodies from using software which has a license including discriminatory conditions.</p>
14591
14592 <p>It should be obvious from the preceding two paragraphs that the Bill does not harm free private enterprise, since the latter can always choose under what conditions it will produce software; some of these will be acceptable to the State, and others will not be since they contradict the guarantee of the basic principles listed above. This free initiative is of course compatible with the freedom of industry and freedom of contract (in the limited form in which the State can exercise the latter). Any private subject can produce software under the conditions which the State requires, or can refrain from doing so. Nobody is forced to adopt a model of production, but if they wish to provide software to the State, they must provide the mechanisms which guarantee the basic principles, and which are those described in the Bill.</p>
14593
14594 <p>By way of an example: nothing in the text of the Bill would prevent your company offering the State bodies an office "suite", under the conditions defined in the Bill and setting the price that you consider satisfactory. If you did not, it would not be due to restrictions imposed by the law, but to business decisions relative to the method of commercializing your products, decisions with which the State is not involved.</p>
14595
14596 <p>To continue; you note that:" 2. The bill, by making the use of open source software compulsory, would establish discriminatory and non competitive practices in the contracting and purchasing by public bodies..."</p>
14597
14598 <p>This statement is just a reiteration of the previous one, and so the response can be found above. However, let us concern ourselves for a moment with your comment regarding "non-competitive ... practices."</p>
14599
14600 <p>Of course, in defining any kind of purchase, the buyer sets conditions which relate to the proposed use of the good or service. From the start, this excludes certain manufacturers from the possibility of competing, but does not exclude them "a priori", but rather based on a series of principles determined by the autonomous will of the purchaser, and so the process takes place in conformance with the law. And in the Bill it is established that *no one* is excluded from competing as far as he guarantees the fulfillment of the basic principles.</p>
14601
14602 <p>Furthermore, the Bill *stimulates* competition, since it tends to generate a supply of software with better conditions of usability, and to better existing work, in a model of continuous improvement.</p>
14603
14604 <p>On the other hand, the central aspect of competivity is the chance to provide better choices to the consumer. Now, it is impossible to ignore the fact that marketing does not play a neutral role when the product is offered on the market (since accepting the opposite would lead one to suppose that firms' expenses in marketing lack any sense), and that therefore a significant expense under this heading can influence the decisions of the purchaser. This influence of marketing is in large measure reduced by the bill that we are backing, since the choice within the framework proposed is based on the *technical merits* of the product and not on the effort put into commercialization by the producer; in this sense, competitiveness is increased, since the smallest software producer can compete on equal terms with the most powerful corporations.</p>
14605
14606 <p>It is necessary to stress that there is no position more anti-competitive than that of the big software producers, which frequently abuse their dominant position, since in innumerable cases they propose as a solution to problems raised by users: "update your software to the new version" (at the user's expense, naturally); furthermore, it is common to find arbitrary cessation of technical help for products, which, in the provider's judgment alone, are "old"; and so, to receive any kind of technical assistance, the user finds himself forced to migrate to new versions (with non-trivial costs, especially as changes in hardware platform are often involved). And as the whole infrastructure is based on proprietary data formats, the user stays "trapped" in the need to continue using products from the same supplier, or to make the huge effort to change to another environment (probably also proprietary).</p>
14607
14608 <p>You add: "3. So, by compelling the State to favor a business model based entirely on open source, the bill would only discourage the local and international manufacturing companies, which are the ones which really undertake important expenditures, create a significant number of direct and indirect jobs, as well as contributing to the GNP, as opposed to a model of open source software which tends to have an ever weaker economic impact, since it mainly creates jobs in the service sector."</p>
14609
14610 <p>I do not agree with your statement. Partly because of what you yourself point out in paragraph 6 of your letter, regarding the relative weight of services in the context of software use. This contradiction alone would invalidate your position. The service model, adopted by a large number of companies in the software industry, is much larger in economic terms, and with a tendency to increase, than the licensing of programs.</p>
14611
14612 <p>On the other hand, the private sector of the economy has the widest possible freedom to choose the economic model which best suits its interests, even if this freedom of choice is often obscured subliminally by the disproportionate expenditure on marketing by the producers of proprietary software.</p>
14613
14614 <p>In addition, a reading of your opinion would lead to the conclusion that the State market is crucial and essential for the proprietary software industry, to such a point that the choice made by the State in this bill would completely eliminate the market for these firms. If that is true, we can deduce that the State must be subsidizing the proprietary software industry. In the unlikely event that this were true, the State would have the right to apply the subsidies in the area it considered of greatest social value; it is undeniable, in this improbable hypothesis, that if the State decided to subsidize software, it would have to do so choosing the free over the proprietary, considering its social effect and the rational use of taxpayers money.</p>
14615
14616 <p>In respect of the jobs generated by proprietary software in countries like ours, these mainly concern technical tasks of little aggregate value; at the local level, the technicians who provide support for proprietary software produced by transnational companies do not have the possibility of fixing bugs, not necessarily for lack of technical capability or of talent, but because they do not have access to the source code to fix it. With free software one creates more technically qualified employment and a framework of free competence where success is only tied to the ability to offer good technical support and quality of service, one stimulates the market, and one increases the shared fund of knowledge, opening up alternatives to generate services of greater total value and a higher quality level, to the benefit of all involved: producers, service organizations, and consumers.</p>
14617
14618 <p>It is a common phenomenon in developing countries that local software industries obtain the majority of their takings in the service sector, or in the creation of "ad hoc" software. Therefore, any negative impact that the application of the Bill might have in this sector will be more than compensated by a growth in demand for services (as long as these are carried out to high quality standards). If the transnational software companies decide not to compete under these new rules of the game, it is likely that they will undergo some decrease in takings in terms of payment for licenses; however, considering that these firms continue to allege that much of the software used by the State has been illegally copied, one can see that the impact will not be very serious. Certainly, in any case their fortune will be determined by market laws, changes in which cannot be avoided; many firms traditionally associated with proprietary software have already set out on the road (supported by copious expense) of providing services associated with free software, which shows that the models are not mutually exclusive.</p>
14619
14620 <p>With this bill the State is deciding that it needs to preserve certain fundamental values. And it is deciding this based on its sovereign power, without affecting any of the constitutional guarantees. If these values could be guaranteed without having to choose a particular economic model, the effects of the law would be even more beneficial. In any case, it should be clear that the State does not choose an economic model; if it happens that there only exists one economic model capable of providing software which provides the basic guarantee of these principles, this is because of historical circumstances, not because of an arbitrary choice of a given model.</p>
14621
14622 <p>Your letter continues: "4. The bill imposes the use of open source software without considering the dangers that this can bring from the point of view of security, guarantee, and possible violation of the intellectual property rights of third parties."</p>
14623
14624 <p>Alluding in an abstract way to "the dangers this can bring", without specifically mentioning a single one of these supposed dangers, shows at the least some lack of knowledge of the topic. So, allow me to enlighten you on these points.</p>
14625
14626 <p>On security:</p>
14627
14628 <p>National security has already been mentioned in general terms in the initial discussion of the basic principles of the bill. In more specific terms, relative to the security of the software itself, it is well known that all software (whether proprietary or free) contains errors or "bugs" (in programmers' slang). But it is also well known that the bugs in free software are fewer, and are fixed much more quickly, than in proprietary software. It is not in vain that numerous public bodies responsible for the IT security of state systems in developed countries require the use of free software for the same conditions of security and efficiency.</p>
14629
14630 <p>What is impossible to prove is that proprietary software is more secure than free, without the public and open inspection of the scientific community and users in general. This demonstration is impossible because the model of proprietary software itself prevents this analysis, so that any guarantee of security is based only on promises of good intentions (biased, by any reckoning) made by the producer itself, or its contractors.</p>
14631
14632 <p>It should be remembered that in many cases, the licensing conditions include Non-Disclosure clauses which prevent the user from publicly revealing security flaws found in the licensed proprietary product.</p>
14633
14634 <p>In respect of the guarantee:</p>
14635
14636 <p>As you know perfectly well, or could find out by reading the "End User License Agreement" of the products you license, in the great majority of cases the guarantees are limited to replacement of the storage medium in case of defects, but in no case is compensation given for direct or indirect damages, loss of profits, etc... If as a result of a security bug in one of your products, not fixed in time by yourselves, an attacker managed to compromise crucial State systems, what guarantees, reparations and compensation would your company make in accordance with your licensing conditions? The guarantees of proprietary software, inasmuch as programs are delivered ``AS IS'', that is, in the state in which they are, with no additional responsibility of the provider in respect of function, in no way differ from those normal with free software.</p>
14637
14638 <p>On Intellectual Property:</p>
14639
14640 <p>Questions of intellectual property fall outside the scope of this bill, since they are covered by specific other laws. The model of free software in no way implies ignorance of these laws, and in fact the great majority of free software is covered by copyright. In reality, the inclusion of this question in your observations shows your confusion in respect of the legal framework in which free software is developed. The inclusion of the intellectual property of others in works claimed as one's own is not a practice that has been noted in the free software community; whereas, unfortunately, it has been in the area of proprietary software. As an example, the condemnation by the Commercial Court of Nanterre, France, on 27th September 2001 of Microsoft Corp. to a penalty of 3 million francs in damages and interest, for violation of intellectual property (piracy, to use the unfortunate term that your firm commonly uses in its publicity).</p>
14641
14642 <p>You go on to say that: "The bill uses the concept of open source software incorrectly, since it does not necessarily imply that the software is free or of zero cost, and so arrives at mistaken conclusions regarding State savings, with no cost-benefit analysis to validate its position."</p>
14643
14644 <p>This observation is wrong; in principle, freedom and lack of cost are orthogonal concepts: there is software which is proprietary and charged for (for example, MS Office), software which is proprietary and free of charge (MS Internet Explorer), software which is free and charged for (Red Hat, SuSE etc GNU/Linux distributions), software which is free and not charged for (Apache, Open Office, Mozilla), and even software which can be licensed in a range of combinations (MySQL).</p>
14645
14646 <p>Certainly free software is not necessarily free of charge. And the text of the bill does not state that it has to be so, as you will have noted after reading it. The definitions included in the Bill state clearly *what* should be considered free software, at no point referring to freedom from charges. Although the possibility of savings in payments for proprietary software licenses are mentioned, the foundations of the bill clearly refer to the fundamental guarantees to be preserved and to the stimulus to local technological development. Given that a democratic State must support these principles, it has no other choice than to use software with publicly available source code, and to exchange information only in standard formats.</p>
14647
14648 <p>If the State does not use software with these characteristics, it will be weakening basic republican principles. Luckily, free software also implies lower total costs; however, even given the hypothesis (easily disproved) that it was more expensive than proprietary software, the simple existence of an effective free software tool for a particular IT function would oblige the State to use it; not by command of this Bill, but because of the basic principles we enumerated at the start, and which arise from the very essence of the lawful democratic State.</p>
14649
14650 <p>You continue: "6. It is wrong to think that Open Source Software is free of charge. Research by the Gartner Group (an important investigator of the technological market recognized at world level) has shown that the cost of purchase of software (operating system and applications) is only 8% of the total cost which firms and institutions take on for a rational and truly beneficial use of the technology. The other 92% consists of: installation costs, enabling, support, maintenance, administration, and down-time."</p>
14651
14652 <p>This argument repeats that already given in paragraph 5 and partly contradicts paragraph 3. For the sake of brevity we refer to the comments on those paragraphs. However, allow me to point out that your conclusion is logically false: even if according to Gartner Group the cost of software is on average only 8% of the total cost of use, this does not in any way deny the existence of software which is free of charge, that is, with a licensing cost of zero.</p>
14653
14654 <p>In addition, in this paragraph you correctly point out that the service components and losses due to down-time make up the largest part of the total cost of software use, which, as you will note, contradicts your statement regarding the small value of services suggested in paragraph 3. Now the use of free software contributes significantly to reduce the remaining life-cycle costs. This reduction in the costs of installation, support etc. can be noted in several areas: in the first place, the competitive service model of free software, support and maintenance for which can be freely contracted out to a range of suppliers competing on the grounds of quality and low cost. This is true for installation, enabling, and support, and in large part for maintenance. In the second place, due to the reproductive characteristics of the model, maintenance carried out for an application is easily replicable, without incurring large costs (that is, without paying more than once for the same thing) since modifications, if one wishes, can be incorporated in the common fund of knowledge. Thirdly, the huge costs caused by non-functioning software ("blue screens of death", malicious code such as virus, worms, and trojans, exceptions, general protection faults and other well-known problems) are reduced considerably by using more stable software; and it is well known that one of the most notable virtues of free software is its stability.</p>
14655
14656 <p>You further state that: "7. One of the arguments behind the bill is the supposed freedom from costs of open-source software, compared with the costs of commercial software, without taking into account the fact that there exist types of volume licensing which can be highly advantageous for the State, as has happened in other countries."</p>
14657
14658 <p>I have already pointed out that what is in question is not the cost of the software but the principles of freedom of information, accessibility, and security. These arguments have been covered extensively in the preceding paragraphs to which I would refer you.</p>
14659
14660 <p>On the other hand, there certainly exist types of volume licensing (although unfortunately proprietary software does not satisfy the basic principles). But as you correctly pointed out in the immediately preceding paragraph of your letter, they only manage to reduce the impact of a component which makes up no more than 8% of the total.</p>
14661
14662 <p>You continue: "8. In addition, the alternative adopted by the bill (I) is clearly more expensive, due to the high costs of software migration, and (II) puts at risk compatibility and interoperability of the IT platforms within the State, and between the State and the private sector, given the hundreds of versions of open source software on the market."</p>
14663
14664 <p>Let us analyze your statement in two parts. Your first argument, that migration implies high costs, is in reality an argument in favor of the Bill. Because the more time goes by, the more difficult migration to another technology will become; and at the same time, the security risks associated with proprietary software will continue to increase. In this way, the use of proprietary systems and formats will make the State ever more dependent on specific suppliers. Once a policy of using free software has been established (which certainly, does imply some cost) then on the contrary migration from one system to another becomes very simple, since all data is stored in open formats. On the other hand, migration to an open software context implies no more costs than migration between two different proprietary software contexts, which invalidates your argument completely.</p>
14665
14666 <p>The second argument refers to "problems in interoperability of the IT platforms within the State, and between the State and the private sector" This statement implies a certain lack of knowledge of the way in which free software is built, which does not maximize the dependence of the user on a particular platform, as normally happens in the realm of proprietary software. Even when there are multiple free software distributions, and numerous programs which can be used for the same function, interoperability is guaranteed as much by the use of standard formats, as required by the bill, as by the possibility of creating interoperable software given the availability of the source code.</p>
14667
14668 <p>You then say that: "9. The majority of open source code does not offer adequate levels of service nor the guarantee from recognized manufacturers of high productivity on the part of the users, which has led various public organizations to retract their decision to go with an open source software solution and to use commercial software in its place."</p>
14669
14670 <p>This observation is without foundation. In respect of the guarantee, your argument was rebutted in the response to paragraph 4. In respect of support services, it is possible to use free software without them (just as also happens with proprietary software), but anyone who does need them can obtain support separately, whether from local firms or from international corporations, again just as in the case of proprietary software.</p>
14671
14672 <p>On the other hand, it would contribute greatly to our analysis if you could inform us about free software projects *established* in public bodies which have already been abandoned in favor of proprietary software. We know of a good number of cases where the opposite has taken place, but not know of any where what you describe has taken place.</p>
14673
14674 <p>You continue by observing that: "10. The bill discourages the creativity of the Peruvian software industry, which invoices 40 million US$/year, exports 4 million US$ (10th in ranking among non-traditional exports, more than handicrafts) and is a source of highly qualified employment. With a law that encourages the use of open source, software programmers lose their intellectual property rights and their main source of payment."</p>
14675
14676 <p>It is clear enough that nobody is forced to commercialize their code as free software. The only thing to take into account is that if it is not free software, it cannot be sold to the public sector. This is not in any case the main market for the national software industry. We covered some questions referring to the influence of the Bill on the generation of employment which would be both highly technically qualified and in better conditions for competition above, so it seems unnecessary to insist on this point.</p>
14677
14678 <p>What follows in your statement is incorrect. On the one hand, no author of free software loses his intellectual property rights, unless he expressly wishes to place his work in the public domain. The free software movement has always been very respectful of intellectual property, and has generated widespread public recognition of its authors. Names like those of Richard Stallman, Linus Torvalds, Guido van Rossum, Larry Wall, Miguel de Icaza, Andrew Tridgell, Theo de Raadt, Andrea Arcangeli, Bruce Perens, Darren Reed, Alan Cox, Eric Raymond, and many others, are recognized world-wide for their contributions to the development of software that is used today by millions of people throughout the world. On the other hand, to say that the rewards for authors rights make up the main source of payment of Peruvian programmers is in any case a guess, in particular since there is no proof to this effect, nor a demonstration of how the use of free software by the State would influence these payments.</p>
14679
14680 <p>You go on to say that: "11. Open source software, since it can be distributed without charge, does not allow the generation of income for its developers through exports. In this way, the multiplier effect of the sale of software to other countries is weakened, and so in turn is the growth of the industry, while Government rules ought on the contrary to stimulate local industry."</p>
14681
14682 <p>This statement shows once again complete ignorance of the mechanisms of and market for free software. It tries to claim that the market of sale of non- exclusive rights for use (sale of licenses) is the only possible one for the software industry, when you yourself pointed out several paragraphs above that it is not even the most important one. The incentives that the bill offers for the growth of a supply of better qualified professionals, together with the increase in experience that working on a large scale with free software within the State will bring for Peruvian technicians, will place them in a highly competitive position to offer their services abroad.</p>
14683
14684 <p>You then state that: "12. In the Forum, the use of open source software in education was discussed, without mentioning the complete collapse of this initiative in a country like Mexico, where precisely the State employees who founded the project now state that open source software did not make it possible to offer a learning experience to pupils in the schools, did not take into account the capability at a national level to give adequate support to the platform, and that the software did not and does not allow for the levels of platform integration that now exist in schools."</p>
14685
14686 <p>In fact Mexico has gone into reverse with the Red Escolar (Schools Network) project. This is due precisely to the fact that the driving forces behind the Mexican project used license costs as their main argument, instead of the other reasons specified in our project, which are far more essential. Because of this conceptual mistake, and as a result of the lack of effective support from the SEP (Secretary of State for Public Education), the assumption was made that to implant free software in schools it would be enough to drop their software budget and send them a CD ROM with Gnu/Linux instead. Of course this failed, and it couldn't have been otherwise, just as school laboratories fail when they use proprietary software and have no budget for implementation and maintenance. That's exactly why our bill is not limited to making the use of free software mandatory, but recognizes the need to create a viable migration plan, in which the State undertakes the technical transition in an orderly way in order to then enjoy the advantages of free software.</p>
14687
14688 <p>You end with a rhetorical question: "13. If open source software satisfies all the requirements of State bodies, why do you need a law to adopt it? Shouldn't it be the market which decides freely which products give most benefits or value?"</p>
14689
14690 <p>We agree that in the private sector of the economy, it must be the market that decides which products to use, and no state interference is permissible there. However, in the case of the public sector, the reasoning is not the same: as we have already established, the state archives, handles, and transmits information which does not belong to it, but which is entrusted to it by citizens, who have no alternative under the rule of law. As a counterpart to this legal requirement, the State must take extreme measures to safeguard the integrity, confidentiality, and accessibility of this information. The use of proprietary software raises serious doubts as to whether these requirements can be fulfilled, lacks conclusive evidence in this respect, and so is not suitable for use in the public sector.</p>
14691
14692 <p>The need for a law is based, firstly, on the realization of the fundamental principles listed above in the specific area of software; secondly, on the fact that the State is not an ideal homogeneous entity, but made up of multiple bodies with varying degrees of autonomy in decision making. Given that it is inappropriate to use proprietary software, the fact of establishing these rules in law will prevent the personal discretion of any state employee from putting at risk the information which belongs to citizens. And above all, because it constitutes an up-to-date reaffirmation in relation to the means of management and communication of information used today, it is based on the republican principle of openness to the public.</p>
14693
14694 <p>In conformance with this universally accepted principle, the citizen has the right to know all information held by the State and not covered by well- founded declarations of secrecy based on law. Now, software deals with information and is itself information. Information in a special form, capable of being interpreted by a machine in order to execute actions, but crucial information all the same because the citizen has a legitimate right to know, for example, how his vote is computed or his taxes calculated. And for that he must have free access to the source code and be able to prove to his satisfaction the programs used for electoral computations or calculation of his taxes.</p>
14695
14696 <p>I wish you the greatest respect, and would like to repeat that my office will always be open for you to expound your point of view to whatever level of detail you consider suitable.</p>
14697
14698 <p>Cordially,<br>
14699 DR. EDGAR DAVID VILLANUEVA NUÑEZ<br>
14700 Congressman of the Republic of Perú.</p>
14701 </blockquote>
14702
14703       </div>
14704       <div class="tags">
14705
14706
14707         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</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>.
14708
14709
14710       </div>
14711     </div>
14712     <div class="padding"></div>
14713
14714     <div class="entry">
14715       <div class="title">
14716         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_still_going_strong.html">Officeshots still going strong</a>
14717       </div>
14718       <div class="date">
14719         25th December 2010
14720       </div>
14721       <div class="body">
14722         <p>Half a year ago I
14723 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html">wrote
14724 a bit</a> about <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">OfficeShots</a>,
14725 a web service to allow anyone to test how ODF documents are handled by
14726 the different programs reading and writing the ODF format.</p>
14727
14728 <p>I just had a look at the service, and it seem to be going strong.
14729 Very interesting to see the results reported in the gallery, how
14730 different Office implementations handle different ODF features.  Sad
14731 to see that KOffice was not doing it very well, and happy to see that
14732 LibreOffice has been tested already (but sadly not listed as a option
14733 for OfficeShots users yet).  I am glad to see that the ODF community
14734 got such a great test tool available.</p>
14735
14736       </div>
14737       <div class="tags">
14738
14739
14740         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
14741
14742
14743       </div>
14744     </div>
14745     <div class="padding"></div>
14746
14747     <div class="entry">
14748       <div class="title">
14749         <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>
14750       </div>
14751       <div class="date">
14752         22nd December 2010
14753       </div>
14754       <div class="body">
14755         <p>The last few days I have spent at work here at the <a
14756 href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> testing if the new
14757 batch of computers will work with Linux.  Every year for the last few
14758 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
14759 computers, and this year HP won the bid.  Two different desktops and
14760 five different laptops are on the list this year.  We in the UNIX
14761 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
14762 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
14763 university.</p>
14764
14765 <p>My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
14766 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well.  To test, I PXE
14767 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
14768 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware.  When
14769 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
14770 on.  If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
14771 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
14772 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.</p>
14773
14774 <p>Anyway, to get to the point of this post.  Here is the simple tests
14775 I perform on a new model.</p>
14776
14777 <ul>
14778
14779 <li>Is PXE installation working?  I'm testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
14780 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment.  If I feel like it, I also test with
14781 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.</li>
14782
14783 <li>Is X.org working?  If the graphical login screen show up after
14784 installation, X.org is working.</li>
14785
14786 <li>Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working?  Running glxgears (in
14787 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
14788 reported by the program.</li>
14789
14790 <li>Is sound working?  With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
14791 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful.  If there
14792 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
14793 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound.  I
14794 normally test this by playing
14795 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ ">a HTML5
14796 video</a> in Firefox/Iceweasel.</li>
14797
14798 <li>Is the USB subsystem working?  I test this by plugging in a USB
14799 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
14800
14801 <li>Is the CD/DVD player working?  I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
14802 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
14803
14804 <li>Is any built in camera working?  Test using cheese, and see if a
14805 picture from the v4l device show up.</li>
14806
14807 <li>Is bluetooth working?  Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
14808 any bluetooth devices are discovered.  In my office, I normally see a
14809 few.</li>
14810
14811 <li>For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working.  I have
14812 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
14813 notice this.</li>
14814
14815 <li>For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working?  I'm testing if the
14816 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
14817 resume.</li>
14818
14819 <li>For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
14820 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
14821 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc?  The set of buttons differ from
14822 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
14823 not.</li>
14824
14825 <li>Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
14826 acceleration sensors etc.  I rarely test these, as I do not know how
14827 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
14828 existence.</li>
14829
14830 </ul>
14831
14832 <p>By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
14833 for the HP machines I am testing.  I'm not done yet, so I will report
14834 the test results later.  For now I can report that HP 8100 Elite work
14835 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook 8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
14836 and audio fail on RHEL6.  Ubuntu Maverik worked with 8440p.  As you
14837 can see, I have most machines left to test.  One interesting
14838 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
14839 RHEL6 with glxgears.  No idea why.</p>
14840
14841       </div>
14842       <div class="tags">
14843
14844
14845         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>.
14846
14847
14848       </div>
14849     </div>
14850     <div class="padding"></div>
14851
14852     <div class="entry">
14853       <div class="title">
14854         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html">Some thoughts on BitCoins</a>
14855       </div>
14856       <div class="date">
14857         11th December 2010
14858       </div>
14859       <div class="body">
14860         <p>As I continue to explore
14861 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>, I've starting to wonder
14862 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
14863 and regulations here in Norway.  Here are some random notes.</p>
14864
14865 <p>One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
14866 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
14867 is known to everyone.  This means that if a BitCoin address has been
14868 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
14869 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
14870 that address.  There is even a web service to look at the details for
14871 all transactions.  There I can see that my address
14872 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a>
14873 have received 16.06 Bitcoin, the
14874 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3">1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3</a>
14875 address of Simon Phipps have received 181.97 BitCoin and the address
14876 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt">1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt</A>
14877 of EFF have received 2447.38 BitCoins so far.  Thank you to each and
14878 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
14879 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
14880 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
14881 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction.  I'm told
14882 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
14883 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
14884 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.</p>
14885
14886 <p>In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
14887 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
14888 without declaring it.  There are money laundering, tax and accounting
14889 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
14890 If the Skolelinux foundation
14891 (<a href="http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">SLX
14892 Debian Labs</a>) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
14893 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
14894 Given that it is impossible to know if money can cross the border or
14895 not, should everything or nothing be declared?  What exchange rate
14896 should be used when calculating taxes?  Would receivers have to pay
14897 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
14898 BitCoin?  I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.</p>
14899
14900 <p>For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
14901 accepted by a lot of users.  It must be possible to get easy access to
14902 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
14903 easy to spend it.  At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
14904 access to, but there are very few places to spend it.  I am not really
14905 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
14906 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins.  I
14907 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
14908 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
14909 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
14910 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular.  I'm sure they
14911 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
14912 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
14913 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
14914 currencies.</p>
14915
14916 <p>The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
14917 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
14918 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
14919 to see which one get the next lump of cash).  The "winner" get 50
14920 BitCoin when this happen.  Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
14921 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
14922 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
14923 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the 50
14924 BitCoins.  Check out
14925 <a href="http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/">BitCoin Pool</a>
14926 if this sounds interesting.  I have not had time to try to set up a
14927 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
14928 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
14929 yet.</p>
14930
14931 <p>Update 2010-12-15: Found an <a
14932 href="http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi">interesting
14933 criticism</a> of bitcoin.  Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
14934 it was interesting to read.  The arguments presented seem to be
14935 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.</p>
14936
14937       </div>
14938       <div class="tags">
14939
14940
14941         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>.
14942
14943
14944       </div>
14945     </div>
14946     <div class="padding"></div>
14947
14948     <div class="entry">
14949       <div class="title">
14950         <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>
14951       </div>
14952       <div class="date">
14953         10th December 2010
14954       </div>
14955       <div class="body">
14956         <p>With this weeks lawless
14957 <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html">governmental
14958 attacks</a> on Wikileak and
14959 <a href="http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech">free
14960 speech</a>, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
14961 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
14962 A blog post from
14963 <a href="http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/">Simon
14964 Phipps on bitcoin</a> reminded me about a project that a friend of
14965 mine mentioned earlier.  I decided to follow Simon's example, and get
14966 involved with <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>.  I got
14967 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
14968 some bitcoins to get started.  I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
14969 for helping me remember BitCoin.</p>
14970
14971 <p>So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder?  It is a digital
14972 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
14973 networks.  It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
14974 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
14975 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions.  The
14976 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets 2.9
14977 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
14978 line client builds just fine.  Hopefully Jonas
14979 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/578157">will get the package into
14980 Debian</a> soon.</p>
14981
14982 <p>Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
14983 There are <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/trade">companies accepting
14984 bitcoins</a> when selling services and goods, and there are even
14985 currency "stock" markets where the exchange rate is decided.  There
14986 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising.  If you
14987 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
14988 you can even get
14989 <a href="https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/">some for free</a> (0.05
14990 bitcoin at the time of writing).  Use
14991 <a href="http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/">BitcoinWatch</a> to keep an eye
14992 on the current exchange rates.</p>
14993
14994 <p>As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
14995 machines.  If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
14996 donations to the address
14997 <b>15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</b>.  Thank you!</p>
14998
14999       </div>
15000       <div class="tags">
15001
15002
15003         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>.
15004
15005
15006       </div>
15007     </div>
15008     <div class="padding"></div>
15009
15010     <div class="entry">
15011       <div class="title">
15012         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Student_group_continue_the_work_on_my_Reprap_3D_printer.html">Student group continue the work on my Reprap 3D printer</a>
15013       </div>
15014       <div class="date">
15015          9th December 2010
15016       </div>
15017       <div class="body">
15018         <p>A few days ago, I was introduces to some students in the robot
15019 student assosiation <a href="http://www.robotica.no/">Robotica
15020 Osloensis</a> at the University of Oslo where I work, who planned to
15021 get their own 3D printer.  They wanted to learn from me based on my
15022 work in the area.  After having a short lunch meeting with them, I
15023 offered them to borrow my reprap kit, as I never had time to complete
15024 the build and this seem unlike to change any time soon.  I look
15025 forward to see how this goes.  This monday their volunteer driver
15026 picked up my kit and drove it to their lab, and tomorrow I am told the
15027 last exam is over so they can start work on getting the 3D printer
15028 operational.</p>
15029
15030 <p>The robotic group have already build several robots on their own,
15031 and seem capable of getting the reprap operational.  I really look
15032 forward to being able to print all the cool 3D designs published on
15033 <a href="http://www.thingiverse.com/">Thingiverse</a>.  I even got
15034 some 3D scans I got made during Dagen@IFI when one of the groups at
15035 the computer science department at the university demonstrated their
15036 very cool 3D scanner.</p>
15037
15038       </div>
15039       <div class="tags">
15040
15041
15042         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap</a>.
15043
15044
15045       </div>
15046     </div>
15047     <div class="padding"></div>
15048
15049     <div class="entry">
15050       <div class="title">
15051         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_development_gathering_and_General_Assembly_for_FRiSK.html">Debian Edu development gathering and General Assembly for FRiSK</a>
15052       </div>
15053       <div class="date">
15054         29th November 2010
15055       </div>
15056       <div class="body">
15057         <p>On friday, the first Debian Edu / Skolelinux
15058 <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2010-12-03-05-Oslo">development
15059 gathering</a> in a long time take place here in Oslo, Norway.  I
15060 really look forward to seeing all the good people working on the
15061 Squeeze release.  The gathering is open for everyone interested in
15062 learning more about Debian Edu / Skolelinux.</p>
15063
15064 <p>On Saturday, the Norwegian member organization taking care of
15065 organizing these development gatherings, Fri Programvare i Skolen,
15066 will hold its
15067 <a href="http://friprogramvareiskolen.no/Genfors/2010">General Assembly
15068 for 2010</a>.  Membership is open for all, and currently there are 388
15069 people registered as members.  Last year 32 members cast their vote in
15070 the memberdb based election system.  I hope more people find time to
15071 vote this year.</p>
15072
15073       </div>
15074       <div class="tags">
15075
15076
15077         Tags: <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>.
15078
15079
15080       </div>
15081     </div>
15082     <div class="padding"></div>
15083
15084     <div class="entry">
15085       <div class="title">
15086         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html">Why isn't Debian Edu using VLC?</a>
15087       </div>
15088       <div class="date">
15089         27th November 2010
15090       </div>
15091       <div class="body">
15092         <p>In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
15093 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
15094 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
15095 to play a video file or stream.  Only if VLC fail will I drag out
15096 gmplayer to see if it can do better.  The reason is mostly the failure
15097 model and trust.  When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
15098 reporting the problem.  When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
15099 just hangs.  The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.<p>
15100
15101 <p>But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
15102 mplayer in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
15103 Edu/Skolelinux</a>.  The reason is simple.  We need a good browser
15104 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
15105 not very good.  For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
15106 is no way for the user to pause the video.  Also, when I
15107 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">last
15108 tested the browser plugins</a> available in Debian, the VLC plugin
15109 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked.  If
15110 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
15111 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.</P>
15112
15113 <p>While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
15114 annoying.  The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
15115 keyboard shortcuts.  When the player is in full screen mode, its
15116 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
15117 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode.  I
15118 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
15119 window mode.  Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
15120 the current video.  It is very nice when playing short videos from the
15121 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
15122 what is going on.</p>
15123
15124       </div>
15125       <div class="tags">
15126
15127
15128         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>.
15129
15130
15131       </div>
15132     </div>
15133     <div class="padding"></div>
15134
15135     <div class="entry">
15136       <div class="title">
15137         <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>
15138       </div>
15139       <div class="date">
15140         22nd November 2010
15141       </div>
15142       <div class="body">
15143         <p>Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
15144 upgrade testing of the
15145 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
15146 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a> to do <tt>apt-get autoremove</tt> when using apt-get.
15147 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
15148 can now present the updated result from today:</p>
15149
15150 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
15151
15152 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
15153
15154 <blockquote><p>
15155   apache2.2-bin
15156   aptdaemon
15157   baobab
15158   binfmt-support
15159   browser-plugin-gnash
15160   cheese-common
15161   cli-common
15162   cups-pk-helper
15163   dmz-cursor-theme
15164   empathy
15165   empathy-common
15166   freedesktop-sound-theme
15167   freeglut3
15168   gconf-defaults-service
15169   gdm-themes
15170   gedit-plugins
15171   geoclue
15172   geoclue-hostip
15173   geoclue-localnet
15174   geoclue-manual
15175   geoclue-yahoo
15176   gnash
15177   gnash-common
15178   gnome
15179   gnome-backgrounds
15180   gnome-cards-data
15181   gnome-codec-install
15182   gnome-core
15183   gnome-desktop-environment
15184   gnome-disk-utility
15185   gnome-screenshot
15186   gnome-search-tool
15187   gnome-session-canberra
15188   gnome-system-log
15189   gnome-themes-extras
15190   gnome-themes-more
15191   gnome-user-share
15192   gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
15193   gstreamer0.10-tools
15194   gtk2-engines
15195   gtk2-engines-pixbuf
15196   gtk2-engines-smooth
15197   hamster-applet
15198   libapache2-mod-dnssd
15199   libapr1
15200   libaprutil1
15201   libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
15202   libaprutil1-ldap
15203   libart2.0-cil
15204   libboost-date-time1.42.0
15205   libboost-python1.42.0
15206   libboost-thread1.42.0
15207   libchamplain-0.4-0
15208   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0
15209   libcheese-gtk18
15210   libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
15211   libcryptui0
15212   libdiscid0
15213   libelf1
15214   libepc-1.0-2
15215   libepc-common
15216   libepc-ui-1.0-2
15217   libfreerdp-plugins-standard
15218   libfreerdp0
15219   libgconf2.0-cil
15220   libgdata-common
15221   libgdata7
15222   libgdu-gtk0
15223   libgee2
15224   libgeoclue0
15225   libgexiv2-0
15226   libgif4
15227   libglade2.0-cil
15228   libglib2.0-cil
15229   libgmime2.4-cil
15230   libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
15231   libgnome2.24-cil
15232   libgnomepanel2.24-cil
15233   libgpod-common
15234   libgpod4
15235   libgtk2.0-cil
15236   libgtkglext1
15237   libgtksourceview2.0-common
15238   libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
15239   libmono-addins0.2-cil
15240   libmono-cairo2.0-cil
15241   libmono-corlib2.0-cil
15242   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
15243   libmono-posix2.0-cil
15244   libmono-security2.0-cil
15245   libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
15246   libmono-system2.0-cil
15247   libmtp8
15248   libmusicbrainz3-6
15249   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
15250   libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
15251   libopal3.6.8
15252   libpolkit-gtk-1-0
15253   libpt2.6.7
15254   libpython2.6
15255   librpm1
15256   librpmio1
15257   libsdl1.2debian
15258   libsrtp0
15259   libssh-4
15260   libtelepathy-farsight0
15261   libtelepathy-glib0
15262   libtidy-0.99-0
15263   media-player-info
15264   mesa-utils
15265   mono-2.0-gac
15266   mono-gac
15267   mono-runtime
15268   nautilus-sendto
15269   nautilus-sendto-empathy
15270   p7zip-full
15271   pkg-config
15272   python-aptdaemon
15273   python-aptdaemon-gtk
15274   python-axiom
15275   python-beautifulsoup
15276   python-bugbuddy
15277   python-clientform
15278   python-coherence
15279   python-configobj
15280   python-crypto
15281   python-cupshelpers
15282   python-elementtree
15283   python-epsilon
15284   python-evolution
15285   python-feedparser
15286   python-gdata
15287   python-gdbm
15288   python-gst0.10
15289   python-gtkglext1
15290   python-gtksourceview2
15291   python-httplib2
15292   python-louie
15293   python-mako
15294   python-markupsafe
15295   python-mechanize
15296   python-nevow
15297   python-notify
15298   python-opengl
15299   python-openssl
15300   python-pam
15301   python-pkg-resources
15302   python-pyasn1
15303   python-pysqlite2
15304   python-rdflib
15305   python-serial
15306   python-tagpy
15307   python-twisted-bin
15308   python-twisted-conch
15309   python-twisted-core
15310   python-twisted-web
15311   python-utidylib
15312   python-webkit
15313   python-xdg
15314   python-zope.interface
15315   remmina
15316   remmina-plugin-data
15317   remmina-plugin-rdp
15318   remmina-plugin-vnc
15319   rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
15320   rhythmbox-plugins
15321   rpm-common
15322   rpm2cpio
15323   seahorse-plugins
15324   shotwell
15325   software-center
15326   system-config-printer-udev
15327   telepathy-gabble
15328   telepathy-mission-control-5
15329   telepathy-salut
15330   tomboy
15331   totem
15332   totem-coherence
15333   totem-mozilla
15334   totem-plugins
15335   transmission-common
15336   xdg-user-dirs
15337   xdg-user-dirs-gtk
15338   xserver-xephyr
15339 </p></blockquote>
15340
15341 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
15342
15343 <blockquote><p>
15344   cheese
15345   ekiga
15346   eog
15347   epiphany-extensions
15348   evolution-exchange
15349   fast-user-switch-applet
15350   file-roller
15351   gcalctool
15352   gconf-editor
15353   gdm
15354   gedit
15355   gedit-common
15356   gnome-games
15357   gnome-games-data
15358   gnome-nettool
15359   gnome-system-tools
15360   gnome-themes
15361   gnuchess
15362   gucharmap
15363   guile-1.8-libs
15364   libavahi-ui0
15365   libdmx1
15366   libgalago3
15367   libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
15368   libgtksourceview2.0-0
15369   liblircclient0
15370   libsdl1.2debian-alsa
15371   libspeexdsp1
15372   libsvga1
15373   rhythmbox
15374   seahorse
15375   sound-juicer
15376   system-config-printer
15377   totem-common
15378   transmission-gtk
15379   vinagre
15380   vino
15381 </p></blockquote>
15382
15383 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
15384
15385 <blockquote><p>
15386   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
15387 </p></blockquote>
15388
15389 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
15390
15391 <blockquote><p>
15392 [nothing]
15393 </p></blockquote>
15394
15395 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
15396
15397 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
15398
15399 <blockquote><p>
15400   ksmserver
15401 </p></blockquote>
15402
15403 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
15404
15405 <blockquote><p>
15406   kwin
15407   network-manager-kde
15408 </p></blockquote>
15409
15410 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
15411
15412 <blockquote><p>
15413   arts
15414   dolphin
15415   freespacenotifier
15416   google-gadgets-gst
15417   google-gadgets-xul
15418   kappfinder
15419   kcalc
15420   kcharselect
15421   kde-core
15422   kde-plasma-desktop
15423   kde-standard
15424   kde-window-manager
15425   kdeartwork
15426   kdeartwork-emoticons
15427   kdeartwork-style
15428   kdeartwork-theme-icon
15429   kdebase
15430   kdebase-apps
15431   kdebase-workspace
15432   kdebase-workspace-bin
15433   kdebase-workspace-data
15434   kdeeject
15435   kdelibs
15436   kdeplasma-addons
15437   kdeutils
15438   kdewallpapers
15439   kdf
15440   kfloppy
15441   kgpg
15442   khelpcenter4
15443   kinfocenter
15444   konq-plugins-l10n
15445   konqueror-nsplugins
15446   kscreensaver
15447   kscreensaver-xsavers
15448   ktimer
15449   kwrite
15450   libgle3
15451   libkde4-ruby1.8
15452   libkonq5
15453   libkonq5-templates
15454   libnetpbm10
15455   libplasma-ruby
15456   libplasma-ruby1.8
15457   libqt4-ruby1.8
15458   marble-data
15459   marble-plugins
15460   netpbm
15461   nuvola-icon-theme
15462   plasma-dataengines-workspace
15463   plasma-desktop
15464   plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
15465   plasma-runners-addons
15466   plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
15467   plasma-scriptengine-python
15468   plasma-scriptengine-qedje
15469   plasma-scriptengine-ruby
15470   plasma-scriptengine-webkit
15471   plasma-scriptengines
15472   plasma-wallpapers-addons
15473   plasma-widget-folderview
15474   plasma-widget-networkmanagement
15475   ruby
15476   sweeper
15477   update-notifier-kde
15478   xscreensaver-data-extra
15479   xscreensaver-gl
15480   xscreensaver-gl-extra
15481   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
15482 </p></blockquote>
15483
15484 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
15485
15486 <blockquote><p>
15487   ark
15488   google-gadgets-common
15489   google-gadgets-qt
15490   htdig
15491   kate
15492   kdebase-bin
15493   kdebase-data
15494   kdepasswd
15495   kfind
15496   klipper
15497   konq-plugins
15498   konqueror
15499   ksysguard
15500   ksysguardd
15501   libarchive1
15502   libcln6
15503   libeet1
15504   libeina-svn-06
15505   libggadget-1.0-0b
15506   libggadget-qt-1.0-0b
15507   libgps19
15508   libkdecorations4
15509   libkephal4
15510   libkonq4
15511   libkonqsidebarplugin4a
15512   libkscreensaver5
15513   libksgrd4
15514   libksignalplotter4
15515   libkunitconversion4
15516   libkwineffects1a
15517   libmarblewidget4
15518   libntrack-qt4-1
15519   libntrack0
15520   libplasma-geolocation-interface4
15521   libplasmaclock4a
15522   libplasmagenericshell4
15523   libprocesscore4a
15524   libprocessui4a
15525   libqalculate5
15526   libqedje0a
15527   libqtruby4shared2
15528   libqzion0a
15529   libruby1.8
15530   libscim8c2a
15531   libsmokekdecore4-3
15532   libsmokekdeui4-3
15533   libsmokekfile3
15534   libsmokekhtml3
15535   libsmokekio3
15536   libsmokeknewstuff2-3
15537   libsmokeknewstuff3-3
15538   libsmokekparts3
15539   libsmokektexteditor3
15540   libsmokekutils3
15541   libsmokenepomuk3
15542   libsmokephonon3
15543   libsmokeplasma3
15544   libsmokeqtcore4-3
15545   libsmokeqtdbus4-3
15546   libsmokeqtgui4-3
15547   libsmokeqtnetwork4-3
15548   libsmokeqtopengl4-3
15549   libsmokeqtscript4-3
15550   libsmokeqtsql4-3
15551   libsmokeqtsvg4-3
15552   libsmokeqttest4-3
15553   libsmokeqtuitools4-3
15554   libsmokeqtwebkit4-3
15555   libsmokeqtxml4-3
15556   libsmokesolid3
15557   libsmokesoprano3
15558   libtaskmanager4a
15559   libtidy-0.99-0
15560   libweather-ion4a
15561   libxklavier16
15562   libxxf86misc1
15563   okteta
15564   oxygencursors
15565   plasma-dataengines-addons
15566   plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
15567   plasma-widget-lancelot
15568   plasma-widgets-addons
15569   plasma-widgets-workspace
15570   polkit-kde-1
15571   ruby1.8
15572   systemsettings
15573   update-notifier-common
15574 </p></blockquote>
15575
15576 <p>Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
15577 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
15578 differences.  I have no idea what packages should be installed after
15579 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.</p>
15580
15581       </div>
15582       <div class="tags">
15583
15584
15585         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>.
15586
15587
15588       </div>
15589     </div>
15590     <div class="padding"></div>
15591
15592     <div class="entry">
15593       <div class="title">
15594         <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>
15595       </div>
15596       <div class="date">
15597         22nd November 2010
15598       </div>
15599       <div class="body">
15600         <p>Most of the computers in use by the
15601 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux project</a>
15602 are virtual machines.  And they have been Xen machines running on a
15603 fairly old IBM eserver xseries 345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
15604 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge 2950 host machine.  This was a
15605 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
15606 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
15607 know is not supported by KVM.  So to migrate, we had to convert
15608 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.</p>
15609
15610 <p>I found
15611 <a href="http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM">a
15612 nice recipe</a> to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
15613 migration.  It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
15614 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
15615 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data.  I NFS mounted the
15616 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.</p>
15617
15618 <pre>
15619 #!/bin/sh
15620
15621 # Based on
15622 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
15623
15624 set -e
15625 set -x
15626
15627 if [ -z "$1" ] ; then
15628     echo "Usage: $0 &lt;hostname&gt;"
15629     exit 1
15630 else
15631     host="$1"
15632 fi
15633
15634 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
15635     echo "error: unable to find LVM volume for $host"
15636     exit 1
15637 fi
15638
15639 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs.  not sure why.
15640 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
15641 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
15642 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
15643
15644 img=$host.img
15645 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
15646 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
15647
15648 parted $img mklabel msdos
15649 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap 0 $disksize
15650 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
15651 parted $img set 1 boot on
15652
15653 modprobe dm-mod
15654 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
15655 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
15656
15657 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=1M
15658 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
15659 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
15660
15661 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
15662 losetup -d /dev/loop0
15663 </pre>
15664
15665 <p>The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
15666 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.</p>
15667
15668 <p>After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
15669 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-686 and
15670 set up grub to boot from the disk image.  After this, the KVM machines
15671 seem to work just fine.</p>
15672
15673       </div>
15674       <div class="tags">
15675
15676
15677         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>.
15678
15679
15680       </div>
15681     </div>
15682     <div class="padding"></div>
15683
15684     <div class="entry">
15685       <div class="title">
15686         <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>
15687       </div>
15688       <div class="date">
15689         20th November 2010
15690       </div>
15691       <div class="body">
15692         <p>I'm still running upgrade testing of the
15693 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
15694 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a>, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
15695 status.  Here is a short update based on a test I ran 20101118.</p>
15696
15697 <p>I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
15698 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
15699 can see if anything should be changed.</p>
15700
15701 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
15702
15703 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
15704
15705 <blockquote><p>
15706   apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
15707   browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-4.3 cups-pk-helper
15708   dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
15709   freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
15710   gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
15711   geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
15712   gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
15713   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
15714   gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
15715   gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
15716   gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
15717   gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
15718   gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
15719   libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
15720   libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-0 libboost-date-time1.42.0
15721   libboost-python1.42.0 libboost-thread1.42.0 libchamplain-0.4-0
15722   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
15723   libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-1.0-2
15724   libepc-common libepc-ui-1.0-2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
15725   libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
15726   libgdl-1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-0 libgif4
15727   libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
15728   libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
15729   libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
15730   libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
15731   libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
15732   libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
15733   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
15734   libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
15735   libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-6
15736   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6.8
15737   libpolkit-gtk-1-0 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
15738   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
15739   libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-4
15740   libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-0.99-0
15741   libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
15742   mono-2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
15743   nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
15744   openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-4suite-xml
15745   python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
15746   python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
15747   python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
15748   python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
15749   python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
15750   python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
15751   python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
15752   python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
15753   python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
15754   python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
15755   python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
15756   python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
15757   python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
15758   remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
15759   rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
15760   software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
15761   telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut tomboy
15762   totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
15763   transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
15764   zip
15765 </p></blockquote>
15766
15767 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
15768
15769 <blockquote><p>
15770   arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
15771   epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
15772   fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
15773   gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
15774   gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
15775   gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
15776   guile-1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
15777   libavahi-ui0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7
15778   libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
15779   libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1
15780   libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3 libfaad0 libgadu3
15781   libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
15782   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
15783   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
15784   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
15785   libgtkhtml2-0 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgtksourceview2.0-0
15786   libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
15787   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
15788   libmagick++10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
15789   libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
15790   libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9
15791   libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8
15792   libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
15793   libspeexdsp1 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libsvga1
15794   libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
15795   libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
15796   libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
15797   sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
15798   totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
15799 </p></blockquote>
15800
15801 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
15802
15803 <blockquote><p>
15804   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
15805 </p></blockquote>
15806
15807 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
15808
15809 <blockquote><p>
15810 [nothing]
15811 </p></blockquote>
15812
15813 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
15814
15815 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
15816
15817 <blockquote><p>
15818   autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-4.3 dcoprss
15819   edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
15820   ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
15821   gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
15822   kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
15823   kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
15824   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
15825   kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
15826   kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
15827   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
15828   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
15829   kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
15830   killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
15831   kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
15832   ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42.0
15833   libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
15834   libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
15835   libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
15836   libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
15837   libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
15838   libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
15839   libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
15840   libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
15841   libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
15842   lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
15843   openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
15844   parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
15845   pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
15846   speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
15847   ttf-sazanami-gothic
15848 </p></blockquote>
15849
15850 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
15851
15852 <blockquote><p>
15853   amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
15854   dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
15855   kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
15856   kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
15857   keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
15858   kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
15859   kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
15860   klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
15861   kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
15862   kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
15863   kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
15864   ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
15865   ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
15866   kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
15867   kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
15868   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
15869   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2
15870   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
15871   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
15872   libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0 libicu38
15873   libiec61883-0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
15874   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
15875   libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
15876   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
15877   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
15878   libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
15879   libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
15880   libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 librss1 libsensors3
15881   libsmbios2 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90
15882   libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
15883   mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
15884   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
15885   ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
15886 </p></blockquote>
15887
15888 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
15889
15890 <blockquote><p>
15891   dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
15892   kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
15893   kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
15894   kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
15895   netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
15896   xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
15897   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
15898 </p></blockquote>
15899
15900 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
15901
15902 <blockquote><p>
15903   kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
15904 </p></blockquote>
15905
15906       </div>
15907       <div class="tags">
15908
15909
15910         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>.
15911
15912
15913       </div>
15914     </div>
15915     <div class="padding"></div>
15916
15917     <div class="entry">
15918       <div class="title">
15919         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html">Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd</a>
15920       </div>
15921       <div class="date">
15922         20th November 2010
15923       </div>
15924       <div class="body">
15925         <p>Answering
15926 <a href="http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html">the
15927 call from the Gnash project</a> for
15928 <a href="http://www.gnashdev.org:8010">buildbot</a> slaves to test the
15929 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
15930 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
15931 Debian/Squeeze.  I hope this can help the developers in getting new
15932 releases out more often.</p>
15933
15934 <p>As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
15935 I have considered setting up a <a
15936 href="http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/">Debian/kfreebsd</a>
15937 machine as well.  I have also considered using the kfreebsd
15938 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the 5
15939 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video.  Because of this, I
15940 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
15941 kfreebsd.  Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
15942 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
15943 screen at random locations).  Have not gotten very far with the
15944 testing.  Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
15945 fatal problem.  Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
15946 useful as a file server for NUUG.  Will try to find time to set up a
15947 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.</p>
15948
15949       </div>
15950       <div class="tags">
15951
15952
15953         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>.
15954
15955
15956       </div>
15957     </div>
15958     <div class="padding"></div>
15959
15960     <div class="entry">
15961       <div class="title">
15962         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html">Debian in 3D</a>
15963       </div>
15964       <div class="date">
15965          9th November 2010
15966       </div>
15967       <div class="body">
15968         <p><img src="http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg"></p>
15969
15970 <p>3D printing is just great.  I just came across this Debian logo in
15971 3D linked in from
15972 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/">the
15973 thingiverse blog</a>.</p>
15974
15975       </div>
15976       <div class="tags">
15977
15978
15979         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>.
15980
15981
15982       </div>
15983     </div>
15984     <div class="padding"></div>
15985
15986     <div class="entry">
15987       <div class="title">
15988         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Making_room_on_the_Debian_Edu_Sqeeze_DVD.html">Making room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD</a>
15989       </div>
15990       <div class="date">
15991          7th November 2010
15992       </div>
15993       <div class="body">
15994         <p>Prioritising packages for the Debian Edu /
15995 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> DVD, which is
15996 supposed provide a school with all the services and user applications
15997 needed on the pupils computer network has always been hard.  Even
15998 schools without Internet connections should be able to get Debian Edu
15999 working using this DVD.</p>
16000
16001 <p>The job became a lot harder when apt and aptitude started
16002 installing recommended packages by default.  We want the same set of
16003 packages to be installed when using the DVD and the netinst CD, and
16004 that means all recommended packages need to be on the DVD.  I created
16005 a patch for debian-cd in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/601203">BTS
16006 report #601203</a> to do this, and since this change was applied to
16007 the Debian Edu DVD build, we have been seriously short on space.</p>
16008
16009 <p>A few days ago we decided to drop blender, wxmaxima and kicad from
16010 the default installation to save space on the DVD, believing that
16011 those needing these applications are few and can get them from the
16012 Debian archive.</p>
16013
16014 <p>Yesterday, I had a look what source packages to see which packages
16015 were using most space.  A few large packages are well know;
16016 openoffice.org, openclipart and fluid-soundfont.  But I also
16017 discovered that lilypond used 106 MiB and fglrx-driver used 53 MiB.
16018 The lilypond package is pulled in as a dependency for rosegarden, and
16019 when looking a bit closer I discovered that 99 MiB of the 106 MiB were
16020 the documentation package, which is recommended by the binary package.
16021 I decided to drop this documentation package from our DVD, as most of
16022 our users will use the GUI front-ends and do not need the lilypond
16023 documentation.  Similarly, I dropped the non-free fglrx-driver package
16024 which might be installed by d-i when its hardware is detected, as the
16025 free X driver should work.</p>
16026
16027 <p>With this change, we finally got space for the LXDE and Gnome
16028 desktop packages as well as the language specific packages making the
16029 DVD more useful again.</p>
16030
16031       </div>
16032       <div class="tags">
16033
16034
16035         Tags: <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>.
16036
16037
16038       </div>
16039     </div>
16040     <div class="padding"></div>
16041
16042     <div class="entry">
16043       <div class="title">
16044         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html">Software updates 2010-10-24</a>
16045       </div>
16046       <div class="date">
16047         24th October 2010
16048       </div>
16049       <div class="body">
16050         <p>Some updates.</p>
16051
16052 <p>My <a href="http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">gnash pledge</a> to
16053 raise money for the project is going well.  The lower limit of 10
16054 signers was reached in 24 hours, and so far 13 people have signed it.
16055 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
16056 how far we can get before the time limit of December 24 is reached.
16057 :)</p>
16058
16059 <p>On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
16060 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
16061 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
16062 It is called
16063 <a href="http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html">kcov</a>,
16064 and can be used using <tt>kcov &lt;directory&gt; &lt;binary&gt;</tt>.
16065 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
16066 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
16067 libglib2.0-dev.  Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
16068 solvable.  I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.</p>
16069
16070 <p>Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for <a
16071 href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html">a
16072 new alpha release of Debian Edu</a>, and just published the second
16073 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
16074 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>
16075 release.  Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
16076 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
16077 client servers and diskless workstations.  A nice touch added
16078 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
16079 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.</p>
16080
16081       </div>
16082       <div class="tags">
16083
16084
16085         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>.
16086
16087
16088       </div>
16089     </div>
16090     <div class="padding"></div>
16091
16092     <div class="entry">
16093       <div class="title">
16094         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Pledge_for_funding_to_the_Gnash_project_to_get_AVM2_support.html">Pledge for funding to the Gnash project to get AVM2 support</a>
16095       </div>
16096       <div class="date">
16097         19th October 2010
16098       </div>
16099       <div class="body">
16100         <p><a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">The Gnash project</a> is the
16101 most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation. It
16102 has done great so far, but there is still far to go, and recently its
16103 funding has dried up.  I believe AVM2 support in Gnash is vital to the
16104 continued progress of the project, as more and more sites show up with
16105 AVM2 flash files.</p>
16106
16107 <p>To try to get funding for developing such support, I have started
16108 <a href="http://www.pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">a pledge</a> with the
16109 following text:</P>
16110
16111 <p><blockquote>
16112
16113   <p>"I will pay 100$ to the Gnash project to develop AVM2 support but
16114   only if 10 other people will do the same."</p>
16115
16116   <p>- Petter Reinholdtsen, free software developer</p>
16117
16118   <p>Deadline to sign up by: 24th December 2010</p>
16119
16120   <p>The Gnash project need to get support for the new Flash file
16121   format AVM2 to work with a lot of sites using Flash on the
16122   web. Gnash already work with a lot of Flash sites using the old AVM1
16123   format, but more and more sites are using the AVM2 format these
16124   days. The project web page is available from
16125   http://www.getgnash.org/ . Gnash is a free software implementation
16126   of Adobe Flash, allowing those of us that do not accept the terms of
16127   the Adobe Flash license to get access to Flash sites.</p>
16128
16129   <p>The project need funding to get developers to put aside enough
16130   time to develop the AVM2 support, and this pledge is my way to try
16131   to get this to happen.</p>
16132
16133   <p>The project accept donations via the OpenMediaNow foundation,
16134   <a href="http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32">http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32</a> .</p>
16135
16136 </blockquote></p>
16137
16138 <p>I hope you will support this effort too.  I hope more than 10
16139 people will participate to make this happen.  The more money the
16140 project gets, the more features it can develop using these funds.
16141 :)</p>
16142
16143       </div>
16144       <div class="tags">
16145
16146
16147         Tags: <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/nuug">nuug</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>.
16148
16149
16150       </div>
16151     </div>
16152     <div class="padding"></div>
16153
16154     <div class="entry">
16155       <div class="title">
16156         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_version_of_a_Perl_library_to_control_the_Spykee_robot.html">First version of a Perl library to control the Spykee robot</a>
16157       </div>
16158       <div class="date">
16159          9th October 2010
16160       </div>
16161       <div class="body">
16162         <p>This summer I got the chance to buy cheap Spykee robots, and since
16163 then I have worked on getting Linux software in place to control them.
16164 The firmware for the robot is available from the producer, and using
16165 that source it was trivial to figure out the protocol specification.
16166 I've started on a perl library to control it, and made some demo
16167 programs using this perl library to allow one to control the
16168 robots.</p>
16169
16170 <p>The library is quite functional already, and capable of controlling
16171 the driving, fetching video, uploading MP3s and play them.  There are
16172 a few less important features too.</p>
16173
16174 <p>Since a few weeks ago, I ran out of time to spend on this project,
16175 but I never got around to releasing the current source.  I decided
16176 today that it was time to do something about it, and uploaded the
16177 source to my Debian package store at people.skolelinux.org.</p>
16178
16179 <p>Because it was simpler for me, I made a Debian package and
16180 published the source and deb.  If you got a spykee robot, grab the
16181 source or binary package:</p>
16182
16183 <p><ul>
16184 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian/packages/lenny/libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.tar.gz">libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.tar.gz</a></li>
16185 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian/packages/lenny/libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.dsc">libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.dsc</a></li>
16186 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian/packages/lenny/libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1_all.deb">libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1_all.deb</a></li>
16187 </ul></p>
16188
16189 <p>If you are interested in helping out with developing this library,
16190 please let me know.</p>
16191
16192       </div>
16193       <div class="tags">
16194
16195
16196         Tags: <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/robot">robot</a>.
16197
16198
16199       </div>
16200     </div>
16201     <div class="padding"></div>
16202
16203     <div class="entry">
16204       <div class="title">
16205         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Links_for_2010_10_03.html">Links for 2010-10-03</a>
16206       </div>
16207       <div class="date">
16208          3rd October 2010
16209       </div>
16210       <div class="body">
16211         <p><ul>
16212
16213 <li><a href="http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2010/09/there-is-no-plan-b-why-the-ipv4-to-ipv6-transition-will-be-ugly.ars">There
16214 is no Plan B: why the IPv4-to-IPv6 transition will be ugly</a></li>
16215
16216 <li>Scanner looking under clothes
16217 <a href="http://www.dagbladet.no/2010/10/03/nyheter/utenriks/reise/overvakingskamera/flyplasser/13667192/">has
16218 already been misused at Heathrow</a>.</li>
16219
16220 <li><a href="http://wiki.softwarelivre.org/Landell">Landell
16221 Webcasting</a> - interesting alternative for
16222 <ahref="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/wiki/">DVSwitch</a> with
16223 simple setup.
16224
16225 </ul></p>
16226
16227       </div>
16228       <div class="tags">
16229
16230
16231         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
16232
16233
16234       </div>
16235     </div>
16236     <div class="padding"></div>
16237
16238     <div class="entry">
16239       <div class="title">
16240         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Terms_of_use_for_video_produced_by_a_Canon_IXUS_130_digital_camera.html">Terms of use for video produced by a Canon IXUS 130 digital camera</a>
16241       </div>
16242       <div class="date">
16243          9th September 2010
16244       </div>
16245       <div class="body">
16246         <p>A few days ago I had the mixed pleasure of bying a new digital
16247 camera, a Canon IXUS 130.  It was instructive and very disturbing to
16248 be able to verify that also this camera producer have the nerve to
16249 specify how I can or can not use the videos produced with the camera.
16250 Even thought I was aware of the issue, the options with new cameras
16251 are limited and I ended up bying the camera anyway.  What is the
16252 problem, you might ask?  It is software patents, MPEG-4, H.264 and the
16253 MPEG-LA that is the problem, and our right to record our experiences
16254 without asking for permissions that is at risk.
16255
16256 <p>On page 27 of the Danish instruction manual, this section is
16257 written:</p>
16258
16259 <blockquote>
16260 <p>This product is licensed under AT&T patents for the MPEG-4 standard
16261 and may be used for encoding MPEG-4 compliant video and/or decoding
16262 MPEG-4 compliant video that was encoded only (1) for a personal and
16263 non-commercial purpose or (2) by a video provider licensed under the
16264 AT&T patents to provide MPEG-4 compliant video.</p>
16265
16266 <p>No license is granted or implied for any other use for MPEG-4
16267 standard.</p>
16268 </blockquote>
16269
16270 <p>In short, the camera producer have chosen to use technology
16271 (MPEG-4/H.264) that is only provided if I used it for personal and
16272 non-commercial purposes, or ask for permission from the organisations
16273 holding the knowledge monopoly (patent) for technology used.</p>
16274
16275 <p>This issue has been brewing for a while, and I recommend you to
16276 read
16277 "<a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/23236/Why_Our_Civilization_s_Video_Art_and_Culture_is_Threatened_by_the_MPEG-LA">Why
16278 Our Civilization's Video Art and Culture is Threatened by the
16279 MPEG-LA</a>" by Eugenia Loli-Queru and
16280 "<a href="http://webmink.com/2010/09/03/h-264-and-foss/">H.264 Is Not
16281 The Sort Of Free That Matters</a>" by Simon Phipps to learn more about
16282 the issue.  The solution is to support the
16283 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and
16284 open standards</a> for video, like <a href="http://www.theora.org/">Ogg
16285 Theora</a>, and avoid MPEG-4 and H.264 if you can.</p>
16286
16287       </div>
16288       <div class="tags">
16289
16290
16291         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</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>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</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>.
16292
16293
16294       </div>
16295     </div>
16296     <div class="padding"></div>
16297
16298     <div class="entry">
16299       <div class="title">
16300         <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>
16301       </div>
16302       <div class="date">
16303          4th September 2010
16304       </div>
16305       <div class="body">
16306         <p>In the <a href="http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote">Debian
16307 popularity-contest numbers</a>, the adobe-flashplugin package the
16308 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian.  The sixth
16309 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla.  This is a clear indication that
16310 working flash is important for Debian users.  Around 10 percent of the
16311 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
16312 installed.</p>
16313
16314 <p>In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
16315 («<a href="http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf">Skolelinux
16316 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
16317 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs</a>»), one of the most important problems
16318 schools experienced with <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
16319 Edu/Skolelinux</a> was the lack of working Flash.  A lot of educational
16320 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
16321 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
16322 good reason to stay with Windows.</p>
16323
16324 <p>I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
16325 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
16326 everything you told him but could work fairly well.  This was a
16327 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
16328 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
16329 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
16330 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
16331 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
16332 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
16333 pages they want to visit.</p>
16334
16335 <p>This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
16336 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
16337 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
16338 Video to working out of the box.  For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
16339 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
16340 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
16341 unstable.  The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
16342 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
16343 release team have not had time to reply to it yet.  I hope they agree
16344 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
16345 accept the new package into Squeeze.</p>
16346
16347       </div>
16348       <div class="tags">
16349
16350
16351         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>.
16352
16353
16354       </div>
16355     </div>
16356     <div class="padding"></div>
16357
16358     <div class="entry">
16359       <div class="title">
16360         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/My_first_perl_GUI_application___controlling_a_Spykee_robot.html">My first perl GUI application - controlling a Spykee robot</a>
16361       </div>
16362       <div class="date">
16363          1st September 2010
16364       </div>
16365       <div class="body">
16366         <p>This evening I made my first Perl GUI application.  The last few
16367 days I have worked on a Perl module for controlling my recently
16368 aquired Spykee robots, and the module is now getting complete enought
16369 that it is possible to use it to control the robot driving at least.
16370 It was now time to figure out how to use it to create some GUI to
16371 allow me to drive the robot around.  I picked PerlQt as I have had
16372 positive experiences with the Qt API before, and spent a few minutes
16373 browsing the web for examples.  Using Qt Designer seemed like a short
16374 cut, so I ended up writing the perl GUI using Qt Designer and
16375 compiling it into a perl program using the puic program from
16376 libqt-perl.  Nothing fancy yet, but it got buttons to connect and
16377 drive around.</p>
16378
16379 <p>The perl module I have written provide a object oriented API for
16380 controlling the robot.  Here is an small example on how to use it:</p>
16381
16382 <p><pre>
16383 use Spykee;
16384 Spykee::discover(sub {$robot{$_[0]} = $_[1]});
16385 my $host = (keys %robot)[0];
16386 my $spykee = Spykee->new();
16387 $spykee->contact($host, "admin", "admin");
16388 $spykee->left();
16389 sleep 2;
16390 $spykee->right();
16391 sleep 2;
16392 $spykee->forward();
16393 sleep 2;
16394 $spykee->back();
16395 sleep 2;
16396 $spykee->stop();
16397 </pre></p>
16398
16399 <p>Thanks to the release of the source of the robot firmware, I could
16400 peek into the implementation at the other end to figure out how to
16401 implement the protocol used by the robot.  I've implemented several of
16402 the commands the robot understand, but is still missing the camera
16403 support to make it possible to control the robot from remote.  First I
16404 want to implement support for uploading new firmware and configuring
16405 the wireless network, to make it possible to bootstrap a Spykee robot
16406 without the producers Windows and MacOSX software (I only have Linux,
16407 so I had to ask a friend to come over to get the robot testing
16408 going. :).</p>
16409
16410 <p>Will release the source to the public soon, but need to figure out
16411 where to make it available first.  I will add a link to
16412 <a href="http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/robot/">the NUUG wiki</a> for
16413 those that want to check back later to find it.</p>
16414
16415       </div>
16416       <div class="tags">
16417
16418
16419         Tags: <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/robot">robot</a>.
16420
16421
16422       </div>
16423     </div>
16424     <div class="padding"></div>
16425
16426     <div class="entry">
16427       <div class="title">
16428         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_hard_link_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken hard link handling with sshfs</a>
16429       </div>
16430       <div class="date">
16431         30th August 2010
16432       </div>
16433       <div class="body">
16434         <p>Just got an email from Tobias Gruetzmacher as a followup on my
16435 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">previous
16436 post about sshfs</a>.  He reported another problem with sshfs.  It
16437 fail to handle hard links properly.  A simple way to spot this is to
16438 look at the . and .. entries in the directory tree.  These should have
16439 a link count >1, but on sshfs the count is 1.  I just tested to see
16440 what happen when trying to hardlink, and this fail as well:</p>
16441
16442 <pre>
16443 % ln foo bar
16444 ln: creating hard link `bar' => `foo': Function not implemented
16445 %
16446 </pre>
16447
16448 <p>I have not yet found time to implement a test for this in my file
16449 system test code, but believe having working hard links is useful to
16450 avoid surprised unix programs.  Not as useful as working file locking
16451 and symlinks, which are required to get a working desktop, but useful
16452 nevertheless. :)</p>
16453
16454 <p>The latest version of the file system test code is available via
16455 git from
16456 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a></p>
16457
16458       </div>
16459       <div class="tags">
16460
16461
16462         Tags: <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>.
16463
16464
16465       </div>
16466     </div>
16467     <div class="padding"></div>
16468
16469     <div class="entry">
16470       <div class="title">
16471         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken umask handling with sshfs</a>
16472       </div>
16473       <div class="date">
16474         26th August 2010
16475       </div>
16476       <div class="body">
16477         <p>My file system sematics program
16478 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">presented
16479 a few days ago</a> is very useful to verify that a file system can
16480 work as a unix home directory,and today I had to extend it a bit.  I'm
16481 looking into alternatives for home directory access here at the
16482 University of Oslo, and one of the options is sshfs.  My friend
16483 Finn-Arne mentioned a while back that they had used sshfs with Debian
16484 Edu, but stopped because of problems.  I asked today what the problems
16485 where, and he mentioned that sshfs failed to handle umask properly.
16486 Trying to detect the problem I wrote this addition to my fs testing
16487 script:</p>
16488
16489 <pre>
16490 mode_t touch_get_mode(const char *name, mode_t mode) {
16491   mode_t retval = 0;
16492   int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, mode);
16493   if (-1 != fd) {
16494     unlink(name);
16495     struct stat statbuf;
16496     if (-1 != fstat(fd, &statbuf)) {
16497       retval = statbuf.st_mode & 0x1ff;
16498     }
16499     close(fd);
16500   }
16501   return retval;
16502 }
16503
16504 /* Try to detect problem discovered using sshfs */
16505 int test_umask(void) {
16506   printf("info: testing umask effect on file creation\n");
16507
16508   mode_t orig_umask = umask(000);
16509   mode_t newmode;
16510   if (0666 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar", 0666))) {
16511     printf("  error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode 666 and umask 000\n",
16512            newmode);
16513   }
16514   umask(007);
16515   if (0660 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar", 0666))) {
16516     printf("  error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode 666 and umask 007\n",
16517            newmode);
16518   }
16519
16520   umask (orig_umask);
16521   return 0;
16522 }
16523
16524 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
16525   [...]
16526   test_umask();
16527   return 0;
16528 }
16529 </pre>
16530
16531 <p>Sure enough.  On NFS to a netapp, I get this result:</p>
16532
16533 <pre>
16534 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
16535 info: testing symlink creation
16536 info: testing subdirectory creation
16537 info: testing fcntl locking
16538   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
16539   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
16540   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
16541   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
16542   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
16543   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
16544 info: testing umask effect on file creation
16545 </pre>
16546
16547 <p>When mounting the same directory using sshfs, I get this
16548 result:</p>
16549
16550 <pre>
16551 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
16552 info: testing symlink creation
16553 info: testing subdirectory creation
16554 info: testing fcntl locking
16555   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
16556   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
16557   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
16558   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
16559   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
16560   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
16561 info: testing umask effect on file creation
16562   error: Wrong file mode 644 when creating using mode 666 and umask 000
16563   error: Wrong file mode 640 when creating using mode 666 and umask 007
16564 </pre>
16565
16566 <p>So, I can conclude that sshfs is better than smb to a Netapp or a
16567 Windows server, but not good enough to be used as a home
16568 directory.</p>
16569
16570 <p>Update 2010-08-26: Reported the issue in
16571 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/594498">BTS report #594498</a></p>
16572
16573 <p>Update 2010-08-27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
16574 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
16575 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a>.</p>
16576
16577       </div>
16578       <div class="tags">
16579
16580
16581         Tags: <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>.
16582
16583
16584       </div>
16585     </div>
16586     <div class="padding"></div>
16587
16588     <div class="entry">
16589       <div class="title">
16590         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Rob_Weir__How_to_Crush_Dissent.html">Rob Weir: How to Crush Dissent</a>
16591       </div>
16592       <div class="date">
16593         15th August 2010
16594       </div>
16595       <div class="body">
16596         <p>I found the notes from Rob Weir on
16597 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/VGb23-kta8c/how-to-crush-dissent.html">how
16598 to crush dissent</a> matching my own thoughts on the matter quite
16599 well.  Highly recommended for those wondering which road our society
16600 should go down.  In my view we have been heading the wrong way for a
16601 long time.</p>
16602
16603       </div>
16604       <div class="tags">
16605
16606
16607         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</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>.
16608
16609
16610       </div>
16611     </div>
16612     <div class="padding"></div>
16613
16614     <div class="entry">
16615       <div class="title">
16616         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/No_hardcoded_config_on_Debian_Edu_clients.html">No hardcoded config on Debian Edu clients</a>
16617       </div>
16618       <div class="date">
16619          9th August 2010
16620       </div>
16621       <div class="body">
16622         <p>As reported earlier, the last few days I have looked at how Debian
16623 Edu clients are configured, and tried to get rid of all hardcoded
16624 configuration settings on the clients.  I believe the work to be
16625 mostly done, and the clients seem to work just fine with dynamically
16626 generated configuration.</p>
16627
16628 <p>What is the point, you might ask?  The point is to allow a Debian
16629 Edu desktop to integrate into an existing network infrastructure
16630 without any manual configuration.</p>
16631
16632 <p>This is what happens when installing a Debian Edu client here at
16633 the University of Oslo using PXE.  With the PXE installation, I am
16634 asked for language (Norwegian Bokmål), locality (Norway) and keyboard
16635 layout (no-latin1), Debian Edu profile (Roaming Workstation), if I
16636 accept to reformat the hard drive (yes), if I want to submit info to
16637 popcon.debian.org (no) and root password (secret).  After answering
16638 these questions, the installer goes ahead and does its thing, and
16639 after around 50 minutes it is done.  I press enter to finish the
16640 installation, and the machine reboots into KDE.  When the machine is
16641 ready and kdm asks for login information, I enter my university
16642 username and password, am told by kdm that a local home directory has
16643 been created and that I must log in again, and finally log in with the
16644 same username and password to the KDE 4.4 desktop.  At no point during
16645 this process did it ask for university specific settings, and all the
16646 required configuration was dynamically detected using information
16647 fetched via DHCP and DNS.  The roaming workstation is now ready for
16648 use.</p>
16649
16650 <p>How was this done, you might wonder?  First of all, here is the
16651 list of things that need to be configured on the client to get it
16652 working properly out of the box:</p>
16653
16654 <ul>
16655 <li>IP address/netmask and DNS server.</li>
16656 <li>Web proxy URL.</li>
16657 <li>LDAP server for NSS directory information (user, group, etc).</li>
16658 <li>Kerberos server for PAM password checking.</li>
16659 <li>SMB mount point to access the network home directory. (*)</li>
16660 <li>Central syslog server to send syslog messages to. (*)</li>
16661 <li>Sitesummary collector URL to submit info to central server. (*)</li>
16662 </ul>
16663
16664 <p>(Hm, did I forget anything?  Let me knew if I did.)</p>
16665
16666 <p>The points marked (*) are not required to be able to use the
16667 machine, but needed to provide central storage and allowing system
16668 administrators to track their machines.  Since yesterday, everything
16669 but the sitesummary collector URL is dynamically discovered at boot
16670 and installation time in the svn version of Debian Edu.</p>
16671
16672 <p>The IP and DNS setup is fetched during boot using DHCP as usual.
16673 When a DHCP update arrives, the proxy setup is updated by looking for
16674 http://wpat/wpad.dat and using the content of this WPAD file to
16675 configure the http and ftp proxy in /etc/environment and
16676 /etc/apt/apt.conf.  I decided to update the proxy setup using a DHCP
16677 hook to ensure that the client stops using the Debian Edu proxy when
16678 it is moved outside the Debian Edu network, and instead uses any local
16679 proxy present on the new network when it moves around.</p>
16680
16681 <p>The DNS names of the LDAP, Kerberos and syslog server and related
16682 configuration are generated using DNS information at boot.  First the
16683 installer looks for a host named ldap in the current DNS domain.  If
16684 not found, it looks for _ldap._tcp SRV records in DNS instead.  If an
16685 LDAP server is found, its root DSE entry is requested and the
16686 attributes namingContexts and defaultNamingContext are used to
16687 determine which LDAP base to use for NSS.  If there are several
16688 namingContexts attibutes and the defaultNamingContext is present, that
16689 LDAP subtree is used as the base.  If defaultNamingContext is missing,
16690 the subtrees listed as namingContexts are searched in sequence for any
16691 object with class posixAccount or posixGroup, and the first one with
16692 such an object is used as the LDAP base.  For Kerberos, a similar
16693 search is done by first looking for a host named kerberos, and then
16694 for the _kerberos._tcp SRV record.  I've been unable to find a way to
16695 look up the Kerberos realm, so for this the upper case string of the
16696 current DNS domain is used.</p>
16697
16698 <p>For the syslog server, the hosts syslog and loghost are searched
16699 for, and the _syslog._udp SRV record is consulted if no such host is
16700 found.  This algorithm works for both Debian Edu and the University of
16701 Oslo.  A similar strategy would work for locating the sitesummary
16702 server, but have not been implemented yet.  I decided to fetch and
16703 save these settings during installation, to make sure moving to a
16704 different network does not change the set of users being allowed to
16705 log in nor the passwords required to log in.  Usernames and passwords
16706 will be cached by sssd when the user logs in on the Debian Edu
16707 network, and will not change as the laptop move around.  For a
16708 non-roaming machine, there is no caching, but given that it is
16709 supposed to stay in place it should not matter much.  Perhaps we
16710 should switch those to use sssd too?</p>
16711
16712 <p>The user's SMB mount point for the network home directory is
16713 located when the user logs in for the first time.  The LDAP server is
16714 consulted to look for the user's LDAP object and the sambaHomePath
16715 attribute is used if found.  If it isn't found, the home directory
16716 path fetched from NSS is used instead.  Assuming the path is of the
16717 form /site/server/directory/username, the second part is looked up in
16718 DNS and used to generate a SMB URL of the form
16719 smb://server.domain/username.  This algorithm works for both Debian
16720 edu and the University of Oslo.  Perhaps there are better attributes
16721 to use or a better algorithm that works for more sites, but this will
16722 do for now. :)</p>
16723
16724 <p>This work should make it easier to integrate the Debian Edu clients
16725 into any LDAP/Kerberos infrastructure, and make the current setup even
16726 more flexible than before.  I suspect it will also work for thin
16727 client servers, allowing one to easily set up LTSP and hook it into a
16728 existing network infrastructure, but I have not had time to test this
16729 yet.</p>
16730
16731 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
16732 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
16733
16734 <p>Update 2010-08-09: Simon Farnsworth gave me a heads-up on how to
16735 detect Kerberos realm from DNS, by looking for _kerberos TXT entries
16736 before falling back to the upper case DNS domain name.  Will have to
16737 implement it for Debian Edu. :)</p>
16738
16739       </div>
16740       <div class="tags">
16741
16742
16743         Tags: <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>.
16744
16745
16746       </div>
16747     </div>
16748     <div class="padding"></div>
16749
16750     <div class="entry">
16751       <div class="title">
16752         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">Testing if a file system can be used for home directories...</a>
16753       </div>
16754       <div class="date">
16755          8th August 2010
16756       </div>
16757       <div class="body">
16758         <p>A few years ago, I was involved in a project planning to use
16759 Windows file servers as home directory servers for Debian
16760 Edu/Skolelinux machines.  This was thought to be no problem, as the
16761 access would be through the SMB network file system protocol, and we
16762 knew other sites used SMB with unix and samba as the file server to
16763 mount home directories without any problems.  But, after months of
16764 struggling, we had to conclude that our goal was impossible.</p>
16765
16766 <p>The reason is simply that while SMB can be used for home
16767 directories when the file server is Samba running on Unix, this only
16768 work because of Samba have some extensions and the fact that the
16769 underlying file system is a unix file system.  When using a Windows
16770 file server, the underlying file system do not have POSIX semantics,
16771 and several programs will fail if the users home directory where they
16772 want to store their configuration lack POSIX semantics.</p>
16773
16774 <p>As part of this work, I wrote a small C program I want to share
16775 with you all, to replicate a few of the problematic applications (like
16776 OpenOffice.org and GCompris) and see if the file system was working as
16777 it should.  If you find yourself in spooky file system land, it might
16778 help you find your way out again.  This is the fs-test.c source:</p>
16779
16780 <pre>
16781 /*
16782  * Some tests to check the file system sematics.  Used to verify that
16783  * CIFS from a windows server do not work properly as a linux home
16784  * directory.
16785  * License: GPL v2 or later
16786  *
16787  * needs libsqlite3-dev and build-essential installed
16788  * compile with: gcc -Wall -lsqlite3 -DTEST_SQLITE fs-test.c -o fs-test
16789 */
16790
16791 #define _FILE_OFFSET_BITS 64
16792 #define _LARGEFILE_SOURCE 1
16793 #define _LARGEFILE64_SOURCE 1
16794
16795 #define _GNU_SOURCE /* for asprintf() */
16796
16797 #include &lt;errno.h>
16798 #include &lt;fcntl.h>
16799 #include &lt;stdio.h>
16800 #include &lt;string.h>
16801 #include &lt;stdlib.h>
16802 #include &lt;sys/file.h>
16803 #include &lt;sys/stat.h>
16804 #include &lt;sys/types.h>
16805 #include &lt;unistd.h>
16806
16807 #ifdef TEST_SQLITE
16808 /*
16809  * Test sqlite open, as done by gcompris require the libsqlite3-dev
16810  * package and linking with -lsqlite3.  A more low level test is
16811  * below.
16812  * See also &lt;URL: http://www.sqlite.org./faq.html#q5 >.
16813  */
16814 #include &lt;sqlite3.h>
16815 #define CREATE_TABLE_USERS                                              \
16816   "CREATE TABLE users (user_id INT UNIQUE, login TEXT, lastname TEXT, firstname TEXT, birthdate TEXT, class_id INT ); "
16817 int test_sqlite_open(void) {
16818   char *zErrMsg;
16819   char *name = "testsqlite.db";
16820   sqlite3 *db=NULL;
16821   unlink(name);
16822   int rc = sqlite3_open(name, &db);
16823   if( rc ){
16824     printf("error: sqlite open of %s failed: %s\n", name, sqlite3_errmsg(db));
16825     sqlite3_close(db);
16826     return -1;
16827   }
16828
16829   /* create tables */
16830   rc = sqlite3_exec(db,CREATE_TABLE_USERS, NULL,  0, &zErrMsg);
16831   if( rc != SQLITE_OK ){
16832     printf("error: sqlite table create failed: %s\n", zErrMsg);
16833     sqlite3_close(db);
16834     return -1;
16835   }
16836   printf("info: sqlite worked\n");
16837   sqlite3_close(db);
16838   return 0;
16839 }
16840 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
16841
16842 /*
16843  * Demonstrate locking issue found in gcompris using sqlite3.  This
16844  * work with ext3, but not with cifs server on Windows 2003.  This is
16845  * done in the sqlite3 library.
16846  * See also
16847  * &lt;URL:http://www.cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2001-08/msg00854.html> and the
16848  * POSIX specification
16849  * &lt;URL:http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/functions/fcntl.html>.
16850  */
16851 int test_gcompris_locking(void) {
16852   struct flock fl;
16853   char *name = "testsqlite.db";
16854   unlink(name);
16855   int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, 0644);
16856   printf("info: testing fcntl locking\n");
16857
16858   fl.l_whence = SEEK_SET;
16859   fl.l_pid    = getpid();
16860   printf("  Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824");
16861   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
16862   fl.l_len    = 1;
16863   fl.l_type   = F_RDLCK;
16864   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
16865
16866   printf("  Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826");
16867   fl.l_start  = 1073741826;
16868   fl.l_len    = 510;
16869   fl.l_type   = F_RDLCK;
16870   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
16871
16872   printf("  Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824");
16873   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
16874   fl.l_len    = 1;
16875   fl.l_type   = F_UNLCK;
16876   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
16877
16878   printf("  Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824");
16879   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
16880   fl.l_len    = 1;
16881   fl.l_type   = F_WRLCK;
16882   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
16883
16884   printf("  Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826");
16885   fl.l_start  = 1073741826;
16886   fl.l_len    = 510;
16887   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
16888
16889   printf("  Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824");
16890   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
16891   fl.l_len    = 2;
16892   fl.l_type   = F_UNLCK;
16893   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
16894
16895   close(fd);
16896   return 0;
16897 }
16898
16899 /*
16900  * Test if permissions of freshly created directories allow entries
16901  * below them.  This was a problem with OpenOffice.org and gcompris.
16902  * Mounting with option 'sync' seem to solve this problem while
16903  * slowing down file operations.
16904  */
16905 int test_subdirectory_creation(void) {
16906 #define LEVELS 5
16907   char *path = strdup("test");
16908   char *dirs[LEVELS];
16909   int level;
16910   printf("info: testing subdirectory creation\n");
16911   for (level = 0; level &lt; LEVELS; level++) {
16912     char *newpath = NULL;
16913     if (-1 == mkdir(path, 0777)) {
16914       printf("  error: Unable to create directory '%s': %s\n",
16915              path, strerror(errno));
16916       break;
16917     }
16918     asprintf(&newpath, "%s/%s", path, "test");
16919     free(path);
16920     path = newpath;
16921   }
16922   return 0;
16923 }
16924
16925 /*
16926  * Test if symlinks can be created.  This was a problem detected with
16927  * KDE.
16928  */
16929 int test_symlinks(void) {
16930   printf("info: testing symlink creation\n");
16931   unlink("symlink");
16932   if (-1 == symlink("file", "symlink"))
16933     printf("  error: Unable to create symlink\n");
16934   return 0;
16935 }
16936
16937 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
16938   printf("Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system\n");
16939   test_symlinks();
16940   test_subdirectory_creation();
16941 #ifdef TEST_SQLITE
16942   test_sqlite_open();
16943 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
16944   test_gcompris_locking();
16945   return 0;
16946 }
16947 </pre>
16948
16949 <p>When everything is working, it should print something like
16950 this:</p>
16951
16952 <pre>
16953 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
16954 info: testing symlink creation
16955 info: testing subdirectory creation
16956 info: sqlite worked
16957 info: testing fcntl locking
16958   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
16959   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
16960   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
16961   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
16962   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
16963   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
16964 </pre>
16965
16966 <p>I do not remember the exact details of the problems we saw, but one
16967 of them was with locking, where if I remember correctly, POSIX allow a
16968 read-only lock to be upgraded to a read-write lock without unlocking
16969 the read-only lock (while Windows do not).  Another was a bug in the
16970 CIFS/SMB client implementation in the Linux kernel where directory
16971 meta information would be wrong for a fraction of a second, making
16972 OpenOffice.org fail to create its deep directory tree because it was
16973 not allowed to create files in its freshly created directory.</p>
16974
16975 <p>Anyway, here is a nice tool for your tool box, might you never need
16976 it. :)</p>
16977
16978 <p>Update 2010-08-27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
16979 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
16980 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a>.</p>
16981
16982       </div>
16983       <div class="tags">
16984
16985
16986         Tags: <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>.
16987
16988
16989       </div>
16990     </div>
16991     <div class="padding"></div>
16992
16993     <div class="entry">
16994       <div class="title">
16995         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Autodetecting_Client_setup_for_roaming_workstations_in_Debian_Edu.html">Autodetecting Client setup for roaming workstations in Debian Edu</a>
16996       </div>
16997       <div class="date">
16998          7th August 2010
16999       </div>
17000       <div class="body">
17001         <p>A few days ago, I
17002 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_roaming_workstation___at_the_university_of_Oslo.html">tried
17003 to install</a> a Roaming workation profile from Debian Edu/Squeeze
17004 while on the university network here at the University of Oslo, and
17005 noticed how much had to change to get it operational using the
17006 university infrastructure.  It was fairly easy, but it occured to me
17007 that Debian Edu would improve a lot if I could get the client to
17008 connect without any changes at all, and thus let the client configure
17009 itself during installation and first boot to use the infrastructure
17010 around it.  Now I am a huge step further along that road.</p>
17011
17012 <p>With our current squeeze-test packages, I can select the roaming
17013 workstation profile and get a working laptop connecting to the
17014 university LDAP server for user and group and our active directory
17015 servers for Kerberos authentication.  All this without any
17016 configuration at all during installation.  My users home directory got
17017 a bookmark in the KDE menu to mount it via SMB, with the correct URL.
17018 In short, openldap and sssd is correctly configured.  In addition to
17019 this, the client look for http://wpad/wpad.dat to configure a web
17020 proxy, and when it fail to find it no proxy settings are stored in
17021 /etc/environment and /etc/apt/apt.conf.  Iceweasel and KDE is
17022 configured to look for the same wpad configuration and also do not use
17023 a proxy when at the university network.  If the machine is moved to a
17024 network with such wpad setup, it would automatically use it when DHCP
17025 gave it a IP address.</p>
17026
17027 <p>The LDAP server is located using DNS, by first looking for the DNS
17028 entry ldap.$domain.  If this do not exist, it look for the
17029 _ldap._tcp.$domain SRV records and use the first one as the LDAP
17030 server.  Next, it connects to the LDAP server and search all
17031 namingContexts entries for posixAccount or posixGroup objects, and
17032 pick the first one as the LDAP base.  For Kerberos, a similar
17033 algorithm is used to locate the LDAP server, and the realm is the
17034 uppercase version of $domain.</p>
17035
17036 <p>So, what is not working, you might ask.  SMB mounting my home
17037 directory do not work.  No idea why, but suspected the incorrect
17038 Kerberos settings in /etc/krb5.conf and /etc/samba/smb.conf might be
17039 the cause.  These are not properly configured during installation, and
17040 had to be hand-edited to get the correct Kerberos realm and server,
17041 but SMB mounting still do not work. :(</p>
17042
17043 <p>With this automatic configuration in place, I expect a Debian Edu
17044 roaming profile installation would be able to automatically detect and
17045 connect to any site using LDAP and Kerberos for NSS directory and PAM
17046 authentication.  It should also work out of the box in a Active
17047 Directory environment providing posixAccount and posixGroup objects
17048 with UID and GID values.</p>
17049
17050 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
17051 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
17052
17053       </div>
17054       <div class="tags">
17055
17056
17057         Tags: <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>.
17058
17059
17060       </div>
17061     </div>
17062     <div class="padding"></div>
17063
17064     <div class="entry">
17065       <div class="title">
17066         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_roaming_workstation___at_the_university_of_Oslo.html">Debian Edu roaming workstation - at the university of Oslo</a>
17067       </div>
17068       <div class="date">
17069          3rd August 2010
17070       </div>
17071       <div class="body">
17072         <p>The new roaming workstation profile in Debian Edu/Squeeze is fairly
17073 similar to the laptop setup am I working on using Ubuntu for the
17074 University of Oslo, and just for the heck of it, I tested today how
17075 hard it would be to integrate that profile into the university
17076 infrastructure.  In this case, it is the university LDAP server,
17077 Active Directory Kerberos server and SMB mounting from the Netapp file
17078 servers.</p>
17079
17080 <p>I was pleasantly surprised that the only three files needed to be
17081 changed (/etc/sssd/sssd.conf, /etc/ldap.conf and
17082 /etc/mklocaluser.d/20-debian-edu-config) and one file had to be added
17083 (/usr/share/perl5/Debian/Edu_Local.pm), to get the client working.
17084 Most of the changes were to get the client to use the university LDAP
17085 for NSS and Kerberos server for PAM, but one was to change a hard
17086 coded DNS domain name in the mklocaluser hook from .intern to
17087 .uio.no.</p>
17088
17089 <p>This testing was so encouraging, that I went ahead and adjusted the
17090 Debian Edu scripts and setup in subversion to centralise the roaming
17091 workstation setup a bit more and avoid the hardcoded DNS domain name,
17092 so that when I test this tomorrow, I expect to get away with modifying
17093 only /etc/sssd/sssd.conf and /etc/ldap.conf to get it to use the
17094 university servers.</p>
17095
17096 <p>My goal is to get the clients to have no hardcoded settings and
17097 fetch all their initial setup during installation and first boot, to
17098 allow them to be inserted also into environments where the default
17099 setup in Debian Edu has been changed or as with the university, where
17100 the environment is different but provides the protocols Debian Edu
17101 uses.</p>
17102
17103       </div>
17104       <div class="tags">
17105
17106
17107         Tags: <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>.
17108
17109
17110       </div>
17111     </div>
17112     <div class="padding"></div>
17113
17114     <div class="entry">
17115       <div class="title">
17116         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html">Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery</a>
17117       </div>
17118       <div class="date">
17119         27th July 2010
17120       </div>
17121       <div class="body">
17122         <p>I discovered this while doing
17123 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">automated
17124 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze</a>.  A few packages
17125 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
17126 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
17127 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.</p>
17128
17129 <p>An example is from todays
17130 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt">upgrade
17131 of KDE using aptitude</a>.  In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
17132 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade.  The cause is simple.  If a
17133 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
17134 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
17135 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
17136 because its dependencies are unavailable.</p>
17137
17138 <p>In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:</p>
17139
17140 <blockquote><pre>
17141 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
17142  perl-modules depends on perl (>= 5.10.1-1); however:
17143   Version of perl on system is 5.10.0-19lenny2.
17144 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
17145  dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
17146 </pre></blockquote>
17147
17148 <p>The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
17149 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/527917">reported as a bug</a>, and will
17150 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
17151 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
17152 failures.  Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
17153 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
17154 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
17155 of dependency loops.</p>
17156
17157 <p>Thanks to
17158 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html">the
17159 tireless effort by Bill Allombert</a>, the number of circular
17160 dependencies
17161 <a href="http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html">left in Debian
17162 is dropping</a>, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)</p>
17163
17164 <p>Todays testing also exposed a bug in
17165 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590605">update-notifier</a> and
17166 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590604">different behaviour</a> between
17167 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
17168 dependency.  Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
17169 it.</p>
17170
17171       </div>
17172       <div class="tags">
17173
17174
17175         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>.
17176
17177
17178       </div>
17179     </div>
17180     <div class="padding"></div>
17181
17182     <div class="entry">
17183       <div class="title">
17184         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Debian_Edu_test_release__alpha0__based_on_Squeeze_is_released.html">First Debian Edu test release (alpha0) based on Squeeze is released</a>
17185       </div>
17186       <div class="date">
17187         27th July 2010
17188       </div>
17189       <div class="body">
17190         <p>I just posted this announcement culminating several months of work
17191 with the next Debian Edu release.  Not nearly done, but one major step
17192 completed.</p>
17193
17194 <blockquote>
17195 <p>This is the first test release based on Squeeze. The focus of this
17196 release is to test the user application selection. To have a look,
17197 install the standalone profile and let the developers know if the set
17198 of installed packages i.e. applications should be modified. If some
17199 user application is missing, or if there are some applications that no
17200 longer make sense to be included in Debian Edu, please let us know.
17201 Also, if a useful application is missing the translation for your
17202 language of choice, please let us know too.</p>
17203
17204 <p>In addition, feedback and help to polish the desktop (menus,
17205 artwork, starters, etc.) is appreciated. We would like to ship a nice
17206 and handy KDE4 desktop targeted for schools out of the box.</p>
17207
17208 <p>The other profiles should be installable, but there is a lot more
17209 work left to be done before they are ready, so do not expect to
17210 much.</p>
17211
17212 <p>Changes compared to the lenny based version</p>
17213
17214 <ul>
17215 <li>Everything from Debian Squeeze
17216 <ul>
17217   <li>Desktop environment KDE 4.4 => the new KDE desktop in
17218          combination with some new artwork
17219   <li>Web browser Iceweasel 3.5
17220   <li>OpenOffice.org 3.2
17221   <li>Educational toolbox GCompris 9.3
17222   <li>Music creator Rosegarden 10.04.2
17223   <li>Image editor Gimp 2.6.10
17224   <li>Virtual universe Celestia 1.6.0
17225   <li>Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.10.4
17226   <li>3D modeler Blender 2.49.2 (new application)
17227   <li>Video editor Kdenlive 0.7.7 (new application)
17228 </ul></li>
17229 <li>Now using Kerberos for password checking (migration not finished).
17230     Enabled for:
17231 <ul>
17232   <li>PAM
17233   <li>LDAP
17234   <li>IMAP
17235   <li>SMTP (sender verification)
17236 </ul>
17237 </li>
17238 <li>New experimental roaming workstation profile for laptops.</li>
17239 <li>Show welcome page to users when they first log in. The URL is
17240     fetched from LDAP.</li>
17241 <li>New LXDE desktop option, in addition to KDE (default) and Gnome.</li>
17242 <li>General cleanup (not finished)</li>
17243 </ul>
17244 <p>The following features are not working as they should</p>
17245
17246 <ul>
17247 <li>No web based administration tool for creating users and groups. The
17248     scripts ldap-createuser-krb and ldap-add-user-to-group can be used
17249     for testing.</li>
17250 <li>DVD installs are missing debian-installer images for the PXE boot,
17251     and do not set up the PXE menu on eth0 because of this. LTSP
17252     clients should still boot from eth1 on thin client servers.</li>
17253 <li>The restructured KDE menu is not implemented.</li>
17254 <li>The LDAP server setup need to be reviewed for security.</li>
17255 <li>The LDAP directory structure need to be reworked.</li>
17256 <li>Different sets of packages are installed when using the DVD and the
17257     netinst CD. More packages are installed using the netinst CD.</li>
17258 <li>The jackd package fail to install. This is believed to be caused by
17259     some ongoing transition, and hopefully should be solved soon. The
17260     jackd1 package can be installed manually for those that need it.</li>
17261 <li>Some packages lack translations. See
17262     http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Squeeze for updated status,
17263     and help out with translations.</li>
17264 </ul>
17265
17266 <p>To download this multiarch netinstall release you can use</p>
17267
17268 <ul>
17269 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</a></li>
17270 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</a></li>
17271 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
17272 </ul>
17273 <p>To download this multiarch dvd release you can use</p>
17274
17275 <ul>
17276 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</a></li>
17277 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</a></li>
17278 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
17279 </ul>
17280
17281 <p>There is no source DVD available yet. It will be prepared when we
17282 get closer to the final release.</p>
17283
17284 <p>The MD5SUM of these images are</p>
17285
17286 <ul>
17287 <li>3dbf45d59f42a53518b6e3c9ec3b5eb6 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
17288 <li>22f2cbfce281d1c6e478be452638675d debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
17289 </ul>
17290
17291 <p>The SHA1SUM of these images are</p>
17292 <ul>
17293 <li>c53d1b69b40cf37cd27aefaf33f6f6a3821bedf0 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
17294 <li>2ec29d7db676d59d32197b05c277ffe16348376c debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
17295 </ul>
17296 <p>How to report bugs:
17297 http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugsInBugzilla</p>
17298
17299 <p>Please direct replies to debian-edu@lists.debian.org</p>
17300 </blockquote>
17301
17302       </div>
17303       <div class="tags">
17304
17305
17306         Tags: <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>.
17307
17308
17309       </div>
17310     </div>
17311     <div class="padding"></div>
17312
17313     <div class="entry">
17314       <div class="title">
17315         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/One_step_closer_to_single_signon_in_Debian_Edu.html">One step closer to single signon in Debian Edu</a>
17316       </div>
17317       <div class="date">
17318         25th July 2010
17319       </div>
17320       <div class="body">
17321         <p>The last few months me and the other Debian Edu developers have
17322 been working hard to get the Debian/Squeeze based version of Debian
17323 Edu/Skolelinux into shape.  This future version will use Kerberos for
17324 authentication, and services are slowly migrated to single signon,
17325 getting rid of password questions one at the time.</p>
17326
17327 <p>It will also feature a roaming workstation profile with local home
17328 directory, for laptops that are only some times on the Skolelinux
17329 network, and for this profile a shortcut is created in Gnome and KDE
17330 to gain access to the users home directory on the file server.  This
17331 shortcut uses SMB at the moment, and yesterday I had time to test if
17332 SMB mounting had started working in KDE after we added the cifs-utils
17333 package.  I was pleasantly surprised how well it worked.</p>
17334
17335 <p>Thanks to the recent changes to our samba configuration to get it
17336 to use Kerberos for authentication, there were no question about user
17337 password when mounting the SMB volume.  A simple click on the shortcut
17338 in the KDE menu, and a window with the home directory popped
17339 up. :)</p>
17340
17341 <p>One step closer to a single signon solution out of the box in
17342 Debian Edu.  We already had PAM, LDAP, IMAP and SMTP in place, and now
17343 also Samba.  Next step is Cups and hopefully also NFS.</p>
17344
17345 <p>We had planned a alpha0 release of Debian Edu for today, but thanks
17346 to the autobuilder administrators for some architectures being slow to
17347 sign packages, we are still missing the fixed LTSP package we need for
17348 the release.  It was uploaded three days ago with urgency=high, and if
17349 it had entered testing yesterday we would have been able to test it in
17350 time for a alpha0 release today.  As the binaries for ia64 and powerpc
17351 still not uploaded to the Debian archive, we need to delay the alpha
17352 release another day.</p>
17353
17354 <p>If you want to help out with implementing Kerberos for Debian Edu,
17355 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
17356
17357       </div>
17358       <div class="tags">
17359
17360
17361         Tags: <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>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
17362
17363
17364       </div>
17365     </div>
17366     <div class="padding"></div>
17367
17368     <div class="entry">
17369       <div class="title">
17370         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/OpenStreetmap_one_step_closer_to_having_routing_on_its_front_page.html">OpenStreetmap one step closer to having routing on its front page</a>
17371       </div>
17372       <div class="date">
17373         18th July 2010
17374       </div>
17375       <div class="body">
17376         <p>Thanks to
17377 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Opengeodata/~3/wUTCzDZk3lc/project-of-the-week-which-way-home">todays
17378 opengeodata blog entry</a>, I just discovered that the
17379 OpenStreetmap.org site have gotten
17380 <a href="http://nroets.dev.openstreetmap.org/demo/index.html?layers=B000FTFTT">support
17381 for calculating routes</a>.  The support is still experimental and
17382 only available from the development server, until more experience is
17383 gathered on the user interface and any scalability issues.</p>
17384
17385 <p>Earlier, the routing I knew about using the OpenStreetmap.org data
17386 was provided by <a href="http://maps.cloudmade.com/">Cloudmade</a>,
17387 but having it on the main page is required to make everyone aware of
17388 the issue.  I've had people reject Openstreetmap.org as a viable
17389 alternative for them because the front page lacked routing support,
17390 and I hope their needs will be catered for when routing show up on the
17391 www.openstreetmap.org front page.</p>
17392
17393       </div>
17394       <div class="tags">
17395
17396
17397         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
17398
17399
17400       </div>
17401     </div>
17402     <div class="padding"></div>
17403
17404     <div class="entry">
17405       <div class="title">
17406         <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>
17407       </div>
17408       <div class="date">
17409         17th July 2010
17410       </div>
17411       <div class="body">
17412         <p>This is a
17413 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">followup</a>
17414 on my
17415 <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
17416 work</a> on
17417 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">merging
17418 all</a> the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.</p>
17419
17420 <p>As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
17421 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
17422 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server.  The two
17423 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.</p>
17424
17425 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
17426 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
17427 on a Debian Edu main-server.  Here is a summary.
17428
17429 <p><strong>powerdns</strong></p>
17430
17431 <a href="http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend">Clues
17432 on how to</a> set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
17433 the web.
17434
17435 <p>PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
17436 One "strict" mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
17437 using the same LDAP objects, and a "tree" mode where the forward and
17438 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
17439 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
17440 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.</p>
17441
17442 <p>In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
17443 base, and uses a "base" scoped search for the DNS name by adding
17444 "dc=tjener,dc=intern," to the base with a filter for
17445 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" for the forward entry and
17446 "dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa," with a filter for
17447 "(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)" for the reverse entry.  For
17448 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
17449 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
17450 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
17451 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
17452 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
17453 spfrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entries it is looking for
17454 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
17455 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
17456 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  The equivalent
17457 ldapsearch commands could look like this:</p>
17458
17459 <blockquote><pre>
17460 ldapsearch -h ldap \
17461   -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
17462   -s base -x '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
17463   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
17464   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
17465   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
17466   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
17467
17468 ldapsearch -h ldap \
17469   -b dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
17470   -s base -x '(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)'
17471   dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
17472   hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
17473   srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
17474 </pre></blockquote>
17475
17476 <p>In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
17477 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
17478 example LDAP objects used there.  In addition to these objects, the
17479 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
17480 also exist.</p>
17481
17482 <blockquote><pre>
17483 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
17484 objectclass: top
17485 objectclass: dnsdomain
17486 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
17487 dc: tjener
17488 arecord: 10.0.2.2
17489 associateddomain: tjener.intern
17490
17491 dn: dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
17492 objectclass: top
17493 objectclass: dnsdomain2
17494 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
17495 dc: 2
17496 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
17497 associateddomain: 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
17498 </pre></blockquote>
17499
17500 <p>In strict mode, the server behaves differently.  When looking for
17501 forward DNS entries, it is doing a "subtree" scoped search with the
17502 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
17503 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" and requests the attributes dnsttl,
17504 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
17505 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
17506 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entires it also do a
17507 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is "(arecord=10.0.2.2)"
17508 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
17509 modifytimestamp.  In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
17510 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
17511 instead.</p>
17512
17513 <p>The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
17514 like this:</p>
17515
17516 <blockquote><pre>
17517 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
17518   '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
17519   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
17520   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
17521   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
17522   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
17523
17524 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
17525   '(arecord=10.0.2.2)' associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
17526 </pre></blockquote>
17527
17528 <p>In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
17529 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
17530 reverse lookups.</p>
17531
17532 <p>A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
17533 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
17534 need to generate a DNS reply.  This make it able to work with any
17535 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.</p>
17536
17537 <p>The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC 1274) and
17538 dnsdomain2 schemas.  The latter is used for reverse entries like
17539 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.</p>
17540
17541 <p>In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
17542 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
17543 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain).  The use
17544 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
17545 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.</p>
17546
17547 <p>There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
17548 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
17549 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
17550 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
17551 (zonename and relativedomainname).</p>
17552
17553 <p>My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
17554 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
17555 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
17556 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
17557 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
17558 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):</p>
17559
17560 <blockquote><pre>
17561 objectclass ( some-oid NAME 'dnsDomainAux'
17562     SUP top
17563     AUXILIARY
17564     MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
17565           DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
17566           TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
17567           NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
17568           A6Record $ DNAMERecord
17569     ))
17570 </pre></blockquote>
17571
17572 <p>This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
17573 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
17574 all the attributes PowerDNS wants.  I've sent an email to the PowerDNS
17575 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
17576 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
17577 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.</p>
17578
17579 <p><strong>ISC dhcp</strong></p>
17580
17581 <p>The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
17582 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want.  This
17583 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
17584 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
17585 what is needed without having to read the source code.</p>
17586
17587 <p>In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
17588 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
17589 stored.  These are the relevant entries from
17590 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:</p>
17591
17592 <blockquote><pre>
17593 ldap-base-dn "dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no";
17594 ldap-dhcp-server-cn "dhcp";
17595 </pre></blockquote>
17596
17597 <p>The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
17598 configuration it need.  The cn "dhcp" is located using the given LDAP
17599 base and the filter "(&(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))".  The
17600 search result is this entry:</p>
17601
17602 <blockquote><pre>
17603 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
17604 cn: dhcp
17605 objectClass: top
17606 objectClass: dhcpServer
17607 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
17608 </pre></blockquote>
17609
17610 <p>The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
17611 subtree with DHCP configuration.  The DHCP configuration subtree base
17612 is located using a base scope search with base "cn=DHCP
17613 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" and filter
17614 "(&(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))".
17615 The search result is this entry:</p>
17616
17617 <blockquote><pre>
17618 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
17619 cn: DHCP Config
17620 objectClass: top
17621 objectClass: dhcpService
17622 objectClass: dhcpOptions
17623 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
17624 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
17625 dhcpStatements: authoritative
17626 dhcpOption: smtp-server code 69 = array of ip-address
17627 dhcpOption: www-server code 72 = array of ip-address
17628 dhcpOption: wpad-url code 252 = text
17629 </pre></blockquote>
17630
17631 <p>Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time.  When
17632 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
17633 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
17634 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
17635 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost.  These provide options
17636 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc.  Leaving out the
17637 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
17638 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
17639 related computer objects.</p>
17640
17641 <p>When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
17642 of the client (00:00:00:00:00:00 in this example), using a subtree
17643 scoped search with "cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" as
17644 the base and "(&(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
17645 00:00:00:00:00:00))" as the filter.  This is what a host object look
17646 like:</p>
17647
17648 <blockquote><pre>
17649 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
17650 cn: hostname
17651 objectClass: top
17652 objectClass: dhcpHost
17653 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
17654 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
17655 </pre></blockquote>
17656
17657 <p>There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
17658 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
17659 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure.  On the
17660 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
17661 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries.  The latter should make
17662 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
17663 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
17664 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
17665 structural object class.
17666
17667 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
17668
17669 <p>The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
17670 to which LDAP schemas to use.  While its "tree" mode is rigid when it
17671 come to the the LDAP structure, the "strict" mode is very flexible,
17672 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
17673 in the configuration.</p>
17674
17675 <p>The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
17676 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
17677 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
17678 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
17679 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
17680 structure.</p>
17681
17682 <p>Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
17683 this might work for Debian Edu:</p>
17684
17685 <blockquote><pre>
17686 ou=services
17687   cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
17688     cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
17689     cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
17690       cn=10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
17691         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
17692     cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
17693       cn=192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
17694         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
17695     ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
17696       cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
17697 </pre></blockquote>
17698
17699 <P>This is not tested yet.  If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
17700 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
17701 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
17702 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.</p>
17703
17704 <p>The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
17705 like this:</p>
17706
17707 <blockquote><pre>
17708 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
17709 dc: hostname
17710 objectClass: top
17711 objectClass: dhcpHost
17712 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
17713 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
17714 associateddomain: hostname.intern
17715 arecord: 10.11.12.13
17716 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
17717 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
17718 </pre></blockquote>
17719
17720 </p>One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
17721 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
17722 auxiliary object class.</p>
17723
17724       </div>
17725       <div class="tags">
17726
17727
17728         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>.
17729
17730
17731       </div>
17732     </div>
17733     <div class="padding"></div>
17734
17735     <div class="entry">
17736       <div class="title">
17737         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects</a>
17738       </div>
17739       <div class="date">
17740         14th July 2010
17741       </div>
17742       <div class="body">
17743         <p>For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
17744 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
17745 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
17746 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
17747 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.</p>
17748
17749 <p>I've looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
17750 information finally found a solution that seem to work.</p>
17751
17752 <p>The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
17753 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry.  If
17754 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
17755 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
17756 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
17757 to a slave DNS server.</p>
17758
17759 <p>If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
17760 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
17761 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
17762 I've written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
17763 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup.  It
17764 seem to work.</p>
17765
17766 <p>With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
17767 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
17768 an earlier email.  The combined LDAP object will look something like
17769 this:</p>
17770
17771 <blockquote><pre>
17772   dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
17773   cn: hostname
17774   objectClass: dhcphost
17775   objectclass: domainrelatedobject
17776   objectclass: dnsdomainaux
17777   associateddomain: hostname.intern
17778   arecord: 10.11.12.13
17779   dhcphwaddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
17780   dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
17781   ldapconfigsound: Y
17782 </pre></blockquote>
17783
17784 <p>The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
17785 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
17786 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress.  LTSP will use
17787 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.</p>
17788
17789 <p>I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
17790 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
17791 outside the "DHCP Config" subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
17792 that.  If I can't figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
17793 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
17794 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
17795 content.  I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
17796 might be a good place to put it.</p>
17797
17798 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
17799 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
17800
17801       </div>
17802       <div class="tags">
17803
17804
17805         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>.
17806
17807
17808       </div>
17809     </div>
17810     <div class="padding"></div>
17811
17812     <div class="entry">
17813       <div class="title">
17814         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html">Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP</a>
17815       </div>
17816       <div class="date">
17817         11th July 2010
17818       </div>
17819       <div class="body">
17820         <p>Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
17821 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
17822 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
17823 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.</p>
17824
17825 <p>Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
17826 to get configuration from LDAP.  The idea is to look up the MAC
17827 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
17828 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
17829 LTSP clients.</p>
17830
17831 <p>The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
17832 in a "computer" LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
17833 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.</p>
17834
17835 <p>This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
17836 this approach.  A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
17837 need to be written.  Comments, suggestions, etc?</p>
17838
17839 <blockquote><pre>
17840 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
17841 #
17842 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
17843 #
17844 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
17845 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
17846 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
17847 #
17848 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
17849 # existence of attribute names.
17850 #
17851 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
17852 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
17853 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
17854 #
17855 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
17856 # configuration settings.  Something like this should work:
17857 #
17858 # objectclass ( 1.1.2.2 NAME 'ltspClientAux'
17859 #     SUP top
17860 #     AUXILIARY
17861 #     MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
17862
17863 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
17864 if [ "$LDAPSERVER" ] ; then
17865     LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
17866     for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk '{print $5}'|sort -u) ; do
17867         filter="(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))"
17868         ldapsearch -h "$LDAPSERVER" -b "$LDAPBASE" -v -x "$filter" | \
17869             grep '^ltspConfig' | while read attr value ; do
17870             # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
17871             attr=$(echo $attr | sed 's/^ltspConfig//i' | tr a-z A-Z)
17872             # bass value on to clients
17873             eval "$attr=$value; export $attr"
17874         done
17875     done
17876 fi
17877 </pre></blockquote>
17878
17879 <p>I'm not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
17880 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
17881 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
17882 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
17883 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)</p>
17884
17885 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
17886 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
17887
17888 <p>Update 2010-07-17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
17889 configuration in LDAP that was created around year 2000 by
17890 <a href="http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html">PC
17891 Xperience, Inc., 2000</a>.  I found its
17892 <a href="http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/">files</a> on a
17893 personal home page over at redhat.com.</p>
17894
17895       </div>
17896       <div class="tags">
17897
17898
17899         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>.
17900
17901
17902       </div>
17903     </div>
17904     <div class="padding"></div>
17905
17906     <div class="entry">
17907       <div class="title">
17908         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
17909       </div>
17910       <div class="date">
17911          9th July 2010
17912       </div>
17913       <div class="body">
17914         <p>Since
17915 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">my
17916 last post</a> about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
17917 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma.  The java application
17918 <a href="http://jxplorer.org/">jXplorer</a> is claimed to be capable of
17919 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
17920 authenticate using Kerberos.  I have only tested the Kerberos
17921 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
17922 LDAP with my test user yet.  It is
17923 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html">available in
17924 Debian</a> testing and unstable at the moment.  The only problem I
17925 have with it is how it handle errors.  If something go wrong, its
17926 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
17927 and remove the failing query.  Nothing big, but very annoying.</p>
17928
17929       </div>
17930       <div class="tags">
17931
17932
17933         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>.
17934
17935
17936       </div>
17937     </div>
17938     <div class="padding"></div>
17939
17940     <div class="entry">
17941       <div class="title">
17942         <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>
17943       </div>
17944       <div class="date">
17945          3rd July 2010
17946       </div>
17947       <div class="body">
17948         <p>Here is a short update on my <a
17949 href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">my
17950 Debian Lenny->Squeeze upgrade testing</a>.  Here is a summary of the
17951 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude.  I'm
17952 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
17953 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
17954 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> and
17955 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585716">#585716</a>).</p>
17956
17957 <p>At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
17958 complete list of the installed packages.  Based on this I see these
17959 differences when I did a test run today.  As usual, I do not really
17960 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
17961 publish the difference.</p>
17962
17963 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
17964
17965 <blockquote><p>
17966   at-spi cpp-4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
17967   libatspi1.0-0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-1-common
17968   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
17969   libgtksourceview-common libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
17970   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
17971   libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
17972   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
17973   python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
17974 </p></blockquote>
17975
17976 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
17977
17978 <blockquote><p>
17979   bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
17980   gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
17981   libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-50
17982   libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
17983   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9
17984   libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3
17985   libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
17986   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
17987   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
17988   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
17989   libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
17990   libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++10
17991   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
17992   libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5
17993   libparted1.8-10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
17994   libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
17995   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1
17996   libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
17997   libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
17998   mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
17999 </p></blockquote>
18000
18001 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
18002
18003 <blockquote><p>
18004   gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
18005   python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
18006   xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
18007   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
18008   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
18009   xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
18010   xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
18011   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
18012   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
18013   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
18014   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
18015   xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
18016   xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
18017   xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
18018   xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
18019   xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
18020   xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
18021   xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
18022   xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
18023   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
18024   xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
18025 </p></blockquote>
18026
18027 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
18028
18029 <blockquote><p>
18030   deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
18031   xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
18032   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
18033 </p></blockquote>
18034
18035 <p>I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
18036 <a href="http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120">changed
18037 in git</a> today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
18038 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
18039 the difference somewhat.
18040
18041       </div>
18042       <div class="tags">
18043
18044
18045         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>.
18046
18047
18048       </div>
18049     </div>
18050     <div class="padding"></div>
18051
18052     <div class="entry">
18053       <div class="title">
18054         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Caching_password__user_and_group_on_a_roaming_Debian_laptop.html">Caching password, user and group on a roaming Debian laptop</a>
18055       </div>
18056       <div class="date">
18057          1st July 2010
18058       </div>
18059       <div class="body">
18060         <p>For a laptop, centralized user directories and password checking is
18061 a bit troubling.  Laptops are typically used also when not connected
18062 to the network, and it is vital for a user to be able to log in or
18063 unlock the screen saver also when a central server is unavailable.
18064 This is possible by caching passwords and directory information (user
18065 and group attributes) locally, and the packages to do so are available
18066 in Debian.  Here follow two recipes to set this up in Debian/Squeeze.
18067 It is also possible to set up in Debian/Lenny, but require more manual
18068 setup there because pam-auth-update is missing in Lenny.</p>
18069
18070 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nscd + libpam-ccreds + libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir</h2>
18071
18072 This is the traditional method with a twist.  The password caching is
18073 provided by libpam-ccreds (version 10-4 or later is needed on
18074 Squeeze), and the directory caching is done by nscd.  The directory
18075 lookup and password checking is done using LDAP.  If one want to use
18076 Kerberos for password checking the libpam-ldapd package can be
18077 replaced with libpam-krb5 or libpam-heimdal.  If one is happy having a
18078 local home directory with the path listed in LDAP, one can use the
18079 pam_mkhomedir module from pam-modules to make this happen instead of
18080 using libpam-mklocaluser.  A setup for pam-auth-update to enable
18081 pam_mkhomedir will have to be written until a fix for
18082 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/568577">bug #568577</a> is in the
18083 archive.  Because I believe it is a bad idea to have local home
18084 directories using misleading paths like /site/server/partition/, I
18085 prefer to create a local user with the home directory in /home/.  This
18086 is done using the libpam-mklocaluser package.</p>
18087
18088 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured</p>
18089
18090 <blockquote><pre>
18091 libnss-ldapd libpam-ldapd nscd libpam-ccreds libpam-mklocaluser
18092 </pre></blockquote>
18093
18094 <p>The ldapd packages will ask for LDAP connection information, and
18095 one have to fill in the values that fits ones own site.  Make sure the
18096 PAM part uses encrypted connections, to make sure the password is not
18097 sent in clear text to the LDAP server.  I've been unable to get TLS
18098 certificate checking for a self signed certificate working, which make
18099 LDAP authentication unsafe for Debian Edu (nslcd is not checking if it
18100 is talking to the correct LDAP server), and very much welcome feedback
18101 on how to get this working.</p>
18102
18103 <p>Because nscd do not have a default configuration fit for offline
18104 caching until <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/485282">bug #485282</a>
18105 is fixed, this configuration should be used instead of the one
18106 currently in /etc/nscd.conf.  The changes are in the fields
18107 reload-count and positive-time-to-live, and is based on the
18108 instructions I found in the
18109 <a href="http://www.flyn.org/laptopldap/">LDAP for Mobile Laptops</a>
18110 instructions by Flyn Computing.</p>
18111
18112 <blockquote><pre>
18113         debug-level             0
18114         reload-count            unlimited
18115         paranoia                no
18116
18117         enable-cache            passwd          yes
18118         positive-time-to-live   passwd          2592000
18119         negative-time-to-live   passwd          20
18120         suggested-size          passwd          211
18121         check-files             passwd          yes
18122         persistent              passwd          yes
18123         shared                  passwd          yes
18124         max-db-size             passwd          33554432
18125         auto-propagate          passwd          yes
18126
18127         enable-cache            group           yes
18128         positive-time-to-live   group           2592000
18129         negative-time-to-live   group           20
18130         suggested-size          group           211
18131         check-files             group           yes
18132         persistent              group           yes
18133         shared                  group           yes
18134         max-db-size             group           33554432
18135         auto-propagate          group           yes
18136
18137         enable-cache            hosts           no
18138         positive-time-to-live   hosts           2592000
18139         negative-time-to-live   hosts           20
18140         suggested-size          hosts           211
18141         check-files             hosts           yes
18142         persistent              hosts           yes
18143         shared                  hosts           yes
18144         max-db-size             hosts           33554432
18145
18146         enable-cache            services        yes
18147         positive-time-to-live   services        2592000
18148         negative-time-to-live   services        20
18149         suggested-size          services        211
18150         check-files             services        yes
18151         persistent              services        yes
18152         shared                  services        yes
18153         max-db-size             services        33554432
18154 </pre></blockquote>
18155
18156 <p>While we wait for a mechanism to update /etc/nsswitch.conf
18157 automatically like the one provided in
18158 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/496915">bug #496915</a>, the file
18159 content need to be manually replaced to ensure LDAP is used as the
18160 directory service on the machine.  /etc/nsswitch.conf should normally
18161 look like this:</p>
18162
18163 <blockquote><pre>
18164 passwd:         files ldap
18165 group:          files ldap
18166 shadow:         files ldap
18167 hosts:          files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns mdns4
18168 networks:       files
18169 protocols:      files
18170 services:       files
18171 ethers:         files
18172 rpc:            files
18173 netgroup:       files ldap
18174 </pre></blockquote>
18175
18176 <p>The important parts are that ldap is listed last for passwd, group,
18177 shadow and netgroup.</p>
18178
18179 <p>With these changes in place, any user in LDAP will be able to log
18180 in locally on the machine using for example kdm, get a local home
18181 directory created and have the password as well as user and group
18182 attributes cached.
18183
18184 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nss-updatedb + libpam-ccreds +
18185   libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir</h2>
18186
18187 <p>Because nscd have had its share of problems, and seem to have
18188 problems doing proper caching, I've seen suggestions and recipes to
18189 use nss-updatedb to copy parts of the LDAP database locally when the
18190 LDAP database is available.  I have not tested such setup, because I
18191 discovered sssd.</p>
18192
18193 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + sssd + libpam-mklocaluser</h2>
18194
18195 <p>A more flexible and robust setup than the nscd combination
18196 mentioned earlier that has shown up recently, is the
18197 <a href="https://fedorahosted.org/sssd/">sssd</a> package from Redhat.
18198 It is part of the <a href="http://www.freeipa.org/">FreeIPA</A> project
18199 to provide a Active Directory like directory service for Linux
18200 machines.  The sssd system combines the caching of passwords and user
18201 information into one package, and remove the need for nscd and
18202 libpam-ccreds.  It support LDAP and Kerberos, but not NIS.  Version
18203 1.2 do not support netgroups, but it is said that it will support this
18204 in version 1.5 expected to show up later in 2010.  Because the
18205 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd package</a>
18206 was missing in Debian, I ended up co-maintaining it with Werner, and
18207 version 1.2 is now in testing.
18208
18209 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured to get the
18210 roaming setup I want</p>
18211
18212 <blockquote><pre>
18213 libpam-sss libnss-sss libpam-mklocaluser
18214 </pre></blockquote>
18215
18216 The complete setup of sssd is done by editing/creating
18217 <tt>/etc/sssd/sssd.conf</tt>.
18218
18219 <blockquote><pre>
18220 [sssd]
18221 config_file_version = 2
18222 reconnection_retries = 3
18223 sbus_timeout = 30
18224 services = nss, pam
18225 domains = INTERN
18226
18227 [nss]
18228 filter_groups = root
18229 filter_users = root
18230 reconnection_retries = 3
18231
18232 [pam]
18233 reconnection_retries = 3
18234
18235 [domain/INTERN]
18236 enumerate = false
18237 cache_credentials = true
18238
18239 id_provider = ldap
18240 auth_provider = ldap
18241 chpass_provider = ldap
18242
18243 ldap_uri = ldap://ldap
18244 ldap_search_base = dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
18245 ldap_tls_reqcert = never
18246 ldap_tls_cacert = /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
18247 </pre></blockquote>
18248
18249 <p>I got the same problem here with certificate checking.  Had to set
18250 "ldap_tls_reqcert = never" to get it working.</p>
18251
18252 <p>With the libnss-sss package in testing at the moment, the
18253 nsswitch.conf file is update automatically, so there is no need to
18254 modify it manually.</p>
18255
18256 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
18257 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
18258
18259       </div>
18260       <div class="tags">
18261
18262
18263         Tags: <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>.
18264
18265
18266       </div>
18267     </div>
18268     <div class="padding"></div>
18269
18270     <div class="entry">
18271       <div class="title">
18272         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
18273       </div>
18274       <div class="date">
18275         28th June 2010
18276       </div>
18277       <div class="body">
18278         <p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
18279 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
18280 tool to browse the LDAP tree.  The only one I was able to find in
18281 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
18282 <a href="http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA</a>, which has proved to
18283 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
18284 populated by default in Skolelinux.  Thanks to it, I have been able to
18285 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
18286 objects.  It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze.  If you
18287 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)</p>
18288
18289 <p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
18290 the BTS yet.  There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
18291 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
18292 Debian submenu in KDE.  I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
18293 released.</p>
18294
18295 <p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet.  I would
18296 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
18297 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet.  So in the mean time, I use
18298 <a href="http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi</a> for that.</p>
18299
18300 <p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
18301 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
18302
18303 <p>Update 2010-06-29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
18304 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq</a> package as a
18305 useful GUI alternative.  It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
18306 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze.  Unless that
18307 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.</p>
18308
18309       </div>
18310       <div class="tags">
18311
18312
18313         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>.
18314
18315
18316       </div>
18317     </div>
18318     <div class="padding"></div>
18319
18320     <div class="entry">
18321       <div class="title">
18322         <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>
18323       </div>
18324       <div class="date">
18325         24th June 2010
18326       </div>
18327       <div class="body">
18328         <p>A while back, I
18329 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
18330 about the fact</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
18331 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
18332 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.</p>
18333
18334 <p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
18335 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
18336 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
18337 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.</p>
18338
18339 <p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
18340 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
18341 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
18342 Debian Edu.</p>
18343
18344 <p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
18345 the
18346 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
18347 schema</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
18348 available today from IETF.</p>
18349
18350 <pre>
18351 --- dhcp.schema    (revision 65192)
18352 +++ dhcp.schema    (working copy)
18353 @@ -376,7 +376,7 @@
18354  objectclass ( 2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
18355         NAME 'dhcpHost'
18356         DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
18357 -       SUP top
18358 +       SUP top AUXILIARY
18359         MUST cn
18360         MAY  (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
18361         X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
18362 </pre>
18363
18364 <p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
18365 Edu/Squeeze.  We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
18366 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.</p>
18367
18368 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
18369 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
18370
18371       </div>
18372       <div class="tags">
18373
18374
18375         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>.
18376
18377
18378       </div>
18379     </div>
18380     <div class="padding"></div>
18381
18382     <div class="entry">
18383       <div class="title">
18384         <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>
18385       </div>
18386       <div class="date">
18387         16th June 2010
18388       </div>
18389       <div class="body">
18390         <p>A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
18391 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run.  Until now,
18392 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
18393 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
18394 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
18395 this:
18396
18397 <blockquote><pre>
18398 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
18399 tasksel --new-install
18400 </pre></blockquote>
18401
18402 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
18403 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
18404 any output what so ever.
18405
18406 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
18407 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
18408 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
18409 happen.  Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
18410 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
18411 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run.  I ended up using
18412 code like this:
18413
18414 <blockquote><pre>
18415 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
18416 cmd="$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed 's/debconf-apt-progress -- //')"
18417 $cmd
18418 </pre></blockquote>
18419
18420 <p>The content of $cmd is typically something like "<tt>aptitude -q
18421 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
18422 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
18423 ~pimportant</tt>", which will install the gnome desktop task, the
18424 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
18425 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
18426 installation.</p>
18427
18428 <p>A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
18429 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
18430 like this.</p>
18431
18432       </div>
18433       <div class="tags">
18434
18435
18436         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>.
18437
18438
18439       </div>
18440     </div>
18441     <div class="padding"></div>
18442
18443     <div class="entry">
18444       <div class="title">
18445         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html">Officeshots taking shape</a>
18446       </div>
18447       <div class="date">
18448         13th June 2010
18449       </div>
18450       <div class="body">
18451         <p>For those of us caring about document exchange and
18452 interoperability, <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">OfficeShots</a>
18453 is a great service.  It is to ODF documents what
18454 <a href="http://browsershots.org/">BrowserShots</a> is for web
18455 pages.</p>
18456
18457 <p>A while back, I was contacted by Knut Yrvin at the part of Nokia
18458 that used to be Trolltech, who wanted to help the OfficeShots project
18459 and wondered if the University of Oslo where I work would be
18460 interested in supporting the project.  I helped him to navigate his
18461 request to the right people at work, and his request was answered with
18462 a spot in the machine room with power and network connected, and Knut
18463 arranged funding for a machine to fill the spot.  The machine is
18464 administrated by the OfficeShots people, so I do not have daily
18465 contact with its progress, and thus from time to time check back to
18466 see how the project is doing.</p>
18467
18468 <p>Today I had a look, and was happy to see that the Dell box in our
18469 machine room now is the host for several virtual machines running as
18470 OfficeShots factories, and the project is able to render ODF documents
18471 in 17 different document processing implementation on Linux and
18472 Windows.  This is great.</p>
18473
18474       </div>
18475       <div class="tags">
18476
18477
18478         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
18479
18480
18481       </div>
18482     </div>
18483     <div class="padding"></div>
18484
18485     <div class="entry">
18486       <div class="title">
18487         <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>
18488       </div>
18489       <div class="date">
18490         13th June 2010
18491       </div>
18492       <div class="body">
18493         <p>My
18494 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">testing
18495 of Debian upgrades</a> from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I've
18496 finally made the upgrade logs available from
18497 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/</a>.
18498 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
18499 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting.  This time
18500 I will only focus on their removal plans.</p>
18501
18502 <p>After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
18503 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze.  The
18504 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
18505 xserver-xorg-video* drivers.  Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
18506 sure why.  When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
18507 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
18508 longer needed.  Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
18509 I do not know.  Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?</p>
18510
18511 <p>For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
18512 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
18513 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
18514 too surprising.</p>
18515
18516 <p>I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
18517 and avoided, and perhaps others as well.  Here are the complete list
18518 of planned removals.  The complete logs is available from the URL
18519 above.  Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
18520 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
18521 conffile questions.  No idea why.  I worked around it by using
18522 '<tt>echo >> /proc/<em>pidofdpkg</em>/fd/0</tt>' to tell dpkg to
18523 continue.</p>
18524
18525 <p><b>apt-get gnome 72</b>
18526 <br>bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
18527   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
18528   iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
18529   libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
18530   nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
18531   serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
18532   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
18533   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
18534   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
18535   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
18536   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
18537   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
18538   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
18539   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
18540   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
18541   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
18542   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
18543   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
18544   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
18545   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
18546   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
18547   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
18548   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
18549   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
18550   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
18551   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
18552   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
18553   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
18554   xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support</p>
18555
18556 <p><b>aptitude gnome 129</b>
18557
18558 <br>bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
18559   djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
18560   gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
18561   gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
18562   libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
18563   libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
18564   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
18565   libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
18566   libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
18567   libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
18568   libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
18569   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
18570   libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
18571   libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
18572   libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
18573   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
18574   libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
18575   libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
18576   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
18577   libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
18578   libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
18579   libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
18580   libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
18581   libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
18582   openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
18583   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
18584   python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
18585   python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
18586   swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
18587   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
18588   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
18589   zip</p>
18590
18591 <p><b>apt-get kde 82</b>
18592
18593 <br>cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
18594   kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
18595   kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
18596   kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
18597   kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
18598   libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
18599   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
18600   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
18601   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
18602   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
18603   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
18604   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
18605   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
18606   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
18607   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
18608   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
18609   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
18610   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
18611   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
18612   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
18613   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
18614   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
18615   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
18616   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
18617   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
18618   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
18619   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
18620   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9</p>
18621
18622 <p><b>aptitude kde 192</b>
18623 <br>bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
18624   djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
18625   ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
18626   kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
18627   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
18628   kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
18629   kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
18630   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
18631   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
18632   kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
18633   kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
18634   klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
18635   kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
18636   krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
18637   ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
18638   kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
18639   kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
18640   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
18641   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
18642   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
18643   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
18644   libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
18645   libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
18646   libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
18647   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
18648   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
18649   libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
18650   libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
18651   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
18652   libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
18653   libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
18654   openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
18655   superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
18656   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
18657   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
18658   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
18659   xulrunner-1.9</p>
18660
18661
18662       </div>
18663       <div class="tags">
18664
18665
18666         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>.
18667
18668
18669       </div>
18670     </div>
18671     <div class="padding"></div>
18672
18673     <div class="entry">
18674       <div class="title">
18675         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</a>
18676       </div>
18677       <div class="date">
18678         11th June 2010
18679       </div>
18680       <div class="body">
18681         <p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
18682 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly.  A few bugs
18683 have been discovered and reported in the process
18684 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
18685 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
18686 enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> in
18687 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
18688 am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
18689
18690 <p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
18691 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
18692 it.  To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
18693 script is inserted.  To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
18694 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
18695 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
18696
18697 <p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
18698 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
18699 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
18700 is created.  The bug report
18701 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
18702 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
18703 to make sure the upgrade go well.  Testing on virtual and real
18704 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
18705 do the trick in such settings anyway.  This is a
18706 <a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/">known
18707 issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
18708 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
18709 working with old kernels or something like that.  I really wish the
18710 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
18711 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
18712 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
18713 Debian Squeeze.</p>
18714
18715 <p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades.  This test
18716 script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
18717 trick:</p>
18718
18719 <blockquote><pre>
18720 #!/bin/sh
18721 set -ex
18722
18723 if [ "$1" ] ; then
18724     desktop=$1
18725 else
18726     desktop=gnome
18727 fi
18728
18729 from=lenny
18730 to=squeeze
18731
18732 exec &lt; /dev/null
18733 unset LANG
18734 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
18735 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
18736 fuser -mv .
18737 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
18738 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
18739 cat > $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d &lt;&lt;EOF
18740 #!/bin/sh
18741 exit 101
18742 EOF
18743 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
18744 exit_cleanup() {
18745     umount $tmpdir/proc
18746 }
18747 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
18748 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
18749 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
18750
18751 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
18752
18753 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger.  It need the test scripts
18754 # to return the correct answers.
18755 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
18756     chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
18757
18758 # Include the desktop and laptop task
18759 for test in desktop laptop ; do
18760     echo > $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test &lt;&lt;EOF
18761 #!/bin/sh
18762 exit 2
18763 EOF
18764     chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
18765 done
18766
18767 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
18768 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
18769 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
18770 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
18771
18772 echo deb $mirror $to main > $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
18773 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
18774 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
18775 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
18776 fuser -mv
18777 </pre></blockquote>
18778
18779 <p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
18780 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
18781 differently so far.  I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
18782 regularly and post the result on the web.  The Gnome upgrade currently
18783 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
18784 kdebase-workspace-data</p>
18785
18786 <p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
18787 (KDE 167 KiB, Gnome 516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
18788 post, so I will refrain from trying.  I can report that for Gnome,
18789 aptitude report 760 packages upgraded, 448 newly installed, 129 to
18790 remove and 1 not upgraded and 1024MB need to be downloaded while for
18791 KDE the same numbers are 702 packages upgraded, 507 newly installed,
18792 193 to remove and 0 not upgraded and 1117MB need to be downloaded</p>
18793
18794 <p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
18795 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
18796 booting without a hitch.  Was unsure if there were still bugs with
18797 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
18798 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
18799 packages.</p>
18800
18801       </div>
18802       <div class="tags">
18803
18804
18805         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>.
18806
18807
18808       </div>
18809     </div>
18810     <div class="padding"></div>
18811
18812     <div class="entry">
18813       <div class="title">
18814         <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>
18815       </div>
18816       <div class="date">
18817          6th June 2010
18818       </div>
18819       <div class="body">
18820         <p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
18821 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
18822 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd.  The packages with such
18823 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
18824 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart.  Because of
18825 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
18826 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.</p>
18827
18828 <p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
18829 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
18830 COLUMNS):</p>
18831
18832 <blockquote><pre>
18833 DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
18834 previous=N
18835 PREVLEVEL=
18836 RUNLEVEL=
18837 runlevel=S
18838 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
18839 UPSTART_INSTANCE=
18840 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
18841 </pre></blockquote>
18842
18843 <p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
18844 script.</p>
18845
18846 <blockquote><pre>
18847 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
18848 previous=N
18849 PREVLEVEL=N
18850 RUNLEVEL=S
18851 runlevel=S
18852 </pre></blockquote>
18853
18854 <p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
18855 sysvinit are not set by upstart.  Not sure if it is intentional or not
18856 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.</p>
18857
18858 <p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
18859 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
18860 choice.</p>
18861
18862       </div>
18863       <div class="tags">
18864
18865
18866         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>.
18867
18868
18869       </div>
18870     </div>
18871     <div class="padding"></div>
18872
18873     <div class="entry">
18874       <div class="title">
18875         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...</a>
18876       </div>
18877       <div class="date">
18878          6th June 2010
18879       </div>
18880       <div class="body">
18881         <p>Via the
18882 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
18883 of Rob Weir</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
18884 <a href="http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
18885 Standards Wars</a> (PDF 25 pages).  I recommend it for everyone
18886 following the standards wars of today.</p>
18887
18888       </div>
18889       <div class="tags">
18890
18891
18892         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>.
18893
18894
18895       </div>
18896     </div>
18897     <div class="padding"></div>
18898
18899     <div class="entry">
18900       <div class="title">
18901         <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>
18902       </div>
18903       <div class="date">
18904          3rd June 2010
18905       </div>
18906       <div class="body">
18907         <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
18908 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
18909 information extracted from each machine.  The script to do so is
18910 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
18911 the Skolelinux build servers:</p>
18912
18913 <blockquote><pre>
18914 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
18915   vendor                    count
18916   Dell Computer Corporation     1
18917     PowerEdge 1750              1
18918   IBM                           1
18919     eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]-     1
18920   Intel                         2
18921   [no-dmi-info]                 3
18922 maintainer:~#
18923 </pre></blockquote>
18924
18925 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
18926 provided in each machine.  Here there are Intel machines without model
18927 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
18928 machines listed as [no-dmi-info].  One can add -l as a command line
18929 option to list the individual machines.</p>
18930
18931 <p>A larger list is
18932 <a href="http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
18933 city of Narvik</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
18934 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly.  In their report there
18935 are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
18936 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
18937 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
18938 collector.</p>
18939
18940       </div>
18941       <div class="tags">
18942
18943
18944         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>.
18945
18946
18947       </div>
18948     </div>
18949     <div class="padding"></div>
18950
18951     <div class="entry">
18952       <div class="title">
18953         <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>
18954       </div>
18955       <div class="date">
18956          1st June 2010
18957       </div>
18958       <div class="body">
18959         <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
18960 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled.  The
18961 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
18962 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
18963 wait.</p>
18964
18965 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
18966 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#583312</a> initially filed
18967 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
18968 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
18969 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#524751</a> initially filed against
18970 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.</p>
18971
18972 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
18973 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
18974 distribution work out of the box for these users.  The nvidia driver
18975 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
18976 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
18977 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
18978 distribution that work for them.  I have no idea what the solution is,
18979 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.</p>
18980
18981 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.</p>
18982
18983       </div>
18984       <div class="tags">
18985
18986
18987         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>.
18988
18989
18990       </div>
18991     </div>
18992     <div class="padding"></div>
18993
18994     <div class="entry">
18995       <div class="title">
18996         <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>
18997       </div>
18998       <div class="date">
18999         27th May 2010
19000       </div>
19001       <div class="body">
19002         <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
19003 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
19004 issues are known and should be solved:
19005
19006 <p><ul>
19007
19008 <li>The wicd package seen to
19009 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting</a> and
19010 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup</a> when
19011 parallel booting is enabled.  No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
19012 seem to be on the case.</li>
19013
19014 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
19015 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition</a>
19016 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect.  The
19017 maintainer is on the case.</li>
19018
19019 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
19020 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
19021 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back</a> to
19022 sysv-rc.  One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
19023 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
19024 sysv-rc more robust.  Will investigate some more and probably upload a
19025 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
19026 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.</li>
19027
19028 </ul></p>
19029
19030 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
19031 solvable before Squeeze is released.  In addition to these there are
19032 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
19033 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.</p>
19034
19035 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
19036 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
19037 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
19038 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
19039
19040 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.</p>
19041
19042       </div>
19043       <div class="tags">
19044
19045
19046         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>.
19047
19048
19049       </div>
19050     </div>
19051     <div class="padding"></div>
19052
19053     <div class="entry">
19054       <div class="title">
19055         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</a>
19056       </div>
19057       <div class="date">
19058         22nd May 2010
19059       </div>
19060       <div class="body">
19061         <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
19062 found time today to return to the project.  Having to spend less time
19063 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
19064 definitely helped freeing some time.</p>
19065
19066 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu.  We
19067 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
19068 get disk and network controllers working.  Without having these
19069 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
19070 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
19071 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
19072 an external medium is a support pain.  Initially, I expected it to be
19073 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
19074 debian-installer to find and use them.  This proved to be wrong.
19075 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
19076 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
19077 /cdrom/firmware/).  This also proved to not work, and at this point I
19078 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
19079 going to work.</p>
19080
19081 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
19082 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
19083 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
19084 packages.  It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
19085 "external" media devices.  Today I changed it to also look in the
19086 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
19087 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu.  I also changed it to
19088 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
19089 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
19090 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
19091 Edu.</p>
19092
19093 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
19094 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
19095 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
19096 run these before activating the firmware during installation.  The
19097 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
19098 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.</p>
19099
19100 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
19101 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.</p>
19102
19103       </div>
19104       <div class="tags">
19105
19106
19107         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>.
19108
19109
19110       </div>
19111     </div>
19112     <div class="padding"></div>
19113
19114     <div class="entry">
19115       <div class="title">
19116         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Pieces_of_the_roaming_laptop_puzzle_in_Debian.html">Pieces of the roaming laptop puzzle in Debian</a>
19117       </div>
19118       <div class="date">
19119         19th May 2010
19120       </div>
19121       <div class="body">
19122         <p>Today, the last piece of the puzzle for roaming laptops in Debian
19123 Edu finally entered the Debian archive.  Today, the new
19124 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-mklocaluser.html">libpam-mklocaluser</a>
19125 package was accepted.  Two days ago, two other pieces was accepted
19126 into unstable.  The
19127 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/pam-python.html">pam-python</a>
19128 package needed by libpam-mklocaluser, and the
19129 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd</a> package
19130 passed NEW on Monday.  In addition, the
19131 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds</a>
19132 package we need is in experimental (version 10-4) since Saturday, and
19133 hopefully will be moved to unstable soon.</p>
19134
19135 <p>This collection of packages allow for two different setups for
19136 roaming laptops.  The traditional setup would be using libpam-ccreds,
19137 nscd and libpam-mklocaluser with LDAP or Kerberos authentication,
19138 which should work out of the box if the configuration changes proposed
19139 for nscd in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/485282">BTS report
19140 #485282</a> is implemented.  The alternative setup is to use sssd with
19141 libpam-mklocaluser to connect to LDAP or Kerberos and let sssd take
19142 care of the caching of passwords and group information.</p>
19143
19144 <p>I have so far been unable to get sssd to work with the LDAP server
19145 at the University, but suspect the issue is some SSL/GnuTLS related
19146 problem with the server certificate.  I plan to update the Debian
19147 package to version 1.2, which is scheduled for next week, and hope to
19148 find time to make sure the next release will include both the
19149 Debian/Ubuntu specific patches.  Upstream is friendly and responsive,
19150 and I am sure we will find a good solution.</p>
19151
19152 <p>The idea is to set up the roaming laptops to authenticate using
19153 LDAP or Kerberos and create a local user with home directory in /home/
19154 when a usre in LDAP logs in via KDM or GDM for the first time, and
19155 cache the password for offline checking, as well as caching group
19156 memberhips and other relevant LDAP information.  The
19157 libpam-mklocaluser package was created to make sure the local home
19158 directory is in /home/, instead of /site/server/directory/ which would
19159 be the home directory if pam_mkhomedir was used.  To avoid confusion
19160 with support requests and configuration, we do not want local laptops
19161 to have users in a path that is used for the same users home directory
19162 on the home directory servers.</p>
19163
19164 <p>One annoying problem with gdm is that it do not show the PAM
19165 message passed to the user from libpam-mklocaluser when the local user
19166 is created.  Instead gdm simply reject the login with some generic
19167 message.  The message is shown in kdm, ssh and login, so I guess it is
19168 a bug in gdm.  Have not investigated if there is some other message
19169 type that can be used instead to get gdm to also show the message.</p>
19170
19171 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
19172 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
19173
19174       </div>
19175       <div class="tags">
19176
19177
19178         Tags: <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>.
19179
19180
19181       </div>
19182     </div>
19183     <div class="padding"></div>
19184
19185     <div class="entry">
19186       <div class="title">
19187         <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>
19188       </div>
19189       <div class="date">
19190         14th May 2010
19191       </div>
19192       <div class="body">
19193         <p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
19194 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
19195 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
19196 expected, if I am to believe the
19197 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
19198 on debian-devel@</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
19199 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
19200 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen.  If serious problems are
19201 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
19202 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
19203 version.</p>
19204
19205 More information about
19206 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
19207 based boot sequencing</a> is available from the Debian wiki.  It is
19208 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
19209 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:</p>
19210
19211 <blockquote><pre>
19212 CONCURRENCY=none
19213 </pre></blockquote>
19214
19215 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
19216 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
19217 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
19218 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
19219
19220       </div>
19221       <div class="tags">
19222
19223
19224         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>.
19225
19226
19227       </div>
19228     </div>
19229     <div class="padding"></div>
19230
19231     <div class="entry">
19232       <div class="title">
19233         <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>
19234       </div>
19235       <div class="date">
19236         14th May 2010
19237       </div>
19238       <div class="body">
19239         <p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
19240 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
19241 system</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
19242 network.  Each machine will automatically report its status to the
19243 central server after boot and once per night.  The network setup is
19244 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
19245 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines.  This is useful
19246 to update the DHCP configuration.</p>
19247
19248 <p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
19249 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary.  Run
19250 this on the collector host:</p>
19251
19252 <blockquote><pre>
19253 perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
19254 </pre></blockquote>
19255
19256 <p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
19257 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.</p>
19258
19259 <p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
19260 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
19261 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
19262 tables in LDAP using this information.  Such tool is unfortunately not
19263 written yet.</p>
19264
19265       </div>
19266       <div class="tags">
19267
19268
19269         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>.
19270
19271
19272       </div>
19273     </div>
19274     <div class="padding"></div>
19275
19276     <div class="entry">
19277       <div class="title">
19278         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html">systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart</a>
19279       </div>
19280       <div class="date">
19281         13th May 2010
19282       </div>
19283       <div class="body">
19284         <p>The last few days a new boot system called
19285 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd</a>
19286 has been
19287 <a href="http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">introduced</a>
19288
19289 to the free software world.  I have not yet had time to play around
19290 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
19291 <a href="http://upstart.ubuntu.com/">upstart</a>, and might prove to be
19292 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
19293 based boot system.  Tollef is
19294 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/580814">in the process</a> of getting
19295 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work.  I
19296 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
19297 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
19298 at the moment do not.</p>
19299
19300 <p>Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
19301 platform support.  It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
19302 some new kernel features enabled to function properly.  This means
19303 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
19304 system.  Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
19305 way forward.</p>
19306
19307 <p>In the mean time, based on the
19308 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
19309 on debian-devel@</a> regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
19310 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
19311 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
19312 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies.  A
19313 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
19314 already in experimental.  If all go well, Squeeze will be released
19315 with parallel booting enabled by default.</p>
19316
19317       </div>
19318       <div class="tags">
19319
19320
19321         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>.
19322
19323
19324       </div>
19325     </div>
19326     <div class="padding"></div>
19327
19328     <div class="entry">
19329       <div class="title">
19330         <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>
19331       </div>
19332       <div class="date">
19333          6th May 2010
19334       </div>
19335       <div class="body">
19336         <p>These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
19337 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
19338 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies.  If you want
19339 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
19340 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
19341 based boot sequencing</a> is enabled, and add this line to
19342 /etc/default/rcS:</p>
19343
19344 <blockquote><pre>
19345 CONCURRENCY=makefile
19346 </pre></blockquote>
19347
19348 <p>That is it.  It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
19349 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
19350 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
19351 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts.  Startpar is configured
19352 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
19353 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
19354 make this happen.</p>
19355
19356 <p>Give it a try, and see if you like the result.  If some services
19357 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
19358 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
19359 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies).  Report bugs and get
19360 the package maintainers to fix it. :)</p>
19361
19362 <p>Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
19363 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct.  I
19364 expect we will get there in Squeeze+1, if we get manage to test and
19365 fix the remaining issues.</p>
19366
19367 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
19368 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
19369 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
19370 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
19371
19372       </div>
19373       <div class="tags">
19374
19375
19376         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>.
19377
19378
19379       </div>
19380     </div>
19381     <div class="padding"></div>
19382
19383     <div class="entry">
19384       <div class="title">
19385         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Forcing_new_users_to_change_their_password_on_first_login.html">Forcing new users to change their password on first login</a>
19386       </div>
19387       <div class="date">
19388          2nd May 2010
19389       </div>
19390       <div class="body">
19391         <p>One interesting feature in Active Directory, is the ability to
19392 create a new user with an expired password, and thus force the user to
19393 change the password on the first login attempt.</p>
19394
19395 <p>I'm not quite sure how to do that with the LDAP setup in Debian
19396 Edu, but did some initial testing with a local account.  The account
19397 and password aging information is available in /etc/shadow, but
19398 unfortunately, it is not possible to specify an expiration time for
19399 passwords, only a maximum age for passwords.</p>
19400
19401 <p>A freshly created account (using adduser test) will have these
19402 settings in /etc/shadow:</p>
19403
19404 <blockquote><pre>
19405 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
19406 Last password change                                    : May 02, 2010
19407 Password expires                                        : never
19408 Password inactive                                       : never
19409 Account expires                                         : never
19410 Minimum number of days between password change          : 0
19411 Maximum number of days between password change          : 99999
19412 Number of days of warning before password expires       : 7
19413 root@tjener:~#
19414 </pre></blockquote>
19415
19416 <p>The only way I could come up with to create a user with an expired
19417 account, is to change the date of the last password change to the
19418 lowest value possible (January 1th 1970), and the maximum password age
19419 to the difference in days between that date and today.  To make it
19420 simple, I went for 30 years (30 * 365 = 10950) and January 2th (to
19421 avoid testing if 0 is a valid value).</p>
19422
19423 <p>After using these commands to set it up, it seem to work as
19424 intended:</p>
19425
19426 <blockquote><pre>
19427 root@tjener:~# chage -d 1 test; chage -M 10950 test
19428 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
19429 Last password change                                    : Jan 02, 1970
19430 Password expires                                        : never
19431 Password inactive                                       : never
19432 Account expires                                         : never
19433 Minimum number of days between password change          : 0
19434 Maximum number of days between password change          : 10950
19435 Number of days of warning before password expires       : 7
19436 root@tjener:~#
19437 </pre></blockquote>
19438
19439 <p>So far I have tested this with ssh and console, and kdm (in
19440 Squeeze) login, and all ask for a new password before login in the
19441 user (with ssh, I was thrown out and had to log in again).</p>
19442
19443 <p>Perhaps we should set up something similar for Debian Edu, to make
19444 sure only the user itself have the account password?</p>
19445
19446 <p>If you want to comment on or help out with implementing this for
19447 Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
19448
19449 <p>Update 2010-05-02 17:20: Paul Tötterman tells me on IRC that the
19450 shadow(8) page in Debian/testing now state that setting the date of
19451 last password change to zero (0) will force the password to be changed
19452 on the first login.  This was not mentioned in the manual in Lenny, so
19453 I did not notice this in my initial testing.  I have tested it on
19454 Squeeze, and '<tt>chage -d 0 username</tt>' do work there.  I have not
19455 tested it on Lenny yet.</p>
19456
19457 <p>Update 2010-05-02-19:05: Jim Paris tells me via email that an
19458 equivalent command to expire a password is '<tt>passwd -e
19459 username</tt>', which insert zero into the date of the last password
19460 change.</p>
19461
19462       </div>
19463       <div class="tags">
19464
19465
19466         Tags: <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>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
19467
19468
19469       </div>
19470     </div>
19471     <div class="padding"></div>
19472
19473     <div class="entry">
19474       <div class="title">
19475         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thoughts_on_roaming_laptop_setup_for_Debian_Edu.html">Thoughts on roaming laptop setup for Debian Edu</a>
19476       </div>
19477       <div class="date">
19478         28th April 2010
19479       </div>
19480       <div class="body">
19481         <p>For some years now, I have wondered how we should handle laptops in
19482 Debian Edu.  The Debian Edu infrastructure is mostly designed to
19483 handle stationary computers, and less suited for computers that come
19484 and go.</p>
19485
19486 <p>Now I finally believe I have an sensible idea on how to adjust
19487 Debian Edu for laptops, by introducing a new profile for them, for
19488 example called Roaming Workstations.  Here are my thought on this.
19489 The setup would consist of the following:</p>
19490
19491 <ul>
19492
19493  <li>During installation, the user name of the owner / primary user of
19494    the laptop is requested and a local home directory is set up for
19495    the user, with uid and gid information fetched from the LDAP
19496    server.  This allow the user to work also when offline.  The
19497    central home directory can be available in a subdirectory on
19498    request, for example mounted via CIFS.  It could be mounted
19499    automatically when a user log in while on the Debian Edu network,
19500    and unmounted when the machine is taken away (network down,
19501    hibernate, etc), it can be set up to do automatic mounting on
19502    request (using autofs), or perhaps some GUI button on the desktop
19503    can be used to access it when needed.  Perhaps it is enough to use
19504    the fish protocol in KDE?</li>
19505
19506  <li>Password checking is set up to use LDAP or Kerberos
19507    authentication when the machine is on the Debian Edu network, and
19508    to cache the password for offline checking when the machine unable
19509    to reach the LDAP or Kerberos server.  This can be done using
19510    <a href="http://www.padl.com/OSS/pam_ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds</a>
19511    or the Fedora developed
19512    <a href="https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/SSSD">System
19513    Security Services Daemon</a> packages.</li>
19514
19515  <li>File synchronisation with the central home directory is set up
19516    using a shared directory in both the local and the central home
19517    directory, using unison.</li>
19518
19519  <li>Printing should be set up to print to all printers broadcasting
19520    their existence on the local network, and should then work out of
19521    the box with CUPS.  For sites needing accurate printer quotas, some
19522    system with Kerberos authentication or printing via ssh could be
19523    implemented.</li>
19524
19525  <li>For users that should have local root access to their laptop,
19526    sudo should be used to allow this to the local user.</li>
19527
19528  <li>It would be nice if user and group information from LDAP is
19529    cached on the client, but given that there are entries for the
19530    local user and primary group in /etc/, it should not be needed.</li>
19531
19532 </ul>
19533
19534 <p>I believe all the pieces to implement this are in Debian/testing at
19535 the moment.  If we work quickly, we should be able to get this ready
19536 in time for the Squeeze release to freeze.  Some of the pieces need
19537 tweaking, like libpam-ccreds should get support for pam-auth-update
19538 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566718">#566718</a>) and nslcd (or
19539 perhaps debian-edu-config) should get some integration code to stop
19540 its daemon when the LDAP server is unavailable to avoid long timeouts
19541 when disconnected from the net.  If we get Kerberos enabled, we need
19542 to make sure we avoid long timeouts there too.</p>
19543
19544 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
19545 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
19546
19547       </div>
19548       <div class="tags">
19549
19550
19551         Tags: <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>.
19552
19553
19554       </div>
19555     </div>
19556     <div class="padding"></div>
19557
19558     <div class="entry">
19559       <div class="title">
19560         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Great_book___Content__Selected_Essays_on_Technology__Creativity__Copyright__and_the_Future_of_the_Future_.html">Great book: "Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity, Copyright, and the Future of the Future"</a>
19561       </div>
19562       <div class="date">
19563         19th April 2010
19564       </div>
19565       <div class="body">
19566         <p>The last few weeks i have had the pleasure of reading a
19567 thought-provoking collection of essays by Cory Doctorow, on topics
19568 touching copyright, virtual worlds, the future of man when the
19569 conscience mind can be duplicated into a computer and many more. The
19570 book titled "Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity,
19571 Copyright, and the Future of the Future" is available with few
19572 restrictions on the web, for example from
19573 <a href="http://craphound.com/content/">his own site</a>. I read the
19574 epub-version from
19575 <a href="http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2883">feedbooks</a> using
19576 <a href="http://www.fbreader.org/">fbreader</a> and my N810. I
19577 strongly recommend this book.</p>
19578
19579       </div>
19580       <div class="tags">
19581
19582
19583         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling</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>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
19584
19585
19586       </div>
19587     </div>
19588     <div class="padding"></div>
19589
19590     <div class="entry">
19591       <div class="title">
19592         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kerberos_for_Debian_Edu_Squeeze_.html">Kerberos for Debian Edu/Squeeze?</a>
19593       </div>
19594       <div class="date">
19595         14th April 2010
19596       </div>
19597       <div class="body">
19598         <p><a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20100413-kerberos/">Yesterdays
19599 NUUG presentation</a> about Kerberos was inspiring, and reminded me
19600 about the need to start using Kerberos in Skolelinux.  Setting up a
19601 Kerberos server seem to be straight forward, and if we get this in
19602 place a long time before the Squeeze version of Debian freezes, we
19603 have a chance to migrate Skolelinux away from NFSv3 for the home
19604 directories, and over to an architecture where the infrastructure do
19605 not have to trust IP addresses and machines, and instead can trust
19606 users and cryptographic keys instead.</p>
19607
19608 <p>A challenge will be integration and administration.  Is there a
19609 Kerberos implementation for Debian where one can control the
19610 administration access in Kerberos using LDAP groups?  With it, the
19611 school administration will have to maintain access control using flat
19612 files on the main server, which give a huge potential for errors.</p>
19613
19614 <p>A related question I would like to know is how well Kerberos and
19615 pam-ccreds (offline password check) work together.  Anyone know?</p>
19616
19617 <p>Next step will be to use Kerberos for access control in Lwat and
19618 Nagios.  I have no idea how much work that will be to implement.  We
19619 would also need to document how to integrate with Windows AD, as such
19620 shared network will require two Kerberos realms that need to cooperate
19621 to work properly.</p>
19622
19623 <p>I believe a good start would be to start using Kerberos on the
19624 skolelinux.no machines, and this way get ourselves experience with
19625 configuration and integration.  A natural starting point would be
19626 setting up ldap.skolelinux.no as the Kerberos server, and migrate the
19627 rest of the machines from PAM via LDAP to PAM via Kerberos one at the
19628 time.</p>
19629
19630 <p>If you would like to contribute to get this working in Skolelinux,
19631 I recommend you to see the video recording from yesterdays NUUG
19632 presentation, and start using Kerberos at home.  The video show show
19633 up in a few days.</p>
19634
19635       </div>
19636       <div class="tags">
19637
19638
19639         Tags: <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>.
19640
19641
19642       </div>
19643     </div>
19644     <div class="padding"></div>
19645
19646     <div class="entry">
19647       <div class="title">
19648         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/After_6_years_of_waiting__the_Xreset_d_feature_is_implemented.html">After 6 years of waiting, the Xreset.d feature is implemented</a>
19649       </div>
19650       <div class="date">
19651          6th March 2010
19652       </div>
19653       <div class="body">
19654         <p>6 years ago, as part of the Debian Edu development I am involved
19655 in, I asked for a hook in the kdm and gdm setup to run scripts as root
19656 when the user log out.  A bug was submitted against the xfree86-common
19657 package in 2004 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/230422">#230422</a>),
19658 and revisited every time Debian Edu was working on a new release.
19659 Today, this finally paid off.</p>
19660
19661 <p>The framework for this feature was today commited to the git
19662 repositry for the xorg package, and the git repository for xdm has
19663 been updated to use this framework.  Next on my agenda is to make sure
19664 kdm and gdm also add code to use this framework.</p>
19665
19666 <p>In Debian Edu, we want to ability to run commands as root when the
19667 user log out, to get rid of runaway processes and do general cleanup
19668 after a user.  With this framework in place, we finally can do that in
19669 a generic way that work with all display managers using this
19670 framework.  My goal is to get all display managers in Debian use it,
19671 similar to how they use the Xsession.d framework today.<p>
19672
19673       </div>
19674       <div class="tags">
19675
19676
19677         Tags: <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>.
19678
19679
19680       </div>
19681     </div>
19682     <div class="padding"></div>
19683
19684     <div class="entry">
19685       <div class="title">
19686         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Lenny_released__work_continues.html">Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Lenny released, work continues</a>
19687       </div>
19688       <div class="date">
19689         11th February 2010
19690       </div>
19691       <div class="body">
19692         <p>On Tuesday, the Debian/Lenny based version of
19693 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> was finally
19694 shipped.  This was a major leap forward for the project, and I am very
19695 pleased that we finally got the release wrapped up.  Work on the first
19696 point release starts imediately, as we plan to get that one out a
19697 month after the major release, to include all fixes for bugs we found
19698 and fixed too late in the release process to include last Tuesday.</p>
19699
19700 <p>Perhaps it even is time for some partying?</p>
19701
19702 <p>After this first point release, my plan is to focus again on the
19703 next major release, based on Squeeze.  We will try to get as many of
19704 the fixes we need into the official Debian packages before the freeze,
19705 and have just a few weeks or months to make it happen.</p>
19706
19707       </div>
19708       <div class="tags">
19709
19710
19711         Tags: <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>.
19712
19713
19714       </div>
19715     </div>
19716     <div class="padding"></div>
19717
19718     <div class="entry">
19719       <div class="title">
19720         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_Munin_and_Nagios_configuration.html">Automatic Munin and Nagios configuration</a>
19721       </div>
19722       <div class="date">
19723         27th January 2010
19724       </div>
19725       <div class="body">
19726         <p>One of the new features in the next Debian/Lenny based release of
19727 Debian Edu/Skolelinux, which is scheduled for release in the next few
19728 days, is automatic configuration of the service monitoring system
19729 Nagios.  The previous release had automatic configuration of trend
19730 analysis using Munin, and this Lenny based release take that a step
19731 further.</p>
19732
19733 <p>When installing a Debian Edu Main-server, it is automatically
19734 configured as a Munin and Nagios server.  In addition, it is
19735 configured to be a server for the
19736 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">SiteSummary
19737 system</a> I have written for use in Debian Edu.  The SiteSummary
19738 system is inspired by a system used by the University of Oslo where I
19739 work.  In short, the system provide a centralised collector of
19740 information about the computers on the network, and a client on each
19741 computer submitting information to this collector.  This allow for
19742 automatic information on which packages are installed on each machine,
19743 which kernel the machines are using, what kind of configuration the
19744 packages got etc.  This also allow us to automatically generate Munin
19745 and Nagios configuration.</p>
19746
19747 <p>All computers reporting to the sitesummary collector with the
19748 munin-node package installed is automatically enabled as a Munin
19749 client and graphs from the statistics collected from that machine show
19750 up automatically on http://www/munin/ on the Main-server.</p>
19751
19752 <p>All non-laptop computers reporting to the sitesummary collector are
19753 automatically monitored for network presence (ping and any network
19754 services detected).  In addition, all computers (also laptops) with
19755 the nagios-nrpe-server package installed and configured the way
19756 sitesummary would configure it, are monitored for full disks, software
19757 raid status, swap free and other checks that need to run locally on
19758 the machine.</p>
19759
19760 <p>The result is that the administrator on a school using Debian Edu
19761 based on Lenny will be able to check the health of his installation
19762 with one look at the Nagios settings, without having to spend any time
19763 keeping the Nagios configuration up-to-date.</p>
19764
19765 <p>The only configuration one need to do to get Nagios up and running
19766 is to set the password used to get access via HTTP.  The system
19767 administrator need to run "<tt>htpasswd /etc/nagios3/htpasswd.users
19768 nagiosadmin</tt>" to create a nagiosadmin user and set a password for
19769 it to be able to log into the Nagios web pages.  After that,
19770 everything is taken care of.</p>
19771
19772       </div>
19773       <div class="tags">
19774
19775
19776         Tags: <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>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary</a>.
19777
19778
19779       </div>
19780     </div>
19781     <div class="padding"></div>
19782
19783     <div class="entry">
19784       <div class="title">
19785         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Relative_popularity_of_document_formats__MS_Office_vs__ODF_.html">Relative popularity of document formats (MS Office vs. ODF)</a>
19786       </div>
19787       <div class="date">
19788         12th August 2009
19789       </div>
19790       <div class="body">
19791         <p>Just for fun, I did a search right now on Google for a few file ODF
19792 and MS Office based formats (not to be mistaken for ISO or ECMA
19793 OOXML), to get an idea of their relative usage.  I searched using
19794 'filetype:odt' and equvalent terms, and got these results:</P>
19795
19796 <table>
19797 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
19798 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:282000</td> <td>docx:308000</td></tr>
19799 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:75600</td> <td>pptx:183000</td></tr>
19800 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:26500     </td> <td>xlsx:145000</td></tr>
19801 </table>
19802
19803 <p>Next, I added a 'site:no' limit to get the numbers for Norway, and
19804 got these numbers:</p>
19805
19806 <table>
19807 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
19808 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:2480 </td> <td>docx:4460</td></tr>
19809 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:299   </td> <td>pptx:741</td></tr>
19810 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:187       </td> <td>xlsx:372</td></tr>
19811 </table>
19812
19813 <p>I wonder how these numbers change over time.</p>
19814
19815 <p>I am aware of Google returning different results and numbers based
19816 on where the search is done, so I guess these numbers will differ if
19817 they are conduced in another country.  Because of this, I did the same
19818 search from a machine in California, USA, a few minutes after the
19819 search done from a machine here in Norway.</p>
19820
19821
19822 <table>
19823 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
19824 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:129000</td> <td>docx:308000</td></tr>
19825 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:44200</td> <td>pptx:93900</td></tr>
19826 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:26500     </td> <td>xlsx:82400</td></tr>
19827 </table>
19828
19829 <p>And with 'site:no':
19830
19831 <table>
19832 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
19833 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:2480</td> <td>docx:3410</td></tr>
19834 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:175</td> <td>pptx:604</td></tr>
19835 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:186       </td> <td>xlsx:296</td></tr>
19836 </table>
19837
19838 <p>Interesting difference, not sure what to conclude from these
19839 numbers.</p>
19840
19841       </div>
19842       <div class="tags">
19843
19844
19845         Tags: <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>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
19846
19847
19848       </div>
19849     </div>
19850     <div class="padding"></div>
19851
19852     <div class="entry">
19853       <div class="title">
19854         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ISO_still_hope_to_fix_OOXML.html">ISO still hope to fix OOXML</a>
19855       </div>
19856       <div class="date">
19857          8th August 2009
19858       </div>
19859       <div class="body">
19860         <p>According to <a
19861 href="http://twerner.blogspot.com/2009/08/defects-of-office-open-xml.html">a
19862 blog post from Torsten Werner</a>, the current defect report for ISO
19863 29500 (ISO OOXML) is 809 pages.  His interesting point is that the
19864 defect report is 71 pages more than the full ODF 1.1 specification.
19865 Personally I find it more interesting that ISO still believe ISO OOXML
19866 can be fixed in ISO.  Personally, I believe it is broken beyon repair,
19867 and I completely lack any trust in ISO for being able to get anywhere
19868 close to solving the problems.  I was part of the Norwegian committee
19869 involved in the OOXML fast track process, and was not impressed with
19870 Standard Norway and ISO in how they handled it.</p>
19871
19872 <p>These days I focus on ODF instead, which seem like a specification
19873 with the future ahead of it.  We are working in NUUG to organise a ODF
19874 seminar this autumn.</p>
19875
19876       </div>
19877       <div class="tags">
19878
19879
19880         Tags: <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>.
19881
19882
19883       </div>
19884     </div>
19885     <div class="padding"></div>
19886
19887     <div class="entry">
19888       <div class="title">
19889         <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>
19890       </div>
19891       <div class="date">
19892         27th July 2009
19893       </div>
19894       <div class="body">
19895         <p>Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
19896 and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
19897 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing.  This
19898 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
19899 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
19900 installation.  Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
19901 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.</p>
19902
19903 <p>The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
19904 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
19905 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.</p>
19906
19907       </div>
19908       <div class="tags">
19909
19910
19911         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>.
19912
19913
19914       </div>
19915     </div>
19916     <div class="padding"></div>
19917
19918     <div class="entry">
19919       <div class="title">
19920         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html">Taking over sysvinit development</a>
19921       </div>
19922       <div class="date">
19923         22nd July 2009
19924       </div>
19925       <div class="body">
19926         <p>After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
19927 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
19928 take over the package and become the new upstream.  The number of
19929 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
19930 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
19931 the package up to date.</p>
19932
19933 <p>On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
19934 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman.  About 10 days ago, I made
19935 a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
19936 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
19937 distributions.  We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
19938 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge.  Since the
19939 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
19940 upstream project at <a href="http://savannah.nongnu.org/">Savannah</a>, and continue
19941 development there.  The project is registered and currently waiting
19942 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
19943 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
19944 working on the future release.</p>
19945
19946 <p>It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
19947 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.</p>
19948
19949       </div>
19950       <div class="tags">
19951
19952
19953         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>.
19954
19955
19956       </div>
19957     </div>
19958     <div class="padding"></div>
19959
19960     <div class="entry">
19961       <div class="title">
19962         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html">Debian boots quicker and quicker</a>
19963       </div>
19964       <div class="date">
19965         24th June 2009
19966       </div>
19967       <div class="body">
19968         <p>I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
19969 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
19970 could find more ways to speed up the boot system.  This was an Ubuntu
19971 funded
19972 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint">developer
19973 gathering</a>. It was quite productive.  We also discussed the future
19974 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
19975 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
19976 asynchronous and event base.  The Ubuntu approach using udev and
19977 upstart might be a good way forward.  Time will show.</p>
19978
19979 <p>Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
19980 process in Debian.  All of these should be applied to get a quick
19981 boot:</p>
19982
19983 <ul>
19984
19985 <li>Use dash as /bin/sh.</li>
19986
19987 <li>Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
19988    clock is in UTC.</li>
19989
19990 <li>Install and activate the insserv package to enable
19991    <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
19992    based boot sequencing</a>, and enable concurrent booting.</li>
19993
19994 </ul>
19995
19996 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
19997 <a href="http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/">Carlos
19998 Villegas</a>.
19999
20000 <p>Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
20001 unstable yesterday.  When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
20002 from the boot sequence.  It depend on very correct dependency
20003 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
20004 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
20005 using this.</p>
20006
20007 <p>On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
20008 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
20009 startup speed as well.  Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
20010 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
20011 possible to run a of them in the same process.  A quick way to test
20012 this would be to enable insserv and run 'mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
20013 insserv'.  Will need to test if that work. :)</p>
20014
20015       </div>
20016       <div class="tags">
20017
20018
20019         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>.
20020
20021
20022       </div>
20023     </div>
20024     <div class="padding"></div>
20025
20026     <div class="entry">
20027       <div class="title">
20028         <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>
20029       </div>
20030       <div class="date">
20031          2nd May 2009
20032       </div>
20033       <div class="body">
20034         <p>There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
20035 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
20036 do not yet know them.</p>
20037
20038 <p>The first one is <a href="http://valgrind.org/">valgrind</a>, a
20039 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
20040 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run 'valgrind program',
20041 and it will report any problems on stdout.  It is even better if the
20042 program include debug information.  With debug information, it is able
20043 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
20044 occurs.  It can report things like 'reading past memory block in file
20045 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M', and
20046 'using uninitialised value in control logic'.  This tool has made it
20047 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
20048 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
20049
20050 <p>The second one is
20051 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity">Coverity</a> which is
20052 a source code checker.  It is able to process the source of a program
20053 and find problems in the logic without running the program.  It
20054 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
20055 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel.  It is now a commercial tool
20056 and the company behind it is running
20057 <a href="http://www.scan.coverity.com/">a community service</a> for the
20058 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
20059 their source checked for free.  Several thousand defects have been
20060 found and fixed so far.  It can find errors like 'lock L taken in file
20061 X line N is never released if exiting in line M', or 'the code in file
20062 Y lines O to P can never be executed'.  The projects included in the
20063 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
20064 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.</p>
20065
20066 <p>I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
20067 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
20068 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
20069 surrounded by today.</p>
20070
20071       </div>
20072       <div class="tags">
20073
20074
20075         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>.
20076
20077
20078       </div>
20079     </div>
20080     <div class="padding"></div>
20081
20082     <div class="entry">
20083       <div class="title">
20084         <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>
20085       </div>
20086       <div class="date">
20087         28th April 2009
20088       </div>
20089       <div class="body">
20090         <p>Julien Blache
20091 <a href="http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214">claim that no
20092 patch is better than a useless patch</a>.  I completely disagree, as a
20093 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
20094 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
20095 time on fixing it.  No patch do not provide any of these positive
20096 properties.</p>
20097
20098       </div>
20099       <div class="tags">
20100
20101
20102         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>.
20103
20104
20105       </div>
20106     </div>
20107     <div class="padding"></div>
20108
20109     <div class="entry">
20110       <div class="title">
20111         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Recording_video_from_cron_using_VLC.html">Recording video from cron using VLC</a>
20112       </div>
20113       <div class="date">
20114          5th April 2009
20115       </div>
20116       <div class="body">
20117         <p>One think I have wanted to figure out for a along time is how to
20118 run vlc from cron to do recording of video streams on the net.  The
20119 task is trivial with mplayer, but I do not really trust the security
20120 of mplayer (it crashes too often on strange input), and thus prefer
20121 vlc.  I finally found a way to do it today.  I spent an hour or so
20122 searching the web for recipes and reading the documentation.  The
20123 hardest part was to get rid of the GUI window, but after finding the
20124 dummy interface, the command line finally presented itself:</p>
20125
20126 <blockquote><pre>URL=http://www.ping.uio.no/video/rms-oslo_2009.ogg
20127 SAVEFILE=rms.ogg
20128 DISPLAY= vlc -q $URL \
20129   --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
20130   --intf=dummy</pre></blockquote>
20131
20132 <p>The command stream the URL and store it in the SAVEFILE by
20133 duplicating the output stream to "nodisplay" and the file, using the
20134 dummy interface.  The dummy interface and the nodisplay output make
20135 sure no X interface is needed.</p>
20136
20137 <p>The cron job then need to start this job with the appropriate URL
20138 and file name to save, sleep for the duration wanted, and then kill
20139 the vlc process with SIGTERM.  Here is a complete script
20140 <tt>vlc-record</tt> to use from <tt>at</tt> or <tt>cron</tt>:</p>
20141
20142 <blockquote><pre>#!/bin/sh
20143 set -e
20144 URL="$1"
20145 SAVEFILE="$2"
20146 DURATION="$3"
20147 DISPLAY= vlc -q "$URL" \
20148   --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
20149   --intf=dummy < /dev/null > /dev/null 2>&1 &
20150 pid=$!
20151 sleep $DURATION
20152 kill $pid
20153 wait $pid</pre></blockquote>
20154
20155       </div>
20156       <div class="tags">
20157
20158
20159         Tags: <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/video">video</a>.
20160
20161
20162       </div>
20163     </div>
20164     <div class="padding"></div>
20165
20166     <div class="entry">
20167       <div class="title">
20168         <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>
20169       </div>
20170       <div class="date">
20171         30th March 2009
20172       </div>
20173       <div class="body">
20174         <p>Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
20175 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure.  It is the
20176 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
20177 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
20178 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
20179 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
20180 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
20181 application.</p>
20182
20183 <p>This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
20184 independently of the server applications.  One can even allow users to
20185 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
20186 protocol and format.  In the normal case, only one client application
20187 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
20188 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
20189 blocked from doing so.</p>
20190
20191 <p>It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
20192 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
20193 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
20194 requirements change.</p>
20195
20196 <p>I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
20197 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
20198 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.</p>
20199
20200       </div>
20201       <div class="tags">
20202
20203
20204         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>.
20205
20206
20207       </div>
20208     </div>
20209     <div class="padding"></div>
20210
20211     <div class="entry">
20212       <div class="title">
20213         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html">Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering</a>
20214       </div>
20215       <div class="date">
20216         29th March 2009
20217       </div>
20218       <div class="body">
20219         <p>I'm sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
20220 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering.  I got a bit done tuning the
20221 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
20222 implementation avahi.  It look like it could be useful for us.  Almost
20223 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
20224 get to know the Skolelinux system.  Walter Bender, involved in the
20225 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
20226 also helped me improve my OLPC installation.  He also showed me that
20227 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
20228 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian.  As a
20229 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu.  We also
20230 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
20231 proved to be too hard for us.  The application seem to need more work
20232 before it is ready for me.  I look forward to getting home and relax
20233 now. :)</p>
20234
20235       </div>
20236       <div class="tags">
20237
20238
20239         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>.
20240
20241
20242       </div>
20243     </div>
20244     <div class="padding"></div>
20245
20246     <div class="entry">
20247       <div class="title">
20248         <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>
20249       </div>
20250       <div class="date">
20251         29th March 2009
20252       </div>
20253       <div class="body">
20254         <p>The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
20255 optimal.  There is RFC 2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
20256 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC 2307bis, with
20257 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory.  The RFC
20258 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
20259 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.</p>
20260
20261 <p>In <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux</a>,
20262 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
20263 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
20264 and LTSP configuration in LDAP.  These objects have a lot in common,
20265 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
20266 object per entity.  For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
20267 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
20268 DNS information and another with DHCP information.  The schemas
20269 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
20270 object.  In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
20271 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
20272 It just do not scale.  I believe it is time for a few RFC
20273 specifications to cleam up this mess.</p>
20274
20275 <p>I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
20276 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
20277 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
20278 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.</p>
20279
20280 <p>I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
20281 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.</p>
20282
20283 <p>Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
20284 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up.  Time to start a
20285 new IETF work group?</p>
20286
20287       </div>
20288       <div class="tags">
20289
20290
20291         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>.
20292
20293
20294       </div>
20295     </div>
20296     <div class="padding"></div>
20297
20298     <div class="entry">
20299       <div class="title">
20300         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">Checking server hardware support status for Dell, HP and IBM servers</a>
20301       </div>
20302       <div class="date">
20303         28th February 2009
20304       </div>
20305       <div class="body">
20306         <p>At work, we have a few hundred Linux servers, and with that amount
20307 of hardware it is important to keep track of when the hardware support
20308 contract expire for each server.  We have a machine (and service)
20309 register, which until recently did not contain much useful besides the
20310 machine room location and contact information for the system owner for
20311 each machine.  To make it easier for us to track support contract
20312 status, I've recently spent time on extending the machine register to
20313 include information about when the support contract expire, and to tag
20314 machines with expired contracts to make it easy to get a list of such
20315 machines.  I extended a perl script already being used to import
20316 information about machines into the register, to also do some screen
20317 scraping off the sites of Dell, HP and IBM (our majority of machines
20318 are from these vendors), and automatically check the support status
20319 for the relevant machines.  This make the support status information
20320 easily available and I hope it will make it easier for the computer
20321 owner to know when to get new hardware or renew the support contract.
20322 The result of this work documented that 27% of the machines in the
20323 registry is without a support contract, and made it very easy to find
20324 them.  27% might seem like a lot, but I see it more as the case of us
20325 using machines a bit longer than the 3 years a normal support contract
20326 last, to have test machines and a platform for less important
20327 services.  After all, the machines without a contract are working fine
20328 at the moment and the lack of contract is only a problem if any of
20329 them break down.  When that happen, we can either fix it using spare
20330 parts from other machines or move the service to another old
20331 machine.</p>
20332
20333 <p>I believe the code for screen scraping the Dell site was originally
20334 written by Trond Hasle Amundsen, and later adjusted by me and Morten
20335 Werner Forsbring.  The HP scraping was written by me after reading a
20336 nice article in ;login: about how to use WWW::Mechanize, and the IBM
20337 scraping was written by me based on the Dell code.  I know the HTML
20338 parsing could be done using nice libraries, but did not want to
20339 introduce more dependencies.  This is the current incarnation:</p>
20340
20341 <pre>
20342 use LWP::Simple;
20343 use POSIX;
20344 use WWW::Mechanize;
20345 use Date::Parse;
20346 [...]
20347 sub get_support_info {
20348     my ($machine, $model, $serial, $productnumber) = @_;
20349     my $str;
20350
20351     if ( $model =~ m/^Dell / ) {
20352         # fetch website from Dell support
20353         my $url = "http://support.euro.dell.com/support/topics/topic.aspx/emea/shared/support/my_systems_info/no/details?c=no&amp;cs=nodhs1&amp;l=no&amp;s=dhs&amp;ServiceTag=$serial";
20354         my $webpage = get($url);
20355         return undef unless ($webpage);
20356
20357         my $daysleft = -1;
20358         my @lines = split(/\n/, $webpage);
20359         foreach my $line (@lines) {
20360             next unless ($line =~ m/Beskrivelse/);
20361             $line =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
20362             $line =~ s/^.+?;(Beskrivelse;)/$1/;
20363
20364             my @f = split(/\;/, $line);
20365             @f = @f[13 .. $#f];
20366             my $lastend = "";
20367             while ($f[3] eq "DELL") {
20368                 my ($type, $startstr, $endstr, $days) = @f[0, 5, 7, 10];
20369
20370                 my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
20371                                             localtime(str2time($startstr)));
20372                 my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
20373                                           localtime(str2time($endstr)));
20374                 $str .= "$type $start -> $end ";
20375                 @f = @f[14 .. $#f];
20376                 $lastend = $end if ($end gt $lastend);
20377             }
20378             my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
20379             tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
20380                 if ($lastend lt $today);
20381         }
20382     } elsif ( $model =~ m/^HP / ) {
20383         my $mech = WWW::Mechanize->new();
20384         my $url =
20385             'http://www1.itrc.hp.com/service/ewarranty/warrantyInput.do';
20386         $mech->get($url);
20387         my $fields = {
20388             'BODServiceID' => 'NA',
20389             'RegisteredPurchaseDate' => '',
20390             'country' => 'NO',
20391             'productNumber' => $productnumber,
20392             'serialNumber1' => $serial,
20393         };
20394         $mech->submit_form( form_number => 2,
20395                             fields      => $fields );
20396         # Next step is screen scraping
20397         my $content = $mech->content();
20398
20399         $content =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
20400         $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
20401         $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
20402         $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
20403
20404         my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
20405
20406         while ($content =~ m/;Warranty Type;/) {
20407             my ($type, $status, $startstr, $stopstr) = $content =~
20408                 m/;Warranty Type;([^;]+);.+?;Status;(\w+);Start Date;([^;]+);End Date;([^;]+);/;
20409             $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty Type;//;
20410             my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
20411                                         localtime(str2time($startstr)));
20412             my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
20413                                       localtime(str2time($stopstr)));
20414
20415             $str .= "$type ($status) $start -> $end ";
20416
20417             tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
20418                 if ($end lt $today);
20419         }
20420     } elsif ( $model =~ m/^IBM / ) {
20421         # This code ignore extended support contracts.
20422         my ($producttype) = $model =~ m/.*-\[(.{4}).+\]-/;
20423         if ($producttype &amp;&amp; $serial) {
20424             my $content =
20425                 get("http://www-947.ibm.com/systems/support/supportsite.wss/warranty?action=warranty&amp;brandind=5000008&amp;Submit=Submit&amp;type=$producttype&amp;serial=$serial");
20426             if ($content) {
20427                 $content =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
20428                 $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
20429                 $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
20430                 $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
20431
20432                 $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty status;//;
20433                 my ($status, $end) = $content =~ m/;Warranty status;([^;]+)\s*;Expiration date;(\S+) ;/;
20434
20435                 $str .= "($status) -> $end ";
20436
20437                 my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
20438                 tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
20439                     if ($end lt $today);
20440             }
20441         }
20442     }
20443     return $str;
20444 }
20445 </pre>
20446
20447 <p>Here are some examples on how to use the function, using fake
20448 serial numbers.  The information passed in as arguments are fetched
20449 from dmidecode.</p>
20450
20451 <pre>
20452 print get_support_info("hp.host", "HP ProLiant BL460c G1", "1234567890"
20453                        "447707-B21");
20454 print get_support_info("dell.host", "Dell Inc. PowerEdge 2950", "1234567");
20455 print get_support_info("ibm.host", "IBM eserver xSeries 345 -[867061X]-",
20456                        "1234567");
20457 </pre>
20458
20459 <p>I would recommend this approach for tracking support contracts for
20460 everyone with more than a few computers to administer. :)</p>
20461
20462 <p>Update 2009-03-06: The IBM page do not include extended support
20463 contracts, so it is useless in that case.  The original Dell code do
20464 not handle extended support contracts either, but has been updated to
20465 do so.</p>
20466
20467       </div>
20468       <div class="tags">
20469
20470
20471         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
20472
20473
20474       </div>
20475     </div>
20476     <div class="padding"></div>
20477
20478     <div class="entry">
20479       <div class="title">
20480         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_bar_codes_at_a_computing_center.html">Using bar codes at a computing center</a>
20481       </div>
20482       <div class="date">
20483         20th February 2009
20484       </div>
20485       <div class="body">
20486         <p>At work with the University of Oslo, we have several hundred computers
20487 in our computing center.  This give us a challenge in tracking the
20488 location and cabling of the computers, when they are added, moved and
20489 removed.  Some times the location register is not updated when a
20490 computer is inserted or moved and we then have to search the room for
20491 the "missing" computer.</p>
20492
20493 <p>In the last issue of Linux Journal, I came across a project
20494 <a href="http://www.libdmtx.org/">libdmtx</a> to write and read bar
20495 code blocks as defined in the
20496 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Matrix">The Data Matrix
20497 Standard</a>.  This is bar codes that can be read with a normal
20498 digital camera, for example that on a cell phone, and several such bar
20499 codes can be read by libdmtx from one picture.  The bar code standard
20500 allow up to 2 KiB to be written in the tag.  There is another project
20501 with <a href="http://www.terryburton.co.uk/barcodewriter/">a bar code
20502 writer written in postscript</a> capable of creating such bar codes,
20503 but this was the first time I found a tool to read these bar
20504 codes.</p>
20505
20506 <p>It occurred to me that this could be used to tag and track the
20507 machines in our computing center.  If both racks and computers are
20508 tagged this way, we can use a picture of the rack and all its
20509 computers to detect the rack location of any computer in that rack.
20510 If we do this regularly for the entire room, we will find all
20511 locations, and can detect movements and removals.</p>
20512
20513 <p>I decided to test if this would work in practice, and picked a
20514 random rack and tagged all the machines with their names.  Next, I
20515 took pictures with my digital camera, and gave the dmtxread program
20516 these JPEG pictures to see how many tags it could read.  This worked
20517 fairly well.  If the pictures was well focused and not taken from the
20518 side, all tags in the image could be read.  Because of limited space
20519 between the racks, I was unable to get a good picture of the entire
20520 rack, but could without problem read all tags from a picture covering
20521 about half the rack.  I had to limit the search time used by dmtxread
20522 to 60000 ms to make sure it terminated in a reasonable time frame.</p>
20523
20524 <p>My conclusion is that this could work, and we should probably look
20525 at adjusting our computer tagging procedures to use bar codes for
20526 easier automatic tracking of computers.</p>
20527
20528       </div>
20529       <div class="tags">
20530
20531
20532         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
20533
20534
20535       </div>
20536     </div>
20537     <div class="padding"></div>
20538
20539     <div class="entry">
20540       <div class="title">
20541         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/When_web_browser_developers_make_a_video_player___.html">When web browser developers make a video player...</a>
20542       </div>
20543       <div class="date">
20544         17th January 2009
20545       </div>
20546       <div class="body">
20547         <p>As part of the work we do in <a href="http://www.nuug.no">NUUG</a>
20548 to publish video recordings of our monthly presentations, we provide a
20549 page with embedded video for easy access to the recording.  Putting a
20550 good set of HTML tags together to get working embedded video in all
20551 browsers and across all operating systems is not easy.  I hope this
20552 will become easier when the &lt;video&gt; tag is implemented in all
20553 browsers, but I am not sure.  We provide the recordings in several
20554 formats, MPEG1, Ogg Theora, H.264 and Quicktime, and want the
20555 browser/media plugin to pick one it support and use it to play the
20556 recording, using whatever embed mechanism the browser understand.
20557 There is at least four different tags to use for this, the new HTML5
20558 &lt;video&gt; tag, the &lt;object&gt; tag, the &lt;embed&gt; tag and
20559 the &lt;applet&gt; tag.  All of these take a lot of options, and
20560 finding the best options is a major challenge.</p>
20561
20562 <p>I just tested the experimental Opera browser available from <a
20563 href="http://labs.opera.com">labs.opera.com</a>, to see how it handled
20564 a &lt;video&gt; tag with a few video sources and no extra attributes.
20565 I was not very impressed.  The browser start by fetching a picture
20566 from the video stream.  Not sure if it is the first frame, but it is
20567 definitely very early in the recording.  So far, so good. Next,
20568 instead of streaming the 76 MiB video file, it start to download all
20569 of it, but do not start to play the video.  This mean I have to wait
20570 for several minutes for the downloading to finish.  When the download
20571 is done, the playing of the video do not start!  Waiting for the
20572 download, but I do not get to see the video?  Some testing later, I
20573 discover that I have to add the controls="true" attribute to be able
20574 to get a play button to pres to start the video.  Adding
20575 autoplay="true" did not help.  I sure hope this is a misfeature of the
20576 test version of Opera, and that future implementations of the
20577 &lt;video&gt; tag will stream recordings by default, or at least start
20578 playing when the download is done.</p>
20579
20580 <p>The test page I used (since changed to add more attributes) is
20581 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20090113-foredrag-om-foredrag/">available
20582 from the nuug site</a>.  Will have to test it with the new Firefox
20583 too.</p>
20584
20585 <p>In the test process, I discovered a missing feature.  I was unable
20586 to find a way to get the URL of the playing video out of Opera, so I
20587 am not quite sure it picked the Ogg Theora version of the video.  I
20588 sure hope it was using the announced Ogg Theora support. :)</p>
20589
20590       </div>
20591       <div class="tags">
20592
20593
20594         Tags: <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/nuug">nuug</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>.
20595
20596
20597       </div>
20598     </div>
20599     <div class="padding"></div>
20600
20601     <div class="entry">
20602       <div class="title">
20603         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_video_mixer_on_a_USB_stick.html">Software video mixer on a USB stick</a>
20604       </div>
20605       <div class="date">
20606         28th December 2008
20607       </div>
20608       <div class="body">
20609         <p>The <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a> is
20610 recording our montly presentation on video, and recently we have
20611 worked on improving the quality of the recordings by mixing the slides
20612 directly with the video stream.  For this, we use the
20613 <a href="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/">dvswitch</a> package from
20614 the Debian video team.  As this require quite one computer per video
20615 source, and NUUG do not have enough laptops available, we need to
20616 borrow laptops.  And to avoid having to install extra software on
20617 these borrwed laptops, I have wrapped up all the programs needed on a
20618 bootable USB stick.  The software required is dvswitch with assosiated
20619 source, sink and mixer applications and
20620 <a href="http://www.kinodv.org/">dvgrab</a>.  To allow this setup to
20621 work without any configuration, I've patched dvswitch to use
20622 <a href="http://www.avahi.org/">avahi</a> to connect the various parts
20623 together.  And to allow us to use laptops without firewire plugs, I
20624 upgraded dvgrab to the one from Debian/unstable to get one that work
20625 with USB sources.  We have not yet tested this setup in a production
20626 setup, but I hope it will work properly, and allow us to set up a
20627 video mixer in a very short time frame.  We will need it for
20628 <a href="http://www.goopen.no/">Go Open 2009</a>.</p>
20629
20630 <p><a href="http://www.nuug.no/pub/video/bin/usbstick-dvswitch.img.gz">The
20631 USB image</a> is for a 1 GB memory stick, but can be used on any
20632 larger stick as well.</p>
20633
20634       </div>
20635       <div class="tags">
20636
20637
20638         Tags: <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/video">video</a>.
20639
20640
20641       </div>
20642     </div>
20643     <div class="padding"></div>
20644
20645     <div class="entry">
20646       <div class="title">
20647         <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>
20648       </div>
20649       <div class="date">
20650          7th December 2008
20651       </div>
20652       <div class="body">
20653         <p>This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
20654 Oslo.  Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
20655 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
20656 LTSP installation.  LTSP now work out of the box on the 10-network.
20657 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
20658 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box.  Was working on getting the
20659 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
20660 finish it before the weekend was up.</p>
20661
20662 <p>Did not find time to look at the 4 VGA cards in one box we got from
20663 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
20664 development gathering.  Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
20665 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
20666 of these cards.</p>
20667
20668       </div>
20669       <div class="tags">
20670
20671
20672         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>.
20673
20674
20675       </div>
20676     </div>
20677     <div class="padding"></div>
20678
20679     <div class="entry">
20680       <div class="title">
20681         <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>
20682       </div>
20683       <div class="date">
20684         25th November 2008
20685       </div>
20686       <div class="body">
20687         <p>Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
20688 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
20689 default in Debian Edu.  We need an embedded video playing plugin with
20690 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
20691 all the multimedia content available on the web.  The test results and
20692 notes are available on
20693 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">the
20694 Debian wiki</a>.  I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
20695 fill this need.  My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
20696 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages.  A lot of the MIME
20697 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
20698 video/ogg), just do not work.  And simple formats like the
20699 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn't supported by the
20700 totem and vlc plugins.  I hope the situation will improve soon.  No
20701 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.</p>
20702
20703 <p>For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin.  It seem to
20704 be the only one fitting our needs. :/</p>
20705
20706       </div>
20707       <div class="tags">
20708
20709
20710         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>.
20711
20712
20713       </div>
20714     </div>
20715     <div class="padding"></div>
20716
20717     <p style="text-align: right;"><a href="english.rss"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/xml.gif" alt="RSS Feed" width="36" height="14" /></a></p>
20718     <div id="sidebar">
20719
20720
20721
20722 <h2>Archive</h2>
20723 <ul>
20724
20725 <li>2014
20726 <ul>
20727
20728 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/01/">January (2)</a></li>
20729
20730 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/02/">February (3)</a></li>
20731
20732 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/03/">March (8)</a></li>
20733
20734 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/04/">April (7)</a></li>
20735
20736 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/05/">May (1)</a></li>
20737
20738 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/06/">June (2)</a></li>
20739
20740 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/07/">July (2)</a></li>
20741
20742 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/08/">August (2)</a></li>
20743
20744 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/09/">September (4)</a></li>
20745
20746 </ul></li>
20747
20748 <li>2013
20749 <ul>
20750
20751 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/01/">January (11)</a></li>
20752
20753 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/02/">February (9)</a></li>
20754
20755 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/03/">March (9)</a></li>
20756
20757 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/04/">April (6)</a></li>
20758
20759 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/05/">May (9)</a></li>
20760
20761 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/06/">June (10)</a></li>
20762
20763 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/07/">July (7)</a></li>
20764
20765 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/08/">August (3)</a></li>
20766
20767 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/09/">September (5)</a></li>
20768
20769 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/10/">October (7)</a></li>
20770
20771 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/11/">November (9)</a></li>
20772
20773 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/12/">December (3)</a></li>
20774
20775 </ul></li>
20776
20777 <li>2012
20778 <ul>
20779
20780 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/01/">January (7)</a></li>
20781
20782 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/02/">February (10)</a></li>
20783
20784 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/03/">March (17)</a></li>
20785
20786 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/04/">April (12)</a></li>
20787
20788 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/05/">May (12)</a></li>
20789
20790 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/06/">June (20)</a></li>
20791
20792 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/07/">July (17)</a></li>
20793
20794 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/08/">August (6)</a></li>
20795
20796 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/09/">September (9)</a></li>
20797
20798 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/10/">October (17)</a></li>
20799
20800 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/11/">November (10)</a></li>
20801
20802 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/12/">December (7)</a></li>
20803
20804 </ul></li>
20805
20806 <li>2011
20807 <ul>
20808
20809 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/01/">January (16)</a></li>
20810
20811 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/02/">February (6)</a></li>
20812
20813 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/03/">March (6)</a></li>
20814
20815 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/04/">April (7)</a></li>
20816
20817 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/05/">May (3)</a></li>
20818
20819 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/06/">June (2)</a></li>
20820
20821 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/07/">July (7)</a></li>
20822
20823 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/08/">August (6)</a></li>
20824
20825 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/09/">September (4)</a></li>
20826
20827 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/10/">October (2)</a></li>
20828
20829 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/11/">November (3)</a></li>
20830
20831 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/12/">December (1)</a></li>
20832
20833 </ul></li>
20834
20835 <li>2010
20836 <ul>
20837
20838 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (2)</a></li>
20839
20840 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/02/">February (1)</a></li>
20841
20842 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/03/">March (3)</a></li>
20843
20844 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/04/">April (3)</a></li>
20845
20846 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/05/">May (9)</a></li>
20847
20848 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (14)</a></li>
20849
20850 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/07/">July (12)</a></li>
20851
20852 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/08/">August (13)</a></li>
20853
20854 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/09/">September (7)</a></li>
20855
20856 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/10/">October (9)</a></li>
20857
20858 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/11/">November (13)</a></li>
20859
20860 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/12/">December (12)</a></li>
20861
20862 </ul></li>
20863
20864 <li>2009
20865 <ul>
20866
20867 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (8)</a></li>
20868
20869 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (8)</a></li>
20870
20871 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (12)</a></li>
20872
20873 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (10)</a></li>
20874
20875 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/05/">May (9)</a></li>
20876
20877 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/06/">June (3)</a></li>
20878
20879 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/07/">July (4)</a></li>
20880
20881 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (3)</a></li>
20882
20883 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (1)</a></li>
20884
20885 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/10/">October (2)</a></li>
20886
20887 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (3)</a></li>
20888
20889 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (3)</a></li>
20890
20891 </ul></li>
20892
20893 <li>2008
20894 <ul>
20895
20896 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (5)</a></li>
20897
20898 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (7)</a></li>
20899
20900 </ul></li>
20901
20902 </ul>
20903
20904
20905
20906 <h2>Tags</h2>
20907 <ul>
20908
20909  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (13)</a></li>
20910
20911  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (1)</a></li>
20912
20913  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (1)</a></li>
20914
20915  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bankid">bankid (4)</a></li>
20916
20917  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin (8)</a></li>
20918
20919  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (14)</a></li>
20920
20921  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa (2)</a></li>
20922
20923  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath (2)</a></li>
20924
20925  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (102)</a></li>
20926
20927  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (149)</a></li>
20928
20929  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan (10)</a></li>
20930
20931  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/dld">dld (15)</a></li>
20932
20933  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook (12)</a></li>
20934
20935  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/drivstoffpriser">drivstoffpriser (4)</a></li>
20936
20937  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (254)</a></li>
20938
20939  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (21)</a></li>
20940
20941  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (12)</a></li>
20942
20943  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture (13)</a></li>
20944
20945  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox (8)</a></li>
20946
20947  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen (11)</a></li>
20948
20949  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju (41)</a></li>
20950
20951  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram (9)</a></li>
20952
20953  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (19)</a></li>
20954
20955  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap (9)</a></li>
20956
20957  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (8)</a></li>
20958
20959  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (1)</a></li>
20960
20961  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network (8)</a></li>
20962
20963  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (30)</a></li>
20964
20965  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (248)</a></li>
20966
20967  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (162)</a></li>
20968
20969  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn (11)</a></li>
20970
20971  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (2)</a></li>
20972
20973  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (48)</a></li>
20974
20975  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (75)</a></li>
20976
20977  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid (1)</a></li>
20978
20979  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reactos">reactos (1)</a></li>
20980
20981  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (11)</a></li>
20982
20983  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (3)</a></li>
20984
20985  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (9)</a></li>
20986
20987  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (1)</a></li>
20988
20989  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ruter">ruter (4)</a></li>
20990
20991  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/scraperwiki">scraperwiki (2)</a></li>
20992
20993  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (41)</a></li>
20994
20995  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (4)</a></li>
20996
20997  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis (4)</a></li>
20998
20999  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (45)</a></li>
21000
21001  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (3)</a></li>
21002
21003  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (9)</a></li>
21004
21005  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (26)</a></li>
21006
21007  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin (1)</a></li>
21008
21009  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (8)</a></li>
21010
21011  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (43)</a></li>
21012
21013  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (4)</a></li>
21014
21015  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (33)</a></li>
21016
21017 </ul>
21018
21019
21020     </div>
21021     <p style="text-align: right">
21022  Created by <a href="http://steve.org.uk/Software/chronicle">Chronicle v4.6</a>
21023 </p>
21024
21025   </body>
21026 </html>